|
By Gregg Levoy The psychologist Abraham Maslow calls spiritual and emotional truancy the Jonah Complex: “the evasion of one’s own growth, the setting of low levels of aspiration, the fear of doing what one is capable of doing, voluntary self-crippling, pseudo-stupidity, mock humility….” Calls often seem immoderate, beyond our abilities or our wildest dreams, beyond what we believe possible, and immoderation is contrary to most spiritual wisdom. We balk, but it makes perfect sense that we should be called to go beyond our limits, because the One that calls us is beyond all limits. I suspect that all the energy we have bound up in resisting our own potential is more energy than we’ll need to reach it. It takes as much energy to fail as it does to succeed. The strategies are legion: - Hiding behind the tasks of discernment. By analyzing a call to death and picking apart all its varying implications and by poring over calculations that would put an actuary into a coma, we lose all the heat from the heart through the head, as if we had been in the bitter cold without a hat.
- Waiting for the Perfect Moment. Waiting for just the right combination of time, money, energy, education, freedom and the ideal alignment of the planets. For most people, says professional public speaker Rosie Perez, “The refrain goes, ‘It’s one for the money, two for the show, three to get ready, three to get ready, three to get ready….’”
- Telling ourselves lies. For instance, “I can’t afford it.” I can’t afford to take the time or spend the money or learn the skills; can’t afford to get off the hamster wheel even momentarily, lest my life come to a grinding halt. None of it was ever true, though. The truth was, “I won’t afford it.” I won’t reprioritize my life, won’t make sacrifices, won’t disrupt my family, won’t forgo eating out in restaurants for six months to be able to buy myself the education I need….
- Choosing a path parallel to the one we feel called to, one that’s close enough to keep an eye on it but not so close we’re tempted to jump tracks. We become an art critic rather than an artist, a school teacher rather than a parent, a reporter rather than a novelist.
- Attempting to replace one calling with another because we don’t like it, our parents don’t like it, it doesn’t earn enough money or prestige.
- Immediately turning a call into a Big Project, thereby intimidating ourselves into paralysis.
- Self-sabotage. We feel called to go to art or medical school but are so afraid of finding out we don’t have what it takes that we “forget” to mail the application until after its deadline has passed.
- Distracting ourselves with other activities. We suddenly become inspired to finish old projects we haven’t thought about in ages.
- Playing “sour grapes.” We believe we won’t succeed at a calling or will suffer unduly for it, and so we try to convince ourselves that we don’t want it anyway.
- Trying to make ourselves unworthy of a calling, hoping that God will decide we’re not the person for the job and take it back … [which is] to follow in the footsteps not of Jesus but of Jonah.
“If it feels safe, it’s probably not the right path,” Mark Gerzon says in Coming Into Our Own, “but if it scares you, it probably is.” The degree of resistance, too, is probably proportionate to the amount of power waiting to be unleashed and the satisfaction to be experienced once the “no” breaks through to “yes” and the call is followed. This piece is composed of excerpts from the book, Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life by Gregg Levoy, available here.
Original content by: http://www.inwardoutward.org/?p=273.
|
Articles, Media, and More 
Scott Bartchy is a radical. He believes in a subversive system that embraces those on the fringes of our society and seeks to establish a new way of life that goes against the status quo.