Hello! Try that on for size. What’s the quality of your responses to the ever changing flow of form and circumstances you call your “life?” Archaic and obsolete? Fresh and visionary? “How do I tell?” you ask. “What’s the criteria for determining?” Fair questions.

Ask yourself this. “Generally speaking, what do I typically feel about the quality of my earth life?” Remember, there are no right or wrong answers. There is only the Truth of what Is . . . the Supreme Awareness that has the power to set us free, once discerned and acknowledged, from the mischief of a “set of obsolete responses” dominating and controlling the quality of our earth lives.

To help process that inquiry effectively, give yourself permission to “come apart for awhile,” right now, by focusing your attention on your breath and noticing as ten cycles of breathing complete their passage in and out.

Let your mind freely play with the following possibilities and notice what comes up as true for you. Once again, now, inquire, “Generally speaking, what do I typically feel about the quality of my earth life?” and then add “Is it my tendency to feel content or disappointed?”

Now, focusing on the breath again, sit quietly and notice what spontaneously comes up in response to the inquiry. When the question is resolved, acknowledge the answer, thank the Source of all Wisdom from which it came and then proceed in a similar fashion to consider the balance of these states of being, always beginning with “Generally speaking, what do I typically feel about the quality of my earth life? Is it my tendency to feel (for example) “Happy or sad . . . Happy or sad . . . Happy or sad,” repeating the choices a number of times until they are firmly imprinted on the psychic process.

Select one of the alternatives from the following list, and sit with it in the preceding fashion until the Truth for you is clearly revealed. Then select another inquiry and repeat the process until you have received a clear insight into each consideration.

• Peaceful or turbulent?
• Confident or insecure?
• Worthy or ashamed?
• Loving or hostile?
• Understanding or resentful?
• Happy or sad?
• Enthusiastic or apathetic?
• Caring or indifferent?

Chances are most of you will discover that the majority of your dominant tendencies are grounded in the more enlightened realms of human possibility. You tend to feel peaceful, confident, worthy, loving, understanding, happy, enthusiastic, content and caring in most situations, with most people, most of the time. Congratulations. Enjoy the Grace. You deserve it.

Just don’t get lost in the fantasy that your whole stash of obsolete responses is history. Somewhat cooked we are. Totally cooked we are not. Welcome to finishing school. The key lies in the inevitable ambivalence we all experienced as we embraced the inquiry exercise.

Sure, “generally speaking” I’m a paragon of virtue . . . in “most” situations, with “most” people, “most” of the time. Hell, we all are, and let’s not knock it. It took us a lot of evolving to get to this point. Honor the work we’ve done in letting go of tons of obsolete responses, but let us not sit on our spiritual butts as if we’ve never heard Jesus invite us to “be ye perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect.”

“Perfect!” That means showing up with our finest, most sacred lovingkindness for “all” people, in “all” situations, “all” the time. On the path of awakening “most” is an encouraging mile marker to put behind us. Let’s just not forget there’s miles to go on the trail of the Prodigal Child before we sleep in the sweet embrace of the Divine Mother’s perfect love.

To examine our lives in this way makes them worth living and is the first step toward living consciously rather than as a set of obsolete responses. Said Thoreau about his stay at Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

The unexamined life is a second hand life. It is so because it depends upon forces other than itself for meaning. Take those away and the meaning is lost. An examined life is meaningful because the process of examination itself grants meaning and dignity to the sum of our days. Surely that is all the meaning we have need of. A life dedicated to a quest for Truth draws meaning from itself and derives both dignity and fulfillment from its commitment to a deeper understanding of the true nature of things.

To free ourselves from the bondage of obsolete responses we must ask if we will stay content with off-the-shelf-answers and one-size-fits-all truths or provide our own. Charles Fillmore, co-founder of Unity, left no doubt as to where he stood on that topic. “There comes a time,” he said, “in the life of every student of Truth where they must stand up and proclaim their Truth to be the Truth regardless of precedent or tradition.” Let’s hear it for “Poppa” Charlie.

Ralph Waldo Emerson encouraged us to “Trust thyself, every heart vibrates to that iron chord. Speak your Truth in words as hard as cannonballs and if that Truth changes tomorrow, speak tomorrow’s Truth in words as hard. Remember, God will not have His work made manifest by cowards!”

And what is the work that God would have us do? The work that demands we engage the adventure of life with a fresh vision and a fearless capacity for the new wine of the Gospel of Jesus Christ?