“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.” Rumi.
From when I was very young – at primary school – I was fascinated with the mind. I remember buying books on the mind, healing, astral projection, and hypnotherapy with my pocket money. At the same time, I loved being outdoors. I can see now that my love affair with the mind was to deliver my first calling to me, alongside my love of nature.
Whilst working in my first business as a horticulturalist I trained as a counsellor. After being approached by the local council I took on teenagers who had social and mental health problems with the aim of helping them adjust their behaviour and find meaningful employment. I noticed how easy it was to implement new ideas into their minds when I gave them repetitive jobs to do with their hands. My fascination with this led to me selling the business and doing a degree in nursing. But then I felt that my love of Nature was pulling me back again. The two areas seemed so diverse, but still, even when I went on to train in clinical hypnotherapy I couldn’t connect the two. My hypnotherapy training led me into an obsession with Carl Jung, and in particular, studying his deep concern over the loss of our emotional and mythic relationship with Nature, and how healing our own living connection with Nature contributes to the whole. He said, “Natural life is the nourishing soil of the soul,” and “We keep forgetting we are primates and have to make allowances for these layers in the psyche”.
Then as the news about the 6th Mass extinction loomed and the realisation that people have to change and start embracing more natural lifestyles, I connected the two.
I had found my calling.
Just because we have callings doesn’t mean they’re easy to follow or easy to find. I listened for too long to people who told me that there was no connection in anything that I was doing and that I should go back to my “good job” as a nurse in the National Health Service.
It was hard to understand what the calling was when I seemed to be going down two diverse paths. Sometimes the calling delivers clues that no one but you can decipher.
Being true to yourself means trusting the process as it reveals itself, taking opportunities as they arise. Above all, you must follow your heart and do what you love.
When we listen to our heart we will always be guided forward in a way that serves us.
Finding, and most importantly acting on, our calling leads us to more fulfilled and happy lives. Spend a few minutes thinking about your calling. It may already be obvious in your life, or it may be disguised as something else. Your calling has no interest in being right in any conventional sort of way; it’s simply your heart speaking its truth.
Listen to it.