The Anatomy of a Calling

Tag: Lissa

10 Signs You’re on the Right Track to Finding Your Calling

Finding and fulfilling your calling can be confusing, disheartening, anxiety-provoking, disappointing, and frustrating, but it can also lead to the greatest feelings of deep fulfillment you’ve ever experienced. When you know—youjust know—that you’re here to be an instrument of sacred service for the Divine to use you as a vessel of love amidst a world in crisis, you’ll find yourself on just such a hero’s journey—because your calling will reach out for you like a magnet draws forth metal. This kind of journey is not for the faint of heart, which is why I wrote my new book The Anatomy of a Calling. Consider it a sort of field manual for anyone on the hero’s or heroine’s journey of embodying your soul’s purpose. (The book trailer just dropped today! You can watch it here.) I wrote this book for anyone who just knows that you’re here on a sort of spiritual mission, one that your soul has been preparing for your whole life, which may be quite mysterious, filled with unexpected twists and turns.

You may have already heard the Call to Adventure, and you’re now on the Road of Trials, where things don’t always go quite as you planned. Or maybe you’ve heard the Call, but you’re Refusing the Call. Or maybe you’re in the Ordeal in the Innermost Cave, experiencing a Dark Night of the Soul, which always happens just before you Find the Holy Grail that you bring back to the Ordinary World on the Road Back. Maybe you’ve already completed one hero’s journey and now you just got called to another, because most of us are in the midst of multiple hero’s journeys all at once! Wherever you are,The Anatomy of a Calling is meant to offer you comfort, reassurance, tools, and practices that can facilitate whatever phase of the journey you find yourself navigating.

One of the ways in which heroes and heroines get off tracks is that people get seduced by myths about what it means to find and fulfill your calling. As I wrote about in 8 Myths About Finding Your Calling, your true soul’s purpose may not be what you think. So how can you tell if you’re on the right track? Here are a few signs.

1. You’re terrified when you first hear the call.

Caroline Myss warns, “God never calls you to something that doesn’t challenge you on the earth level. Why? You have to be tested, you have to be broken, you have to choose which voice you will listen to.” Everyone wants to feel the deep fulfillment of doing what you’re here on this earth to do, but most of us want that fulfillment without sacrificing our comfort zone. Yet most callings beckon you out of your comfort zone. We might try to compromise. “Can I please keep my comfort zone and still find and fulfill my calling?” The Universe probably giggles a little bit before saying, “No love. At some point, you have to choose. Are you all in? Or not?”

2. Your true calling activates your life force.

When you’re tuned into your real calling, you’ll feel filled with “Shakti,” that creative force of love that leaps you out of your chair into inspired actions that ignite your passion and burn a fire inside your soul. It’s not that you won’t get tired or feel drained sometimes. But you’ll feel as if Something Larger is taking you over and using you to fulfill a mission, and that feeling of getting used feels yummier than any regular old achievement. You may even find that your health improves, you attract a new love relationship, or you become an amazing person magnet, because this kind of life force is the very stuff that moves mountains, works miracles, and changes the world.

3. Your calling doesn’t fit in a box.

You can’t find a role model for anyone who is doing exactly what you’re being called to do. Usually, your calling will be perfectly unique, just for you. Someone else might offer you inspiration or share a similar calling to yours. But the way you will navigate the hero’s journey of your calling will be as unique as a fingerprint. After I had quit my job as a doctor, back when I was still trying to figure out what in the world I was supposed to do next, I was searching for something I could join—some preexisting thing that would fit me like a glove. My mentor Kitchen Table Wisdom author Rachel Naomi Remen, MD said, “Don’t join something. Build something.” If your perfect job doesn’t exist, create it.

4. You’ll realize that you’ve spent your whole life training for JUST THIS.

Even what seemed like dismal failures and ginormous life mistakes turned out to inform what your soul is here on this earth to express. The addiction you recovered from, the divorce that failed to close your heart, the cancer you survived, the child you almost abused during your postpartum depression, the job that required you to sell your soul—all of it becomes grist for the mill and bench presses your compassion muscles, making youjust the perfect person to do what you’re here to do.

5. Some people feel threatened by what you feel called to do.

Many true callings will beckon you to disrupt the status quo. For those who are comfortable with things as they are, you may ruffle inner feathers and shine a light on things they may not want to see within themselves. We can be very sneaky about the ways in which we compromise our souls. When one of us starts living fully aligned with the soul’s integrity, other people who aren’t doing the same tend to get uncomfortable. This doesn’t mean you should let what everybody thinks hold you back from saying a big “Hell Yeah” to your calling. It may not feel like it, but you’re doing those people a favor by illuminating something true within them, even if they feel triggered by the illumination.

