The life experience of all people begins with one simple thing: response. If not for response, nothing would happen in the human experience.

There is an innate response to life that begins in utero for the embryo and continues through childhood. If you observe infants, it is readily apparent that they do not have to think about responding to life. They are not trying to respond. That is just how they are wired.

The physical body is hardwired to respond to life. As long as a person is alive, the innate response at a subconscious level continues. But more and more, as the child matures into adolescence and adulthood, their response to life depends on conscious factors in the individual’s experience. It relies on their deliberate conscious actions, their conscious openness to the wisdom available to them, and their conscious choice to receive Love and express Love to the people around them.

Lloyd Arthur Meeker, the founder of the Attunement process, put it this way:

According to your response, so is it established unto you.

It is our primal spirituality to respond to life. That’s how we are made. And yet, in the culture in which we live, with all that gets put into a young person’s psyche, the blossoming of response through all the conscious dimensions of the human experience tends to get shut down.

Virtually all people are faced with that challenge. There are all the negative messages that invade the human psyche from the world. For a person’s conscious response to blossom, they have to transcend any negative messages they have received. They have to respond to the creative urge within themselves in a way that a negative message they have received might say they cannot or should not.

I wrote about the negative messages from our culture in last week’s Pulse of Spirit. They are too numerous to name in this article. But here is an abbreviated list:

You don’t deserve it.
You are too young.
You are too old.
You aren’t smart enough.
There is something wrong with you.
You are not good-looking enough.

I’m sure such things are familiar to you. I just wanted to name a few of these negative messages to be sure you know the kind of thing I am addressing.

The words of these messages express a conscious thought. But often, beneath the conscious thought is a deep subconscious belief and deep feelings.

Response is vital at all levels of the human experience. The emotional body has the capacity to respond. When we open up to something and respond to it, our heart gets stirred by whatever it is we responded to.

The mind, too, has the ability to respond. It can respond to the invisible source of imagination, inspiration, and wisdom within us all. It can respond to the impulse to take action in a particular way.

According to your response, so is it established unto you.

Whether we respond makes all the difference. Have you ever watched someone in an emergency who didn’t respond? I find it deeply disturbing. Generally speaking, people respond to something, but possibly not the creative urge within themselves.

I am no expert on the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting. But press reports say that 376 law enforcement officers descended on Robb Elementary School to save children from a lone shooter. They didn’t take action for 77 minutes, and there was a great loss of life. They didn’t respond to an urge to protect the children. Apparently, they responded to their fears. Now there were many factors at play, and it is not my purpose here to analyze them all. My point is simply that people respond to different impulses, and often those impulses are not creative. And sometimes, they don’t respond at all. In this case, it was a life-and-death situation.

There is whether we respond to the creative urge within us. There is also how we respond. At from what level of our being? The emotional? The mental? And in what spirit? With what feelings?

How we respond establishes our life pattern. And it determines what we create in our world.

For various reasons, people end up not feeling free to respond. They feel somehow disempowered and perhaps victimized by the world.

It happened, and there is nothing I can do. These people did this, those people did that, this happened, and I am powerless.

I am here to say it is not true. There is always something to respond to. The creative urge within us is always there. It never stopped being there, ever. And anytime we turn to it and respond to it, we are set free, according to our response. If we turn to that urge to imagine and dream of something different, our mind is set free to think about that, and our lives are set free to live it.

If we respond to the Love given to us from on high, that establishes something for us. The truth is that we are all loved by the mysterious source of life that created us and sustains us even now. We were loved so much that we were given life. We are being given life right now.

If a person doesn’t appreciate what they are given, they are unlikely to respond to it, at least not in full. That is true related to the Love we each receive from the source of power that creates us. And yet, if you accept that you are loved and receive that Love, how can you not respond? Gratitude for being loved is one way to respond. When we do that, we can’t help but give love ourselves. We become loving.

According to your response, so is it established unto you.

To me, the names Mother God and Father God are very real. I know I am loved by them both.

Sometimes, there are men in my world who don’t seem very loving, particularly toward me. I do my best to create loving relationships with the men in my life. And sometimes that goes better than others. But whatever happens, I am here for my Father, and I know His Love.

Sometimes, I wish that a woman in my life would be more loving than she seems to be. And yet, I always know the Love of my Mother that constantly surrounds me. As I turn to Her, I can’t help but love Her back and bring Her Love to the world.

A person may not think they are getting enough attention from the opposite sex, or whatever sex, but there is always enough Love coming from Mother God and Father God. How about starting with that? Then we can have relationships with each other without a huge void due to the fact we have not received what is immediately present and available to us to receive from on high—Love, spiritual surround, friendship, and inspiration. Are we not going to receive it from on high, from the source of our own Being, but then go begging for Love from each other?

If we truly open ourselves, surrender and give praise and thanksgiving for what we are already receiving, then when we turn to one another, our cup is full. We have something to share with one another that amplifies what we are receiving from on high and then gives the color of our individuality to it. And then, human culture and personality being what they are, we can endure whatever the hardships are of relating to other people.

There are things to endure with other people. It can be hard sometimes under the best of circumstances. But it gets really difficult if you relate to other people as an empty cup. Then any unkind word, any forgetfulness, disregard, or mean-spiritedness from another person can seem impossible to withstand.

Enduring such things seldom feels good. But it is different if you are living life with a full cup. On that basis, there is a power and presence within oneself to respond to with your creative fire at all levels. And there is the presence and power of another person to respond to.

Of course, this is where it gets tricky, because, as human beings, we are complex. What are you responding to in that other person? Most of us are a mixed bag in some way. So, what part of that mixed bag are we responding to? There are whatever negative factors from our culture that might have intruded upon that person’s psyche. And then there is a power and a presence that is creative and beautiful. The Divine is present in the person, and it is unique to them.

Response is not just a general thing of responding to God or to the Divine, whatever you want to call it. And it is not, if it is going to be creative, if you respond to all the foibles, personality quirks, and dysfunctionality of the people around you, when we all have some dose of that. It is finding and perceiving what is true in that other person that is unique to them—that is, the Divine in them—and wholeheartedly responding to that.

Response is specific to the unique power and presence in play at the moment, whether relative to another person or from the creative source of your own Being. It is specific to the inspiration of the moment that is available now, which is different from what it was an hour ago and different from what it will be tomorrow. There is an intelligence, a guidance, a governance, and a pattern of Love that is available now. It tells us to do something now, and to think, and feel something now.

And so it is with another person. There is something to respond to in one another that is specific and unique to each of us.

Think of it this way. If you were out on a date and you addressed the other person using the name of someone you dated a year ago, it might not go well. There is someone specific there, identified by a name. There is the unique spirit of that person and their unique qualities. And there are individual creative factors at that moment, as there are in all the moments of our life. That gives us a unique opportunity to respond. And when we do, we open up the potential of a pattern of reciprocity with that person.

What is reciprocity? If you look up the origin of the word, it has to do with going back the way you came. Reciprocity is a process of going back and forth. That’s what a reciprocating valve does.

Reciprocity is initiated by response. No response, no reciprocity. Something comes one way, and then something goes back. But it does not stop there. There is a creative back-and-forth that is specific to the people involved, specific to the factors involved, and particular to the creative opportunity that can be fulfilled by that reciprocity.

If we stay in the land of generalities, we do not respond with all of who we are that is appropriate to that situation. There is no reciprocity, no creativity, and a lost opportunity. And then, in the middle of that lost opportunity, we might feel victimized in a world where nothing is happening.

So how shall we respond? And from what level of ourselves?

According to your response, so is it established unto you.

But not only that. Our world is created out of our response and our reciprocity.