When is it your soul calling and when is it simply your ambition?

One of the things I hate is the spiritual sugar-coating of egoic motivations. So many times I hear people saying: “I feel a calling to do this” (whatever “this” might be) when actually it is their wish, their egoic wish that wants it. Now, nothing wrong with wanting and desiring something, and nothing wrong with having ambition. We are humans - we have a body, we have a mind, and our magnificent ego is trying to survive and succeed in this world we live in. That’s fine. It is just not a spiritual calling. It is not the same as hearing a call.

When you hear the call of your soul, many times, it does not make any sense to your ego. The mind will usually say this is crazy, it’s a bad idea and you should not do it. Your mind will usually see your soul call as a dangerous direction to go for. But the soul doesn’t really care.

While the ego is busy with the survival of the “I” the soul couldn’t care less about it. The soul knows that the I of the ego is only an illusion is not worthy of worrying for. The soul cares about one thing: shining the divine in the specific way you are born to shine and No one else can.

Because Noone else can shine like you. Your ego can not look to others and comfort itself with the social confirmation of “It is OK, I am like everybody else…I am normal”. Your real soul shine is not normal. It can never be coz it is unique, not like everybody else. Hence, the ego gets scared with the crazy ideas of the soul and marks them “dangerous”.

And the ego is “right”. It was dangerous for Jesus to be himself and shine his soul. It cost him his life. And not only to him but to so many people who decided to listen to their soul. Usually, it is not going to cost you the life of the body. But it does usually feel like that…The fear of listening to the soul is a fear of death. But usually, it is ego death, not a physical death of the body.

There are many workshops out there to help you go for your ambitions and be the person you want to be. Manifest your dreams, earn the money you wish to earn, drive the car that will flatter your image, and look in the mirror to see the person your ego wants you to become so you can feel great about yourself. Nothing is wrong with that, except that it is NOT your soul calling.

If you follow your soul, eventually people are going to love what you are and what you do because it shines! They will want to pay you a lot of money for it, just like Van Gogh’s paintings are worth a lot of money nowadays, just like some people would pay any amount of money to have the fucking wooden cross that killed Jesus. But this is only eventually. At the beginning, almost no one is going to like what you do and who you are, because it is different. But if you really listen to the calling of your soul, you do not care. You just have to do it, whether people like it or not, whether it seems to make sense or not. You just do it, because you have to and you have to because this is your truth.

So next time you “feel a call” check with yourself, is it really a call from the depth of your soul or simply something that comes from your ambitious drive for success.

Both are good.

What is wrong (in my idea) is to try to present the latter as if it was the first.

Blessings,

Ohad Pele / Ocotober, 2021