Vocation
What is vocation?
“Vocation” – literally, a calling – a call to service, to dedicating one’s life to a cause. In the religious sense, it is a calling to do the work of a Higher Power.
How do you know if you’ve got it?
The only way to know you’ve got it is through serious self-examination. This means really looking at what your life is about, among other things. Interest or desire are not the same as vocation. You may be interested in serving the Gods; you may desire to reflect Their aspects in the world (and these are not unworthy goals), but your vocation, if you have one, gives you no choice. You will feel compelled to become a vessel through which the Gods can speak, and act, and interact, with the world.
Ultimately, only you and the Gods will know if you truly suffer from vocation. However, there are some character traits which will become a major portion of your makeup, symptoms which others with whom you associate may begin to recognize in you: If the focus of your life shifts toward a chronic spiritual awareness, you’ve been exposed. If you develop the willingness to “be there when needed”, especially if this is accompanied by a decreasing need to blow your own horn, you’re probably incubating the condition. If you find that you are serving from an ego-less state, because there is no other way for you to function, and that you serve to fulfill some task They have set you, and not to further your own interests, you probably have a full-blown case of vocation. And if the people you serve and your friends and family sense that somehow the presence of Divinity walks with you through your daily life, the diagnosis is pretty much confirmed.
If vocation is such an internal thing, why do we need to do anything about it?
Those who feel truly that the Gods have called them to serve often feel the necessity to announce this to their community. This comes not from a desire for status or power, but from a need to formalize a commitment that one has been impelled to make; to declare this irrevocable commitment to the community; and to ask for the opportunity to serve the community as a vessel of the Gods.