The Soul's Calling and The World is Waiting for Your Gifts

Archetypal psychologist James Hillman declared in his book The Soul’s code: In Search of Character and Calling:

“Each person enters the world called.”

From this perspective, each soul has come into the world at a particular place, in a particular time, for a particular reason. Like the views of Plato, Hillman suggested that we bring into this world a potentiality, a gift or innate vison, that we are intended to express in our lives.  

This potential is not a precise predetermined pattern but rather a journey in remembering who we are and what we came here for through the intuitive prompting from the soul.   The journey that includes experiences such as loss, heartache, and despair in our own lives and the world belongs to the pattern of our unique calling.  Mythologist and psychologist Sharon Blackie speaks of two aspects of calling: The first that relates to one’s personal or individual soul-journey in this life, the necessary growth as a soul.  The second is in regard to “service of the world soul” which asks “what particular gift do we bring to this world, at this time?” Blackie speaks of the importance of holding these two in balance in the greater unfolding of the cosmos.  

As cultural myths and narratives are becoming explicitly unraveled in society and Mother Nature is in great need of care, we can no longer separate our personal healing journey from the collective.  This requires the bravery of feeling the embodiment of the interconnectivity of the self to other, of self to nature, of self to the cosmos.  It is also guiding us to ask the deeper questions of: What did I come here to do/to learn? How can I use my gifts to serve the world in its unfolding at this time? These questions can be gleaned through the conscious mind, and also through the subtle whispers of the body, intuition, archetypes, dreams, and active imagination processes that connect to the emerging personal and cultural myths we can birth into our precious lives and planet.   

The Way It Is 

There’s a thread you follow. It goes among

things that change. But it doesn’t change. 

People wonder about what you are pursuing.  

You have to explain about the thread. 

But it is hard for others to see. 

While you hold it you can’t get lost. 

Tragedies happen; people get hurt 

or die, and you suffer and get old. 

Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. 

You don’t ever let go of the thread. 

William Stafford