For myself, a important part of my journey and healing, has been the call to action. I notice that the nature of this call has been changing.
So for example, initially I was drawn to support people going through spiritual crisis/emergence...and I wanted to try to start a dialogue with mental health professionals to try to open their eyes and move away from medical determinism and pathology, and accept spiritual emergence as a phenomena.
Now I feel more drawn to exploring how the spiritually awakened perspective could have a positive impact in helping to confront the wider global emergency.
I was wondering have others felt this "call to action", and has the "call" developed and changed over time?
Be interesting to know.
Now when I see so many people have the problems similar to mine, I start feeling there is work to be done for me, like researching the topics and trying to help to create the Great Community, or some world-wide support system. I think in Buddhist countries such things are already well-developed and we need to ask, how they create their temples and monasteries, where people can concentrate on their personal development, for a lifetime or for a while. I think we don't need to give away everything for this - we are modern people, because of that ..maybe it's normal to work a little, have girlfriend, but live in a monastery, where your daily needs are supported and people achieve modest material well-being without too much focus on this.
In past, I always wanted to do something for the world, but I think this desire is changing. When your lifestyle is balanced, you help the world anyway, and now I more want to help my own collective, people like me, and I don't want to concentrate in making skeptics to believe in something - they tend to fall off anyway, and they have very high degree of faith in their thing; it's as useless thing to do as trying to make me non-spiritual - some atheists have tried, but completely wasted time. So it's not my primary vision that we spend our lives helping people to become somebody else; rather we can help them move a bit further, and we can point out serious mistakes and opportunities, which do not take them off from their path.
I see that in psychology - they try to change your ways into theirs, turning spiritual person into a material one; but what we need to do is helping them to progress further and solve the problems they see themselves, remaining on their way. Similarly, you cannot turn an atheist into a spiritual seeker, but you can discuss ethics, world problems etc. with them, and they are enlightened enough when they understand all those things in their own terms; you can fix their own models based on their rules of argumentation, their senses, but not to change the model completely. In my past, I have seen too many solutions in changing people - rather, these were useful debates, but by making me better in understanding an atheist world, not so much in bringing those people out of their matrix into some kind of reality. So this is my past call, I have not stopped following this, but I also have more realistic vision about these matters - the vision that they are definitely on their own paths, not mine.
For me I've been still incorporating my awakening and still very much focused on just surviving on some levels but I feel like whenever I think about this aspect of an awakening it can be difficult for me to get caught up in focusing on external things and then feel the need to overachieve in some way and then I'll realize that's not the best route and just focus on my current situation again. So no I have not purposefully taken part in any sort of service as a result of my awakening. I read once years ago on a website where a woman talked about her own awakening that even if a person just sat on a rock for the rest of their life they would still have value. Like we can't have our value taken away from us. It's just a part of who we are. So I try to remember that and just be gentle with myself. Like "Okay am I sitting on a rock?" Well laying in bed will do. So I'm doing alright. Check. Ha ha Having said that however I feel like I have definitely made a big difference in my immediate family slowly over time. I feel like with taking steps like that those steps have to be careful and patient. Like just because we can "see" something doesn't mean that others will so we can only provide gentle nudges and mostly from our own side. So like slowly bringing up our own wounds or...it's difficult to explain. But eventually I feel like if we gently but consistently bring up certain things then those around us sometimes come along with us for the ride and decide to grow. I know my own family has definitely grown in certain ways. I've also had some experiences with my awakening that suggest that the bigger world is connected even to the smallest moment within someone. I'm still working on wording that in a way I feel comfortable with but another thing I've read along the way is that just be one person being aware of something there is an increased opportunity to change something. So just by the sheer act of being aware we can change a situation in theory. That thought always comforts me and makes me wonder if most of our work should be internal then? Not really sure but that's kind of what I picture sometimes. And somehow that seems more doable too and less overwhelming.
When I first had the awakening I felt I had found my purpose. However in doing so I think what happened is that I created an ego and had a bit of a fall. I then found that my real calling was to do a lot of inner work and in doing so work with people close to me. Now I feel that opening up again to a wider calling especially this year. Hopefully the choices I make will be more in line with my authentic self this time!
I’ve been thinking this myself a lot recently. I’m being more vocal in person and online but I’d also like to join forces and combine energies soon. All suggestions welcome 🙂