Below are my Applied Meditation Therapy questions and comments that naturally emerged from the Hopi Elder's compassionate Calling. I will address the Elder's ten life considerations individually in order to arouse your own curiosity, reflection, and inner wisdom. I hope that the comments and questions provided here will continue to inspire your own thoughtful inquiry into the Elder's Spiritual Calling and Life Considerations. May this Applied Meditation Therapy inquiry into the Elder's words also encourage your wonderment and appreciation regarding the nature of your humanity, your true self, your relationships, and the meaning and purpose of your life.

I realize that I have given you much to reflect upon here. These questions were not meant to be answered quickly or all at once. As our life experiences unfold, our relation to each individual question needs to be explored and contemplated anew. The way of applied meditation therapy is an endless and wondrous journey. Our way is to live the path with sincerity and honestly explore the questions ceaselessly, not to attain perfection or exhaust the answers. Just pick one question to set the contemplative tone for the day or for the week. You do not need to worry about getting anywhere other than to be completely where you are with self-compassion, wakefulness, and child-like curiosity.

1) WHERE ARE YOU LIVING?    Where does your mind live? What thoughts are you attached to? Where does your heart live? Do you live in Truth? Does the place where you live, no matter how humble, reflect beauty, care, order, and warmth? How can you create a place where you live that is designed from within yourself so that it reveals your true self? What does the condition of your abode say about you to yourself? Is the place where you are living a good place to die? Does it nourish you? Make it a good place to die and you make it a good place to live. Nothing limits you to do this, no matter where you are, except the limitations you create in your own mind.

2) WHAT ARE YOU DOING?    How does what you are doing or not doing continue to hold you and your life in a condition of stagnation, meaninglessness, worry, fear, or despair? How does your doing or not doing effect your health and the well being of others? Can you have Faith in yourself to find other more healthy ways of doing and not doing? Are you being honest about what you are doing or not doing? Do you take time to be honestly and authentically alone with yourself and truthfully clarify the harmful or beneficial effects of your doing or not doing? Can you arouse the faith and courage to do what needs to be done? Can you listen with your whole body and surrender to Vast Wisdom, knowing that this is exactly honoring not doing in doing?

3) WHAT ARE YOUR RELATIONSHIPS?    What is your relationship to your life? Do you find yourself bodily present in each moment? Are you showing up for your whole life or are you grasping parts of your life and pushing away others? What is your mind's relationship toward you and your behavior? What is your mind's relationship toward others? In either case, is it judging, argumentative, critical, gentle, blaming, accepting, demeaning, compassionate, controlling? Are you aware of the emotional content that energizes your thinking and your speech toward others? How much of your relationship and behavioral interaction with others is based on mental pre-judgment or held prejudice from past experiences? Can you practice being with others without without placing them in absolute mental categories? Do you try to listen from your mind or from your heart? Can you practice not attaching to your thoughts when someone is trying to communicate a feeling in themselves? Do you listen to both the words and their emotional content while listening to another? Can you remain open to the other's emotional feeling even when your heart becomes uncomfortable and ill at ease? What does your mind do when your heart is ill at ease or uncomfortable with the emotional feeling of another? Does your mind try to protect your heart from feeling the painful or uncomfortable emotion in another person? Do you have a spiritual relationship with yourself? Does your relationship to yourself evidence a deep commitment to embody the Truth before your pride, hurt, beliefs, judgments, and personal preferences? Do you nourish a grateful and appreciative relationship with the simplest and most mundane things that support your life? Do you have a relationship with Nature no matter whether you are in an office, on a mountain, or in a forest? Do you have a relationship with the Whole Universe in every place you find yourself?

