Find Your Calling: An Expression of Who You Truly Are

By Dr. Scott Zarcinas | Author, Doctor, Wayfarer

What’s in this article:

Why your calling is an expression of your true nature rather than a role you must discover.
How confusing your calling with a career or role can create unnecessary expectations.
The relationship between Soul Identity, your natural qualities and your calling.
How recognising your true nature helps you find and live your calling with greater joy, fulfilment and freedom.

The Call

Our calling is the expression of our nature, rather than a role we must discover and perform correctly.

For much of my life, I have believed that finding and living our calling is one of the most fulfilling things we can do. When we feel the need to give ourselves to our work, relationships, creativity, service, or any other pursuit that feels meaningful and worthwhile, we feel the calling of our true nature.

When we feel that we are doing what we are here to do, life takes on a different quality. Yet the search for our calling can sometimes become another source of pressure.

We can wonder whether there is a particular role we are supposed to fulfil, a purpose we have yet to discover, or some important contribution we are failing to make. We look for signs that will tell us what we should be doing, hoping that one day we will recognise the path we were meant to follow.

The search itself can become exhausting, particularly when we believe that our fulfilment depends upon finding the right answer.

The Search for the Right Role

Much of our understanding of calling is shaped by what we do. We associate it with occupations, careers, vocations and particular forms of service. Someone might feel called to become a teacher, a doctor, an artist, a parent, a writer or a spiritual practitioner.

Our roles can provide meaningful ways of participating in life, and they can become important expressions of who we are.

The difficulty arises when we begin confusing the role with the calling itself.

If we believe our calling is a particular occupation, what happens when that occupation is no longer available to us? What happens when circumstances change, opportunities disappear, or the work we once found fulfilling becomes difficult to continue? Does our calling disappear with the role, or does something of it remain?

I have come to understand that these questions point towards a deeper understanding of our calling. The roles we fulfil may change throughout our lives, while the nature from which our calling arises remains.

The Nature of Our Calling

Consider a lemon tree. Its nature is to express itself as a lemon tree, producing leaves, blossoms, and fruit according to its own innate pattern. It doesn’t need to discover what kind of tree it should become or compare its expression with that of an apple tree. Its growth is the unfolding of what it already is.

The circumstances in which it grows will influence how that nature is expressed. Sunshine, water, soil, and seasons all play their part. There may be years of abundant fruit and years when very little appears. Throughout these changing conditions, the nature of the tree remains.

Our calling can be understood in a similar way.

Each of us has a unique Soul Identity, what I understand as our spiritual DNA, the divine pattern through which our individual expression of Being unfolds.

Our calling arises from this nature and finds expression through the circumstances, relationships, opportunities and activities of our lives.

This means that finding our calling involves recognising who we truly are and discovering how that nature seeks expression through us.

When Calling Becomes Another Expectation

One of the difficulties with treating calling as a role we must discover is that it can become another standard against which we measure ourselves.

We wonder whether we have chosen the right career, made the right decisions, followed the right opportunities, or achieved enough to justify our sense of purpose. We may even begin comparing our lives with people who appear to have found their calling and are successfully living it.

Over time, these expectations can become part of the Self-Image through which we experience ourselves.

We begin identifying with what we believe we should be doing, and our sense of fulfilment becomes dependent upon how successfully we perform that role.

This is where calling can become another form of waiting for life to begin. We postpone our experience of joy, peace, freedom, and fulfilment until we have discovered the right path, achieved the right result, or become the person we believe we are supposed to be.

The weight of these expectations can obscure the very nature we are trying to express.

Recognising What Is Already Here

When we understand that our calling arises from our nature, the question of “What is my calling?” changes.

Instead of continually asking what role we are supposed to perform, we can begin exploring what is already present within us.

Some questions we can instead ask centre on recognising the patterns of our own nature:

What naturally interests us?
What brings us joy?
What do we find ourselves returning to, even when circumstances make its expression difficult?
What qualities do we bring to our relationships, our work and the ordinary activities of our lives?
What gives us a sense of participating in something meaningful?

For one person, calling may find expression through teaching and sharing knowledge. For another, through creativity, nurturing, discovery, healing, building, or serving. The particular activity may change, and the same nature may find expression through many different activities over a lifetime.

The important recognition is that our calling belongs to who we are, and its expression can take many forms.

Living Our Calling

Finding our calling and living our calling are therefore intimately connected. Recognition and understanding of our nature allows that nature to find expression in the world.

This is also where your natural state of being becomes important. Joy, security, acceptance, peace, and freedom are qualities inherent in our being. As we recognise our Soul Identity, we can begin allowing these qualities to be expressed through what we do, rather than continually seeking them as rewards for what we achieve.

Our calling becomes a living expression of who we are, unfolding through the opportunities and circumstances of our lives.

There will still be decisions to make, difficulties to navigate, skills to develop, and responsibilities to fulfil. These are part of the experience of bringing our nature into form.

The question is whether we are participating in life from the recognition of who we truly are, or continually measuring ourselves against an image of who we believe we should become.

Finding our calling therefore begins with recognising something that has been present all along. The more deeply we understand our nature, the more clearly we can recognise the many ways it seeks expression.

Our calling is the expression of our nature. Living it is how we participate in the unfolding of who we truly are.