6. Your calling seems to be a moving target.

You may think callings are some black and white thing, and if only you could pick the right answer out of a catalog, you’d like happily ever after, feeling deeply fulfilled by the inner knowing that you’re contributing your gifts just as you’re meant to. But true callings don’t tend to work that way. Your calling may look like ten different professions in one lifetime. Or it could mean total loyalty to one job, during which you change evolve you personally show up for that job a dozen times. I once thought it was my calling to go to medical school and practice medicine as a doctor. Then I felt like I had missed my calling because I felt very strongly called to leave medicine. Then I felt called to make art about my patients with breast cancer. Then I felt called to write a book—or five. Then I felt called to found the Whole Health Medicine Institute, a training program for conscious health care providers, therapists, coaches, and healers. It’s not that I got my calling wrong. It’s just that callings are a journey, and sometimes, we’re only given one bread crumb at a time. As Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “Faith is taking the first step when you can’t see the whole staircase.”

7. You can only see your calling one clear step into the future.

Callings don’t usually come with business plans, so you may feel called to make one inspired move—like quitting the wrong job or applying for a domain name or signing up for more education. But you may discover that after you’ve been brave enough to take that initial step, you feel a bit lost because the next step hasn’t been revealed yet. Don’t despair. You can’t rush your calling. Trust Divine timing and know that when the time is right for you to leap, you will be shown what to do—and you will recognize it.

8. Callings don’t go away.

You can quit your job, but you can’t quit your calling. You may find that you left behind what you thought was once a calling, but no longer feels like one. And yet, your calling keeps trailing you like a shadow. You don’t find callings. Callings find you—and like a true love, they won’t let you go. You may deny your calling for a long, long time, but callings are patient. They wear you down like a persistent two-year old, until you finally fall to your knees, bow down, and say, “I’m in.”

9. You feel like an instrument of the Divine in the world.

When you’ve really found your calling, you know it’s not YOU who’s doing that thing you do in the world. It’s an organizing intelligence, a Universal Love, a Benevolent Presence, God/Goddess—whatever you want to call this Thing That Takes You Over and uses you for sacred service. Your work begins to feel not like an act of ambition, but an offering of love. You care less about money (though there’s nothing wrong with a calling that offers you a comfortable living!) and more about living in alignment with your soul’s truth.

10. Your calling opens your heart.

You start noticing that your calling becomes your spiritual practice. Your growth edges get pushed. Your shadows get illuminated. Your relationships get tested. Your comfort zone gets threatened. Your ego gets stripped bare as onion layer after onion later of That Which Is Not Your True Nature gets peeled back. What you find at the core is your authentic self, your soul, or what I call in my new book The Anatomy of a Calling “Your Inner Pilot Light.” (Learn more about how to cultivate a relationship with your Inner Pilot Light here.) Your heart opens. Your capacity for compassion expands. The love within you overflows. You realize that really, your calling is all about showing you how to love.

To learn more tips and tools for finding and fulfilling your calling, visit TheAnatomyOfACalling.com.

Trusting your journey,

PS. To film my book trailer, a film crew followed me all around my favorite haunts in the Bay Area—everywhere from the Muir Beach Overlook to Grace Cathedral. Watch it here if you’re curious. Also, the preorder bonuses are still available until December 28, in case you feel the uprising of shakti leaping you out of your chair to preorder this book. This will be the kind of book you’ll want to talk about in your book club, so buy several copies to share with friends who are also on a hero’s journey. You can check out the preorder bonuses and place your order here.

December 1, 2015
When You Know You’ve Veered off Course from Your Calling

The following is an excerpt from my new memoir The Anatomy of a Calling. The Anatomy of a Calling is about finding and fulfilling your calling, using Joseph Campbell’s hero’s journey as a map for what happens in between the moment when you hear The Call to Adventure and when you finally bring the Holy Grail home to your people who need it. This excerpt describes a particularly painful part of my hero’s journey and demonstrates what happens when we start to veer out of alignment with the integrity of the soul.

I received the letter from my patient Fiona in my box at the office after a long night of delivering babies, when I had almost no reserve left. In her letter, Fiona explained that after she and her husband fought for the bazillionth time about the fact that they hadn’t had sex in over a year, he threatened to leave her if she didn’t go see a gynecologist to figure out what was wrong. Because my schedule was so packed, she waited two months to see me, praying I might have some magical solution that would save her marriage. I had taken care of her a few years back, and her recollection of me was that I was approachable, tender, funny, compassionate, and honest. She felt she could trust me.

In her letter, Fiona explained that on the morning of her appointment, she showered, trimmed her pubic hair, and spritzed on her favorite perfume. She donned her laciest lingerie and wore her favorite dress. When she arrived at my office, she stood in line behind four other people signing in at the front desk and took her seat with the other twenty women in the waiting room. She waited for over an hour, and long past her appointment time, my medical assistant finally put her in a room, where she was ordered to undress and left alone in a chilly room wearing nothing more than a paper gown for 20 minutes. By that time, feeling cold and uncomfortably vulnerable, she started to cry.

