by Joel L, Western Australia

I have heard the term ‘Responding to the Call’ in a few different settings…..

A leadership group I have been a part of used it; I have heard mainstream religions use it; I have also heard the term used at Universal Medicine. It has been my experience with the latter where I started to truly feel what this is asking of me.

Before Universal Medicine, ‘responding to the call’ meant to do something that someone asked of me from within that group. If an alumni of the leadership group called me, I would be obliged to ‘respond to that call’ because of our shared alumni status, regardless of whether I knew them or not.

But I am learning that these ‘calls’ I used to get from people (often latterly phone calls) are quite different to ‘the call’ that comes from that much deeper place within. Responding consistently from that deeper place within is now my daily study. I find it’s not about waiting for ‘the call’ to do something big or grand, but about discerning if those things I feel/think just ‘have to get done’ are coming from that deeper place within, or if they are coming from a neediness within me.

Writing these blogs has been a particularly interesting exploration of this learning.

In moments of stillness I have some insight into what ‘might be’… it’s not ‘a voice in my head’, or outside me for that matter… it’s like a seed from within – a feeling – that if I don’t second guess what it needs to be, becomes its own flower. And, if I don’t get excited and try to open the flower bud before its ready, it opens in its own time and in a magical way… For me, this is how I experience the call. Not just in writing, but in most things.

Recently, I was reading some of the comments from one of my blogs and thought, ‘I’ve got to write another one’. But this was coming from a neediness within me to replicate what I had done (dare I say recognition played a part). It was not a true call. In that moment, I decided what the flower would be and I wrote and wrote and wrote until I forced it open… and, when I finally stopped – what I read and felt wasn’t nice.

I am learning that when I act from my own ideals and ‘needs’ I somehow minimise the potential of any given exchange, expression and experience before it has even begun. At the same time, I cannot just ‘leave it to the fate of the universe’, because then I take me out of the equation. There is something about being neither the controller nor the victim of life – being willing to express what I feel in each moment, combined with not forcing or second guessing what is there to be expressed or created. The result is not always fireworks or brass bands, but joyful and beautiful nonetheless.

So, when I respond to the call within and am able to navigate away from my own needs or beliefs about what life should be; then I am witness to magic… not really its owner, not its creator but more its midwife, welcoming it into the world.