Finding a Life's Calling

Abstract

This study investigates the experience of discovering a sense of vocation, the initiation into a sense of calling or a central life task. After some personal reflections, a provisional description of vocation is presented and the historical development of the concept in Eastern and Western religions is traced. The essay examines Jungian perspectives on vocation, the views of Ira Progoff and Roberto Assagioli, and Dane Rudhyar's concept of "transpersonal activity." Attention is given to a variety of ways that vocation may be discerned, its centrality in both traditional and contemporary religious experience, the relationship between vocation and inflation or grandiosity, and the ethical dimension of vocation. Another central concern is to demonstrate the complexity of contemporary psychotherapy as a process that is often expected to encompass three levels of initiation that traditionally have been separated: enculturation, individualization, and transpersonalization.