Apparently, as she described in her letter, I didn’t acknowledge the tears or even apologize for the wait when I finally came in. Fiona wrote that I looked tired. My hair was up in a ponytail, my eyes were puffy and weary, and I wasn’t wearing any makeup. I wore my white coat over my wrinkled green surgical scrubs, stretched over my pregnant belly.

She wrote that I made small talk with her as I filled out some papers and got ready to perform her annual exam, but when I asked her if she was having any problems, Fiona hesitated. I stood with my back to her, not making eye contact. Because I was so distracted, she didn’t feel safe to share with me the uncomfortable story of her failing sex life. So she decided to keep her mouth shut. I performed her Pap smear, refilled her prescriptions, and left her alone in the room, kicking herself.

When Fiona got home, she took off her finest dress and put away her lacy lingerie. It took her months to get brave enough to make an appointment with another doctor, but she had found a good one, who didn’t accept managed care insurance plans and no longer practiced obstetrics, so the doctor had been able to spend a whole hour with her. Her doctor was helping her to improve her hormone balance and getting her off antidepressants, and she and her husband were in therapy together.

She wrote that she didn’t intend to judge me or shame me. She was raised to believe that you treat doctors with respect and don’t question their advice or their behavior. But she was so hurt by the encounter, so disappointed in my actions, that she felt like she wanted me to know, just in case it helped other patients. She wished me well and congratulated me on my pregnancy and expressed compassion for how busy she knew I was. She signed it, “I believe you’re still in there. Love, Fiona.”

I wept when I read Fiona’s letter. The worst part was that I didn’t even remember the encounter, and I couldn’t conjure up an image of her face. Fiona was just another faceless, nameless number on the medical assembly line of my practice.

What was happening to me? How had I let myself get so busy that I failed to notice that a patient of mine had been crying? I was called to medicine to be a healer. I was the “squirrel girl,” after all. But what kind of healer leaves a crying, naked woman with a health concern feeling the way Fiona did? When had I stopped caring?

When I called Fiona at home to apologize after reading her letter, she thanked me for the phone call. She told me not to worry or feel badly. I felt unspeakably ashamed.

***

When I was done with work, still stinging from Fiona’s letter and the grueling night shift I had just finished, I stopped by the grocery store. The only thing that was keeping me from my well-deserved bed was a pimply, teenage kid who couldn’t seem to get my groceries scanned. I stood there for what felt like an hour, spent, hungry, and disappointed in myself. The kid’s face was flushed and his brow was starting to sweat, and I could see him looking helplessly at the other clerks, who were all scanning and swiping with ease.

Then I heard myself say something I still can’t believe came out of me.

“If I did my job the way you did your job, there would be dead people everywhere.”

Really. I actually said that.

On my way home from the grocery store, a squirrel darted out in front of my car, and I felt my car thump over it. I thought about stopping, checking on the squirrel to see if there was any way I could save it. But I just kept driving, anesthetized and depleted, without even looking back in my rear view mirror.

I couldn’t sleep that night, in spite of my exhaustion. I kept tossing from side to side like a tuna, my back hurting, feeling my baby kick my ribs. I thought about my father’s cancer. I thought about letting down Fiona and being mean to that poor kid. And the squirrel. The squirrel. Something felt squashed in my chest, like a vice was clenching my heart. Tears would have felt welcome. They would have reminded me I was still alive. But they never came. I felt an uprising of pain but like a shaken Coke bottle with the top still on, the pain had nowhere to go.

It was the first time I’ve ever thought about suicide.

Just when I started thinking about how I would prefer to die if I killed myself, my baby kicked me, and I remembered that if I killed myself, I’d be killing not just me, but my little girl.

Oh my God. I couldn’t even manage to kill myself.

I felt a tornado of fury funnel up in me. I looked around for something to break—a plate or a vase maybe. But just as I was spinning in circles, finding nothing, I heard a voice.

A gentle, loving whisper said, “Darling, they’re about to break you. You have to quit your job.”

The moments that followed bathed me with what I can only describe as a flood of unconditional love unlike anything I had ever experienced, a waterfall of grace rushing over me and through me, filling my heart and body and mind with hope and peace. I felt my whole nervous system relax. My mind became silent and I felt myself pop outside of my body until I was no longer Lissa; I was the burst-open consciousness witnessing Lissa in her pain with unbridled love, compassion, and tenderness. In that moment, the very idea that life could be painful felt almost absurd. Looking down on myself, I saw myself laughing out loud like a crazy person. Perhaps this is what it looked like to lose your mind, but if that’s what it felt like to become insane, I didn’t have any desire to return to the pain of sanity. I felt weightless, untethered, as if I could be everywhere at once and also nowhere at all, at home in the vast expanse of nothingness that felt, instead of empty, uncommonly full. The idea of suicide suddenly felt ludicrous.

