For thousands of years, great wisdom figures have offered us the following counsel: Know thyself. The unexamined life is not worth living. To refuse to examine the assumptions one lives by is immoral.
Who I am powerfully determines how I will act; what I will choose; how I will respond; how I will react; what I will consider; what I will embrace; what I will integrate into my personality; what I will value; what I will discount. This list could go on and on.
More than forty years ago I began to emerge, write down and reflect upon what I have come to call: Essential Life Questions. Although I currently have 6 pages of questions there are four questions that I consider to be the tap roots for the others.
This morning, gentle reader, I will offer you my four Essential Life Questions and also provide you with a number of questions for each of the four. I invite you to spend some time reflecting upon the questions that resonate with you at this time in your life. I also invite you to add questions to each of my four Essential Life Questions.
WHO ARE YOU?
- What are your core values? (Those 3-4 values that to the best of your ability you will never compromise)
- What are your core guiding life-principles? (Those 3-4 guiding life-principles that to the best of your ability you will never compromise)
- What are your core deep tacit assumptions? (Those 3-4 core assumptions that you hold that powerfully inform, guide and direct you – for example, ‘People are inherently good’ or ‘People are inherently sin-full’) NOTE: One of the most challenging things for us is to emerge and ‘own’ our deep tacit assumptions.
WHO ARE YOU CHOOSING TO BECOME?
- For Example: Are you choosing to become more open, more discriminating, more compassionate, more loving, more forgiving, more mercy-full, more flexible, more progressive, more conservative, more liberal, more radical, etc.?
- Are there core values, core guiding life-principles or core deep tacit assumptions that no longer serve you and that you are considering or actively replacing?
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
- What’s your life-purpose?
- Who are you ‘called’ to be in the world?
- What three life-decisions did you make that helped bring you to this place in your life?
- What three life-decisions did you not make that would have taken you to another place?
- What motivates you and what de-motivates you when it comes to your ‘life-purpose’ and ‘call’?
WHERE ARE YOU GOING?
- Are you following a life-path that others chose for you? How do you know?
- Are you ‘taking the road less traveled?’
- Are you surveying your own life-path?
- If you continue on the life-path you are on where will you end up?
In addition to these four Essential Life Questions there are five other ‘categories’ that I invite you to consider. I invite you to emerge 2-3 Guiding Questions for each category and then I invite you to spend some time reflecting upon and responding to the questions. There are five dimensions that help determine who we are as fully human beings these are: the Physical Dimension, the Intellectual Dimension, the Emotional Dimension, the Spirit(ual) Dimension, and the Social-Relational Dimension (we are, by nature, social-relational beings).
Today, I will leave us with two quotations to hold:
Be the change you want to see in the world. –Gandhi
We convince by our presence. –Walt Whitman
Searcher-Seeker 
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