The Lexicon
Meaning, will, destiny
Calling
A calling is a summons you did not author, a pull toward the life that is uniquely yours to live. The old word vocation means to be called, as if by a voice; the soul comes into the world, the ancients said, accompanied by a daimon, an inner genius that holds the image of your destiny and presses you toward it. The restless dissatisfaction you feel in the wrong life is that genius reminding you. The deep gladness that meets a true need is its yes.
Carried by 18 teachers · across 4 traditions · 11 quotes
To answer a calling you must first learn to hear it, and hearing requires stillness. The calling rarely announces itself in words; it speaks through longing, through what you cannot not do, through the strange persistence of a dream. Often it asks you to reclaim energy you have scattered and gather your spirit back to the present. The teachers warn that to refuse your calling is to betray yourself, while to accept it, even when it costs everything comfortable, is to feel destiny and freedom fuse. You are not choosing a career; you are consenting to become who you already are.
In their words
Between stimulus and response there is a space, and in that space is our power to choose.Viktor Frankl
Vocational arousal — finding your purpose through the yearning.Barbara Marx Hubbard
What is to give light must endure burning.Viktor Frankl
The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.Carl Jung
Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors where there were only walls.Joseph Campbell