I felt as if I was ballooning all the way out of my body, growing bigger than the bed my body was still lying on, expanding bigger than the bedroom, bigger than the house, bigger even than San Diego itself, as if I was exploding into the atmosphere and beyond, becoming starlight itself, pure weightless, timeless joy and aliveness, glancing back at the earth with unspeakable awe.

Wow. This is awesome . . .

But then, as quickly as I had popped into this ecstatic state of consciousness, I flipped out of it. Jolted back into my body, I felt accosted by another voice, a cruel, judging voice that said “What are you talking about? You can’t quit your job! You’re about to have a baby. You have a mortgage. Plus, you spent twelve years sacrificing everything so you could be a doctor. You’d be stupid and reckless if you left your job. And what would everybody think? Doctors don’t just quit their jobs, especially when they have medical school debt and responsibilities. Not to mention that your dying father would be so disappointed in you. Don’t be silly. You have a great job. You have a terrific husband. You live in a gorgeous house. You should suck it up and be grateful for what you have. Now go back to sleep and stop being an idiot.”

But the tender, nurturing voice was insistent. “You don’t have to do it now, sweetheart. But the time is coming for you to quit your job, so get ready. And don’t worry. Everything will be okay, and you will not be alone.”

The mean voice piped up, “Don’t listen to that nonsense!”

The loving voice said, “Your father is a 59 year old doctor who will die in three months. That could be you. If you found out you only had three months to live, would you be living the life you’re living?”

My answer was a resounding, “HELL, NO.”

But how could I quit my job? and I had promised to pay the bills for both of us. I’d have to sell my house. And how could I possibly afford the $120,000 malpractice tail I’d have to pay for the privilege of quitting my job? How would we afford a place in San Diego? We’d have to move. Quitting my job would require a total life overhaul. It was too much to even consider.

The gentle voice said, “You don’t have to do anything yet. Just make peace with the truth.” I could feel the warmth of that voice surrounding me like a hug. My pulse slowed down. My breathing deepened. I felt invisible arms holding me as I curled up in bed, and the next thing I remember, the sun was rising over San Diego Bay the next morning.

***

I didn’t feel the least bit heroic that night. I was still a hero mired in my victim story in the Ordinary World. But what I didn’t know at the time is that my hero’s journey began that night with the appearance of the loving, gentle voice speaking the truth I had been unwilling to admit to myself. I had no idea what I was being called to do. I thought medicine was my calling, but my gut instincts, the chronic sick feeling in my stomach, my health issues, Fiona’s letter—they all felt like signs from the Universe that something wasn’t right. I was being called to do something else, but when I picked up that jangling phone, the message wasn’t clear at all.

Maybe you’re still slogging through the Ordinary World like I was, reassuring yourself that things could be so much worse, and you should just feel grateful for what you have. You may still be blind to even the possibility that your life could be so much more. You may not even realize how you’ll one day look back at this time in your life and recognize how relatively dysfunctional, dull, and joy-deficient your Ordinary World was compared to how you’ll feel when you find the courage to say “Yes” to your hero’s journey. But one day, when you reflect back, you’ll understand that it was all a necessary and natural part of the journey, just like it is for every hero. You’ll understand that it was all happening in perfect timing and you were exactly where you were supposed to be until the moment when you were ready to pick up the phone.

If you’ve heard a voice warning you that change is afoot, you probably can’t see what lies ahead yet, but you have a strong sense that there’s something more, and that the time for you to embark upon your new adventure is coming soon. This is the first step of your hero’s journey.

Preorder The Anatomy of a Calling to learn how to navigate the rough patches of your own hero’s journey. This book is about me and my story, but really, it’s about you and your story. Each chapter tells my story but also offers practical guideposts and practices to facilitate whatever part of the hero’s journey you’re facing now in your own journey to find and fulfill your unique soul’s purpose.

LEARN MORE & PREORDER NOW

Love,

November 30, 2015
8 Myths About Finding Your Calling

More now than ever before, we are entering a time when people are realizing that it’s not ultimately fulfilling to just find a stable job, hunker down and serve a company that doesn’t feed your soul, build up your retirement account, and delay gratification until you retire at 65, when you can golf and lie on beaches in Florida until you kick the bucket. Not only do fewer and fewer stable jobs exist; even those who have seemingly stable jobs are finding that something even more important is beckoning them—a way to do soul-uplifting work you love that serves others and benefits our planet.

