Responding To The Call

Authored by Brian O’Donnell, PhD

Responding To The Call

My name is Brian O’Donnell and I am a Pathwork student and teacher from the Great Lakes Path in the United States.

The topic of my sharing today is -  The Call. This is a concept that has been understood throughout the worlds spiritual and religious traditions.  Basically, it is the process by which that place in each of us that is deeper than our personality or everyday self, that is whole and complete already, is calling us in each moment to greater aliveness, to greater truth.  The Call is our threshold or doorway to true spirituality.  It is calling us to live in alignment with a larger and more coherent inner reality and knowing.  It is evolution knocking on our door. It is calling us Home to our True Nature.  And most of us honestly are Homesick.

It is probably no accident that you are reading this message today.  You are more than likely responding to a Call. You are ready to listen to the voice of your soul.  It may come as a whisper or a shout.

Each of us receives many calls every day - on our devices.  We are pulled to the many demands of our busy lives.  Work, world events, family and friends occupy our attention.  So, it is easy to dismiss or turn away from the deeper and more subtle call from our depths by getting caught up in the numerous calls from our devices.

This deeper Call is always inviting us out of illusion and our small and limited thinking, it calls us out of our contracted and distorted way of living.  For example, some of us are too self-centered and the Call is to wake up to the needs of others; while other people are too focused on pleasing and sacrificing to those around them and the Call may be to take care of the self-first at times.

The Call has many faces.  It can come in the form of a crisis. It can arrive when we fall in love. Restlessness is a call as is dissatisfaction and boredom.  Longing is a Call.  Basically, if you are unhappy in any way there is a Call you are not responding to.  Suffering is the Calls primary signature.

This Call can be subtle or very strong yet it never forces.  It is persistent though.  The Call is more than a thought – it involves our whole being.  It is sensed and felt.  It is universal in the sense that all of us are being called in every moment to a more expanded life, yet very personal as it is tailored to our unique life circumstances. 

This Call from Wholeness; God; Source; Essential Self is based on eternal values and is unsentimental.  It disregards personal attachments and may even contradict the rules and expectations of our society, family or friendship community.  For example, several years back I felt a Call to step away from my psychotherapy practice for 9 months.  This was frightening to me as this was my source of income and even identity.  Yet I honored this Call and it opened up new areas inside myself and even in my practice when I returned.

What does it take to really hear and respond to this sacred Call?

To truly be responsive to this soul movement from our depths we need to dare look and accept the temporary truth of ourselves without judgment. Our limitations and strengths need to be faced directly.   Also, we need to dare to feel what we really feel at any moment whether it is painful or blissful.  Can we dare to fail or not to succeed.  For if we are too focused on making an impression, winning or looking good we can’t hear the true call and respond to it.

What also blocks our hearing and responding to the Call from Wholeness is our compulsions and drives.   

These compulsions arise from unhealed wounds and unmet pain from our past.  Our compulsions are a false remedy to try to fix the emptiness or brokenness of our wounds. Examples of our compulsions can be the drive to fill emptiness inside with food, alcohol, sex.  The drive can be to be on top of everything, to be always in control, to have everything clean, or to always be right.  These compulsions block our access to the divine voice within.  The fact is that these compulsions only make us more empty and more alienated from our sacred core and thus more driven to fix this discomfort by becoming even more compulsive or driven.

True Calls come from our wholeness – our undamaged pure and essential self.  Calls are relaxed while compulsions are tense and forceful.

Calls always take into consideration self and the other whereas compulsions are either too me or too you focused.

Another way we may block access to the Call is at the other end of the spectrum from compulsively trying to fill in the hole of our wounding with ceaseless craving and control.  This other end strategy is to tune out of life.  Basically, a giving up.  Resignation and deadness are predominant.  We stop believing we can have a fulfilling life and just settle.  Depression is connected to this life strategy.  As anxiety is connected to the compulsive remedy. Both strategies obscure the Call.

Underneath the compulsion and giving up strategies is a fundamental fear of change.  Our everyday self doesn’t like the unknown – the unfamiliar.  This egoic stance is very practiced and excellent at excuses and justifications so as to not have to evolve.  We say to ourselves ‘I don’t have time’; ‘I’m not strong enough” “the pain is too unbearable so I won’t go near it.’

The Call is indeed asking us to risk, to open up, to let go of what feels safe or to our advantage.  To answer the Call requires effort, patience, discipline and the willingness to meet pain in a constructive way.  The everyday ego will resist this with everything it has. In reality the danger is, not in listening to the Call and following it, but to keep submitting to our egoic strategies.  Following a true Call is utterly safe and it will open our lives to greater joy, fulfillment and meaning which is our birthright.

When we fully answer the Call of the eternal self the doors to the universe open up!

Once we hear the Call and cross the threshold in honoring this awakening it is helpful to have guidance and instruction on how to follow this soul inspiration.  The Pathwork, of which I am a student and teacher, is a profound spiritual and philosophical discipline that can illuminate our way Home to the essential self.  The Pathwork provides a comprehensive road map to the marvelous treasure that is inside all of us waiting to be discovered. It is comprehensive in the sense that it focuses on the body, mind, emotions and spirit.

The Pathwork is both highly inspirational and practical.  It combines the wisdom of ancient traditions along with the clarity of modern depth psychology.  There are 258 Lectures that are the basis of the teaching. These teachings are neither cynical or falsely reassuring, but thoroughly realistic and freeing.

 The Pathwork provides a detailed blueprint for building a healthy and vibrant aliveness.  It is an answer to a collective prayer for spiritual direction, clarity and emancipation.

 --Brian O’Donnell