Are You Searching for Answers?

When I stand before God at the end of my life, I would hope that I would not have a single bit of talent left, and could say, "I used everything you gave me." ~Erma Bombeck

We spend much of our lives asking very basic life questions and searching for answers:

Who am I?
Why am I here?
What is Truth?
What am I supposed to do?
What's my passion?
Am I valuable?
What makes me truly happy?

I am confident everyone who reads that list is nodding their head in agreement, and maybe you're thinking "Oh, I know one you missed!" I am also confident that each of you has spent a fair amount of time thinking about what the right answers are for you, individually. Have you discovered the answers for yourself yet?

I cannot tell you the answers for you. I can only discover the answers are for me. But what I can tell you are some general thoughts about the questions.

The questions have to be answered. They arise up within each of us and pose a problem that has to be solved if we are to experience harmony. No individual will find peace or rest until he or she forms a settles sense about the questions...for a time...because the questions and their answers are multi-layered, and we discover the layers sequentially.

The answers to life questions cannot be found in only one place; they can be found like clues in many places, some of them rather surprising, like bumper stickers, for example. They represent truth, and since truth is universal and infinite, it simply cannot be contained in one place, one psychology, one religion, one building, one nation.... I feel quite confident you get my sense.

The answers to the questions have to be verified from within your Self. You may be searching for the answers (one of life's truly fun little games) and when you think you've got it, you go inside of yourself and ask another questio
"Is this right?" You listen to your Self for its answer to validate or discard what you think is the answer. This would make you the ultimate authority on the answers. Even your agreement with the answers from any other leaves you as the ultimate authority.

The answers change as you unfold greater understanding. The apostle, Paul, tried to explain this for us when he said "When I was a child, I used to talk as a child, think as a child, reason as a child; when I became a man, I put aside childish things." A toddler might think what truly makes him happy is a bright, blue ball. That changes as he unfolds an understanding of "there is more."

There will be many distractions and diversions while you are searching for answers. Even an individual who dedicates his or her entire life to discovering what Life Itself is all about, becomes distracted by the lure of the sirens: a show on TV, friends calling to play, a really good book. And so, while we may take these detours, if the questions remain unanswered, it will set up a level of unrest within you that will niggle and tickle you until you get back and work on them some more.

There is more found in silence than in sound. When the band is playing, the whistle is blowing, the horns are blaring and the babies are crying for our attention, we lose the silence. In the silence is the communication between the Self and Itself Within. Muffling the exte
al sounds so that you can participate in your own silence, is an assist to the discovery of the answers. If you are searching for answers to some very basic life questions, try listening to the silence.