More than anyone I know, my beloved friend Scott Dinsmore believed in doing work that you love. In addition to starting Live Your Legend, he also gave a TEDx talk that over 3 million people have watched—How to Find and Do Work You Love. In a tragic accident while climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro, Scott just passed into the spirit realm in September, but his legacy lives on, in the hearts of all who knew him. We can’t help ask ourselves, are we living our legends NOW?

The Anatomy of a Calling

While Scott talked about “living your legend,” I’ve always been attracted to the notion of a “calling.” As a doctor, I felt like I was called to medicine the way some are called to the priesthood, as a sort of spiritual mission. But what is a “calling?” A “calling” is a call from the soul that guides you to create a more beautiful world in your own exquisitely unique way. A calling is not your ego fantasizing about working remotely from beaches anywhere while getting big book deals and fat paychecks (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). It’s a deeper thing, a yearning to serve a Divine purpose that arises from the heart, usually in ways that ease the suffering of other people or animals or rainforests.

My personal journey towards finding and fulfilling my own calling was painful and confusing. I thought I was called to medicine, but then I felt betrayed by medicine, as if I couldn’t stay in alignment with my soul’s integrity within a system that required me to see 40 patients per day. I wound up quaking in my surgeon’s clogs and leaving my stable job as a medical doctor in 2007 to embark upon a journey from the head to the heart, one that took me straight into the gut-wrenching unknown, where mystery awaited me, alongside dragons and miracles. In my new book The Anatomy of a Calling, I tell the whole crazy, tragic, miraculous story of how I left the operating room, wound up $200,000 in debt, and somehow—through what I can only call GRACE—wound up writing books, starring in PBS specials, and running a training program for health care providers called the Whole Health Medicine Institute. Although The Anatomy of a Calling is about me and my story, it’s really about you and your story. Finding and fulfilling your calling is a hero’s journey, just like Joseph Campbell spelled out in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces, a model I use as the map by which I help you can track and follow your own progress along the path of finding and fulfilling one’s calling. I firmly believe every single one of us is a hero. Some people just don’t know it yet.

So what does it even mean to find and fulfill your calling? There seems to be a whole misguided mythology around life purpose, and since I’ve been teaching doctors and other visionaries about Divine purpose for five years now, I know that a lot of it is total hogwash. So let’s bust a few myths together so you can feel into the truth of why you’re here and what you may be called to do.

8 Myths about Finding Your Calling

Myth #1 Callings come with business plans.

I could never have written a business plan for the shocking and unexpected ways in which I’ve been called to serve on this planet, and most people I know who are living smack dab in the center of their purpose couldn’t either. All you can do is follow one small breadcrumb at a time, mustering up the moxie to say “YES” when that breadcrumb shows up, even though you may have no idea where you’re being led.

Myth #2 You only get one calling.

Sometimes you’re called to one act of service, but that calling may have an expiration date. You do what you’re here to do. You complete it. And then you’re called to do something else. You may even be called to more than one act of service simultaneously. This doesn’t mean you’re flaky or a branding nightmare. It just means you’re multi-passionate and your services may be needed in seemingly disparate areas of your genius.

Myth #3 Only chosen people have callings.

Callings are not a luxury reserved for divinely appointed extraordinary people. Every single one of us is called to play our instrument of divinity in the cosmic orchestra, in our own unique way.

Myth #4 Callings must come with paychecks.

Some people are called to be stay-home moms. Others are called to volunteer to do food distribution at a refugee camp in Africa. You don’t have to get paid for fulfilling your calling, though people who find and fulfill their calling tend to find that money is a natural byproduct of contributing your gifts and service towards something that lights up your soul.

Myth #5 If you’re following your calling, life is easy all the time.

Finding and fulfilling your calling is a hero’s journey. That means you’re going to get the call—and refuse to answer it for a while. Then when you’re finally brave enough to say yes, you’ll embark upon the Road of Trials, where you’ll bump into obstacles, get your conviction and commitment tested, and meet both allies who lift you up and enemies that push you down. You’ll approach the Innermost Cave, where you’ll endure the Ordeal and find the holy grail. But you’ll still need to find the courage to bring the holy grail back home, as true heroes always do. Finding and fulfilling your calling may not be easy, but it’s likely to be the most deeply nourishing, rewarding experience you’ll ever have in this human life.

Myth #6 Finding your calling means you have to quit your stable job.

Sometimes finding your calling requires you to take a leap of faith and quit the job that isn’t your calling. But callings aren’t all or nothing. There’s no reason you can’t pay the bills with a stable job that doesn’t necessarily light your fire while fulfilling your calling on the side. There may even be a way to make your current job into a calling in ways that are simpler than you thought.

Myth #7 You must have a breakdown to find your calling.

For many, myself included, a breakdown precedes a breakthrough. I had to go through what I came to call my “Perfect Storm” before I found my true calling. But you don’t have to wait for things to fall apart in order to say yes to that which is calling you. People often ask me “How do you know when it’s time to take a leap of faith?” I answer, “When the pain of staying put exceeds your fear of the unknown, you leap.” That’s when the hero’s journey really accelerates.