4) ARE YOU IN RIGHT RELATION?    Why are you in an intimate relationship? Is it authentic, sincere, truthful, and upright? Does the relationship evidence a mutual respect and caring? Do you consciously manipulate your intimate relationship for your benefit? Do you treat the intimate other with a seeming kindness to relieve your own guilt or shame? Can you forgive yourself and practice speaking and behaving from truth and authentic being? Do you make time to listen with your whole body to the feeling life of your intimate other? Do you practice not taking each other for granted? Do you feel worthy in the relationship? Do you feel equal in the relationship? Is your intimate relationship with yourself based upon self integrity and truth or upon denial, illusion, conceit, self negation, dishonesty, or self-rationalizations? Do you evaluate "right relation to people and circumstances" based upon your practice of sincerity, authenticity, mindfulness, honesty and willingness to see things as they are before your personal preferences or expectations? Is your relationship with the Spiritual Integrity of the Whole Universe based upon a bartering system i.e.. (If you take care of this or that in my life I will pray or mediate more often)? Or, is your Spiritual Relationship with the Whole Universe based on unconditional faith that there is a Vast Wisdom beyond your personal beliefs, preferences, expectations, and comprehension? Do you have an idealized conception of how you would like to be or an idealized image you want others to see you as? Do you keep failing to measure up to these idealized images of yourself, alone and with others? When you see yourself as failing to measure up to these images, does it discourage you from practicing right relations to truth, spirituality, and integrity in each moment of your life. Can you explore a healthier and more realistic relationship to these idealized images? Can you compassionately accept yourself as you are (with all your limitations) and still practice the endless refinement of right or authentic and compassionate relation to self and all sentient and insentient beings and circumstances.

5) WHERE IS YOUR WATER?    What truly can quench the endless fires of your desire and wanting? Is there a well within yourself that can satisfy your perpetual thirst? Do you feel that the well from within has to be filled from without? Will it ever be filled that way? Is it really empty? Can you drink emptiness and be fulfilled? Can you walk faithfully in a desert barren of all beliefs and recognize that this is the exactly the satisfaction of your thirst? What is the original water nature of your heart/mind? Is it clear or muddy? Is muddiness a natural condition of our heart/mind flowing against the banks of life? Does this mean that muddy waters are a natural condition of living? Can you trust that muddy waters are clear by nature? Sitting down and following breath, can you allow muddy water to be muddy water, thereby releasing heart/mind to reveal its originally clear nature? Even in clearness, muddy waters flow as muddy waters? Remember, as branching streams flow in the darkness, the still moon is graciously reflected even in rippling waters. Drinking from that flowing reflection of light in the darkness, be at ease and peace within yourself--knowing that your soul's thirst is endlessly quenched from the unfathomable waters within.

6) KNOW YOUR GARDEN.   What is the garden of you life? Can you see a garden in your family relationships? Can you cultivate your character and allow it to bloom? Can you become intimate with your mind/heart and know the weeds that flourish there? Are you willing to be a true gardener who practices the endless, joyful care of his/her garden? Can you endlessly and compassionately practice not giving energy to your mind/heart weeds? Remember that your mental and emotional weeds make good spiritual fertilizer. What kind of manure do you find in yourself that can function as fertilizer for wisdom, growth, and compassion? If your inner garden was cut off from the dirt, would it continue to grow? Remember that the pure white lotus has roots embedded in mud. Without the mud, no lotus can bloom. Can you live your life as just one flower? Nothing special, yet quite extra-ordinary.

7) IT IS TIME TO SPEAK YOUR TRUTH.   What does it mean to be straightforward in speech with sensitivity and compassion for others? Can you speak modestly and practice not using words which would make others feel unworthy, demeaned, belittled, or humiliated? Can you abstain from words of slander, hypocrisy, and gossip. Can you openly express your concerns regarding the behavior of another while communicating a deep respect and an unconditional regard for their humanness. Do you practice speaking to others with integrity, uprightness, honesty, kindness, modesty, truthfulness, and authenticity? Do you speak with genuine feeling, sincerity, and natural expression without hidden intent? Can you practice not making promises lightly and fulfill all promises made to self and others? What does it mean to diminish the use of idle or frivolous speaking by speaking with a mindful appreciation and gratitude for this Only Moment of life and death? Can you allow an Empty Silence to speak Its truth and wisdom while diminishing your urgency to fill the void with sounds, words, or thoughts? Does your speaking practice reflect a genuine interest and sympathetic feeling for both the joys and suffering of others?