Vocation and Profession | A Spiritual Perspective
One’s vocation encompasses the changes that occur in the world when you act from the capacities of your higher self rather than your everyday self.
A method for discerning one’s vocation:
- Observe what resonates with you in the world.
- Recognize how your everyday self responds to it and harmonize/balance these reactions.
- Connect with your higher self to discover its true response to the situation. This response will contain the substance of freedom and be informed by, but not determined by, the circumstances you face.
- Empathically place yourself in the positions of others involved before acting, and assess the potential impact of your words or deeds. Adjust your action if necessary. This step ensures that your free intention enhances Love, Truth, Harmony, and Meaning in the world rather than causing harm.
- Await the appropriate time and place to implement your intention. The world will reveal the right timing.
- When the moment arrives, act from your higher self in accordance with your prepared intention and action—while remaining open to improvisation.
- After the situation has passed, reflect on your actual impact on the circumstances and others involved. You can do this by empathically placing yourself in their positions and experiencing your words or deeds from their perspectives.
With repeated practice, this process will enhance your understanding and your intuitive sense of your vocation. This, in turn, enables you to act more consciously from your higher self, allowing your actions to become an expression of your vocation.
Naturally, there are numerous nuances to each step. And the capacities required are not at all trivial but would have to be consciously developed through dedicated practice. For this, we have found the methods introduced in “Ways to Social Healing — Basic Methods” and our course “Preparation for Spiritual Awakening” helpful.
At this stage, vocation is not necessarily tied to profession. Any life situation can present an opportunity to awaken to your higher self and respond from that place—i.e., from your vocation. However, you may notice how this process introduces elements of professionalism. In essence, we’re learning to act consciously with an understanding of intended and likely outcomes.
For those seeking to align their profession with their vocation, there are two primary scenarios to consider:
- Finding an existing profession that offers sufficient flexibility, or that you can reshape adequately, to serve as a vehicle for your vocation. This could be your current profession, one you could transition into, or one requiring additional training.
Consider examples such as teachers, psychotherapists, or doctors. These professions have certain rules but also areas of flexibility. Both can either support or hinder your vocation. Can you express your vocation within the given system? Can you modify the rules and expectations to some extent to allow for the expression of your vocation? This is generally the easier option. - Creating a new profession that serves as an expression of your vocation. While this offers the greatest flexibility, it lacks an established framework to rely on. You’ll need to develop your own training plan, guidelines, agreements on payment, possibly a name for your practice, and other things. This is the more challenging option but may be necessary if the first is not viable.
Again, there are numerous nuances in this process, including:
- Harmonizing your Spirit, Soul, and Body to a degree that allows spiritual impulses (i.e., intentions) to flow freely through soul and body into the world.
- Wisely working with already established forms and expectations. Some of them can be transformed only slowly over longer periods of time.
- Developing a true and objective appreciation of your work. What is its true value in gold?
- Striking a realistic balance between the true value of your work, existing price expectations in the world, and what you need for living.
- Understanding the stage you’re in: Apprentice, Journey(wo)man, Master
Generally speaking, it will be helpful to spend enough time discerning one’s vocation before moving on to finding or creating a profession for it. However, the latter process will naturally also test and deepen your connection to your vocation.
Working Together
The next stage in this vocational journey unfolds when two or more individuals, each having discovered and embodied their vocation as a profession, begin to collaborate and co-create. This collaboration is characterized by:
- Sharing their unique capacities with one another
- Supporting each other in areas of weakness
- Freely choosing to work in the name of an higher ideal, transcending even their individual higher selves.
(We found the methods introduced in Course 4 helpful for this step.)