Myth #8 Callings have to be grand.

You don’t have to get up on stage or give a TED talk or write a book or start a nonprofit organization in order to find and fulfill a calling. Some callings may seem humble but are equally significant to raising the vibration of the planet. Your calling may ask you to quit your stable job to stay home and take care of your sick grandmother. You may be asked to raise conscious children. You might be the janitor who hugs everyone in the office and spreads a virus of love through a culture of greed. You might be the woman who walks the beach every night and picks up trash. Every small act of love for another human, animal, plant or aspect of nature contributes to the revolution of love that will help us heal globally.

Have You Found Your Calling?

How might you serve this revolution of love in your own big or small ways? How will you live your legend? Are you brave enough to say yes when the phone rings? Are you listening for the spiritual guidance that will show you the way through the dark unknown of your Divine purpose? Are you willing to let your heart take the lead as you navigate your hero’s journey?

If you need support on your hero’s journey, you can preorder The Anatomy of a Calling here.

You can also tune in at no cost when Lewis Howes is the first person to interview me specifically about finding and fulfilling your calling. Register for the School of Greatness Summit here so you can tune into our interview on Monday.

Just know that you are not alone as you venture into this scary territory of that which you are called to do. Blessings on your journey!

November 30, 2015
Do We Really Create Our Own Reality?

There’s a school of thought in spiritual circles that ascribes to the idea that everything that happens in our lives—the blissful things, the growth edge things, the horrid things—all happens with purpose. This spiritual teaching suggests that everything reflected in our lives is the result of our conscious or unconscious desires, and that when things aren’t going our way, it’s because the blueprint of the subconscious actually desires the very thing we think we don’t want. In other words, we may believe that we want to meet the love of our life, or we may hope to have the cancer cured, but if someone were to muscle test us or read the subconscious mind intuitively, we would discover that at the level of the subconscious, we’re actually terrified of falling in love because of a past heartbreak, or the cancer is meeting some core need for rest, connection, or freedom from a toxic job, for example.

“Wait!” you say. “But I really DO want to find The One!” Or “Hang on a minute! I swear I want to be cured of my cancer.” Or “Watch it now. Are you suggesting that my business is failing because I want it to fail?”

Yes, and no. Those who promote this viewpoint are not suggesting that you CONSCIOUSLY want a crappy love life or cancer or failure in your business. They’re saying you subconsciously want it, and because your subconscious is in charge 95% of the time, this subconscious blueprint will sabotage the very thing your conscious mind wants to create. They say that everything in your life, you create. The good, the bad, the ugly—it’s all up to you.

Yeah! We Are Not Victims!

I find myself simultaneously attracted to and challenged with this viewpoint. The good news is that if this is true, and everything in our reality is the direct out-picturing of our subconscious blueprint, then we are not victims! We are empowered! If we are sick, or broke, or heartbroken, or grieving, or pained with unmet longing for something we don’t yet have, then we should be able to simply change the blueprint by reprogramming the conscious and subconscious mind, something we are increasingly able to do through energy psychology techniques.

I’ve witnessed and personally experienced seemingly miraculous outcomes from those who employ these techniques towards cancer or money issues or the desire for a dream to come true. So that seems kind of awesome. Heal the subconscious blueprint, and voila! Your 3D reality shifts almost instantaneously. You meet the love of your life. The cancer disappears. Your business takes off like a rocket ship to superstardom.

But Hang on a Second . . .

If this is the case, we should always be able to control outcomes in our lives and get what we want. The message is “You can have the perfect life! Whatever you desire, you can have—as long as you do more. Try harder. If you’re not getting everything you want, it’s all your fault—and you can change it.”

But then this sounds like yet another grasping strategy for how to get what the ego wants, a spiritual spin on how to control the Universe. This viewpoint also strikes me as cruel. If a mother loses her child, does this mean she subconsciously wants to lose her baby? Or that her baby subconsciously has a death wish? If a woman has stage 4 cancer but is fighting for her life with every possible treatment, does that mean that, at least subconsciously, she has lost the will to live? Does that mean that Syrian refugees subconsciously wish to be tortured and forced to flee their homes, running for their lives into a world that doesn’t want to welcome them and keep them safe? Does that mean that the poverty-stricken are subconsciously stuck in scarcity thinking? Such a viewpoint doesn’t feel benevolent or loving to me, not one bit. And how can we claim to be spiritual if we’re not deeply rooted in compassion, able to be with someone’s suffering as a source of comfort?

What If WE JUST DON’T KNOW?

