Your gifts and your calling are needed.
The essential pattern of life is that the parts make up the whole and this allows for a healthy synergy and reciprocity between individuals and the collective. This means that you, and each of us, have a unique gift to bring to the world that naturally contributes to the holistic flourishing of the whole. Our true gifts aren't random and nor is the flourishing of the whole. It's the intelligent design of life. It’s not haphazard or pot luck as to whether our gifts will serve the essential needs of the wider community — they are precisely designed to bring fulfillment to ourselves and to others. And the only way to discover our true gifts and live as our authentic self is to walk the path of our Awakening.
The problem is that the rational-scientific, de-spiritualised world has lost touch with this essential pattern and we have become untethered from the intelligent design of life. The culture and the wider world is set up in a way that is fundamentally disconnected from the principle of ‘flourishing for all through the meaningful contribution of all.’ It is built on the rational principles of separation, division, greed, and hierarchical structures of power that have nothing to do with each person finding meaning through contributing their unique soul gifts. Individually and collectively we are educated onto career paths that generally have nothing to do with our true gifts. This means the necessary reciprocal pathway between our natural gifts, our calling, our destiny, and the flourishing of the whole, is broken. The power and greed of the few is put before the goal of flourishing for all.
Yet, more and more of us are waking up to the reality of the brokenness that for too long has been taken as inevitable and then normative. Recognising the dysfunction and its root causes allows us to begin fixing the small part that is ours to fix. This is for each one us individually to take responsibility for discovering our true gifts and calling, and then to find a way to contribute them for the good of all. I'm not living under a stone — I fully appreciate, and experience it myself, that there is little receptivity for 'true gifts' and 'callings' in the broken and dysfunctional culture. Yet, the only way we will change the culture is to begin living differently ourselves. This is the essential path of Awakening - that we commit to becoming our authentic self, discovering our true gifts and offering them in service to the wider community, even when it is very difficult to do so.
I'm the first to admit that it is a monumental struggle to live authentically in a world that doesn't recognise the need for it and even ridicules the effort. It's a struggle to bring true gits to a world that doesn't want them or recognise their value especially when they are spiritual gifts. It's also a struggle to avoid the seduction of commodifying our gifts and being lured into what some call 'spiritual capitalism.' But one truth that keeps me going is the realisation that this struggle is also integral to the path of awakening. Anything valuable takes effort, and the more valuable the greater the effort required. But it's also true that the struggle is infinitely harder than it should be or needs to be because of the utterly dysfunctional state of the culture in which we are trying to awaken — yet we must do it anyway.
It has always been the task of a lifetime to become your true self. It's hard work. This is what Jesus meant when he said, 'Many are called, but few are chosen.' And Carl Jung said that only a few will individuate - his term for awakening to the true self. You may also be thinking, 'what is the point, if only a few will awaken to their true self?' The point is that it's worth doing for its own sake because it is the essential design of life. It's better to be true to Truth than to fall in with a broken culture that has lost its way.
There is more to be said about both the evolutionary shift that is underway at this time and that is supporting us to awaken; and about the fact that we just need a certain critical mass to awaken to tip the culture into a new and healthier direction.
At the moment I am writing a book that addresses these issues in detail and I'm designing a wisdom school to support you and others to walk the truer path in life. I hope the wisdom school will be ready to launch in January 2026.
Image, Luna Moth, Eliot Porter.