I certainly can’t claim to know how to explain the cause and effect of 3D reality. What if we’re humble enough to acknowledge that the way the Universe operates is one big phat mystery? What if we’re all here for some unspecified purpose, and our souls are here to learn God knows what, and the Universe is conspiring to shower us with blessings—but those blessings may not be wrapped up in nice neat little packages? What if our wishes and desires are duly noted, but in some unseen realm, our souls are in cahoots with a wise, loving Universal Intelligence that participates in orchestrating our reality so that we can learn exactly what we’re here to learn so we can grow closer to whatever you might call God, so we can become more benevolent, more compassionate, more gentle, more humble, more unconditionally loving?

What if the Rolling Stones are right? Maybe we can’t always get what we want, but somehow, we get what we need?

I don’t know how these things work. I played around with these ideas in my upcoming book The Anatomy of a Calling: A Doctor’s Journey from the Head to the Heart and a Prescription for Finding Your Life’s Purpose,which you can preorder here. But I ask more questions these days than I dare to answer.

All I can conclude is that when it comes to spiritual teachings like this, we need to hold our viewpoints lightly. Be curious. Wonder. Be willing to participate in the co-creation of reality. Stay humble. Remain open for awe. If things go the way you wish, stumble into gratitude wholeheartedly. And if not, be exquisitely tender with your heart. Find the gifts in the challenges without blaming yourself or wallowing in a victim story, but also be kind and acknowledge that it is hard to be human, and we’re all doing the best we can.

If nothing else, practice compassion for all beings. Including yourself. BE love. Close your eyes right now and feel it. You are loved. Everything in the universe is conspiring to support you. Everything is going to be okay. . .

Love,

November 30, 2015
Your Calling Doesn’t Have to Be Grand

Recently, I spoke at Chris Guillebeau’s World Domination Summit, where 3000 people who yearn to make the world a better place gather to inspire one another and compare notes. My talk was, in part, about sacred activism, how we can find and fulfill our spiritual mission and allow our gifts and talents to be used in service to our life purpose. As part of my call to spiritual action to those in the WDS community, I shared something I wrote about in my upcoming book The Anatomy of a Calling.

The “Karass” and the “Granfalloon”

In Cat’s Cradle, Kurt Vonnegut writes about how God organizes the world into units which he calls a “karass.” A karass is a unit of incarnated beings whose job it is to bring into being one of God’s holy ideas. Members of a karass all further the collective purpose seamlessly, though many never even know they are part of this karass. Even if they never meet, they work together in harmony, in impeccable service to God’s holy idea. Everything about their lives furthers the purpose perfectly, even though they may be furthering the purpose unconsciously. When you meet someone who is a member of your karass, even though it may make no sense to you on a human level, you will recognize them as a family member instantly. Your souls will resonate, even if you appear to have nothing in common on the human level. This is how the Divine gets important things done in the world. Your karass is like a peaceful army that activates to bring light into the world.

Vonnegut compares the karass to its polar opposite, which he calls “The Granfalloon.” The Granfalloon is a group of people who think they are connected to each other in some way, but they have no spiritual connection whatsoever. For example, the Harvard class of 1986—or the Republican party—or Mets fans. They are completely unrelated to each other when it comes to their soul purpose. They may think they belong to the same tribe, but the bond is shallow, whereas the bond between members of a karass runs deep and pure. Members of the same karass are held to their purpose like electrons around a nucleus. Some live very close to the purpose. Some are further out. But all are held to the purpose by a spiritual magnetism. They may have never met each other, or they may be married to each other. They may work in the same field or they may have very different careers. But their lives fit together in service to this shared spiritual purpose.

We are all here for an unknown purpose. Serving this purpose makes us feel fulfilled and enriched. But if we get seduced off purpose—by ambition, fame, money, or the ego’s grasping at comfort—our vitality gets stolen from us. When we commit to this purpose we’re here to serve, when we give ourselves to serving it with great impeccability, everything begins to fall into place.

Finding & Fulfilling Your Calling

We all have the opportunity to find our karass and fulfill our calling. When we do, we are filled with a deep sense of fulfillment that nourishes us at the soul level, that sense of knowing that you have been an instrument of Divine work in the world. This kind of fulfillment is much more deeply enriching than making lots of money, writing a book that hits the New York Times bestseller’s list, becoming a household name, or even reaching lots of people with charitable works. Finding and fulfilling your calling requires courage, because it often means following your heart and trusting your intuition, even when it guides you away from what our culture most values—security, comfort, reason, safety, and practicality.

What if you’re loaded with courage but you still haven’t found your calling?

This creates a deep pain for those who long to contribute their gifts. I felt this pain palpably at World Domination Summit. Like so many inspirational conferences, the shadow side of gathering people together to inspire and motivate them is that many people wind up feeling not good enough.

My calling isn’t helping as many people as his calling.

I’m not doing enough to find and fulfill my calling.

I haven’t met enough people in my karass.

My influence isn’t big enough/important enough/valuable enough/world-changing enough.

Can’t you hear the quiet despair underlying these “not enough” feelings? Do YOU ever feel this way? If I could go back to World Domination Summit and get on stage in front of those 3000 people, I would add one important statement that I failed to mention.

Every revolutionary act of love, even the smallest, most private action, raises the vibration of the planet and changes the world.

If you practice acts of love every day, you have found your calling. It need not be any “bigger” than that.

Become a Beacon of Love

Your courage to do your own inner work, to end the cycle of judgment and blame, to take personal responsibility for what you wish was different in your life and in the world—that is an act of love and healing, and it feeds your calling. Every loving action that stems from that healed place could affect history in ways you don’t even realize. The unconditional love you bask upon your children could raise the next Gandhi or Mother Teresa or Martin Luther King, Jr. The forgiveness you offer that person who violated you could lead to that person’s enlightenment, and he or she could change the world because of your forgiveness. Every time you forgive the unforgivable, every time you give a voice to the voiceless, every time you open your heart when it’s tempted to close, every time you find compassion in your heart when you’re inclined to judge—you raise the vibration of the planet. Every time you let love lead, you are smack dab in the center of your purpose. It can be that simple.

The Saint Disguised as a Janitor

When I was a resident at Northwestern, Oscar was a janitor who seemed to have made it his mission to be a beacon of love, affection, humor, and support for every exhausted, humiliated, trodden-down medical student and resident in the hospital. Every day when Oscar saw me racing around, he made me stop (he called me “Speedy Gonzalez”) and he hugged me. I could feel my whole body relax into his big, warm bear hugs. Sometimes that was the only moment I felt loved and safe all day long. I wasn’t the only one. This undercover saint in janitor clothes practiced revolutionary acts of love all day long while cleaning blood off floors and wiping urine off potty seats. I sure hope this guy never entertained thoughts like “I’m not doing enough” or “I must find my calling some day.” The Divine used him every day to touch and comfort hearts, and those medical students and residents who were uplifted by him went on to touch hundreds of patients every day. Who knows? Perhaps Oscar saved lives . . . not just those of the patients in that hospital, but those of the students and residents who have some of the highest suicide rates in the country. Sometimes one hug is all it takes to make a real difference.

The Collective Vibration

In Australia, I met Ami, an Israeli jeweler who had a near-death experience and came back channeling the teachings of gold. One of the teachings he shared with me is the notion that the planet is one big energetic bowl with a constantly changing vibration. Every act of love, he told me, raises the collective vibration of the planetary bowl, thereby changing outcomes all over the planet. For example, because one man quits his job to stay home and take care of his aging grandmother, perhaps the vibration is raised just high enough to keep an oil-driller from plowing down a plot of trees in the rainforest. Perhaps because one child risks her reputation and stands up for another child who is getting bullied on the schoolyard, one less human gets beheaded by ISIS. Perhaps love affects the world in ways that are different than the typical cause and effect we think we understand.

If this is the case, then anyone—including you—can find and fulfill his or her calling simply by doing whatever it is that you do with great love, from the heart, infused with meaning and kindness. This is what I wish I had said at World Domination Summit.

Your calling need not be some grand thing. The person who starts the nonprofit to feed hungry children in Africa is no more important to the collective vibration of the planet than Oscar the janitor/saint. The author who writes books and gets up on stage to speak about global peace is no more valuable than the stay home parent committed to raising compassionate children who are beacons of love and forgiveness. It takes a village to create global peace. Your loving influence on just one person could affect history in ways you don’t even realize.

Perhaps when we hit a threshold vibration, global miracles become possible. You can help. We all can. Every small act of love can cause miraculous changes globally.

Make Me an Instrument

So please, do pick up when the phone rings with instructions for your calling. But don’t be surprised if the little voice on the other side of the call instructs you to do something seemingly simple. I’m convinced that some of the most enlightened people on the planet are performing some of the most humble tasks, far from the spotlight and often in thankless positions. Just watch any of the angels who work or volunteer for Hospice.

So take the pressure off. Relax into your calling, one baby step at a time. Let go of the “not enough” thoughts or the pressure to be grand. Nothing describes this better than the prayer of St. Francis. May we all make this our daily prayers as we commit to being vessels of love in our own unique ways.

Lord, make me an instrument of thy peace.

Where there is hatred, let me sow love;

Where there is injury, pardon;

Where there is doubt, faith;

Where there is despair, hope;

Where there is darkness, light;

Where there is sadness; joy.

O Divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek

To be consoled as to console,

To be understood, as to understand,

To be loved as to love;

For it is in giving that we receive;

It is in pardoning that we are pardoned;

It is in dying to self that we are born to eternal life.

Love,

November 30, 2015