A Calling or a Craving?
If you are reading this blog, you are likely a person who wants to be more self-aware and to embrace your deeper desires.
Each new year, it is common to reflect upon what you most care about. As you reflect, an important question to consider is this: do your longings arise from “callings” or “cravings?”
A calling is a desire to give. A craving is a desire to get. A calling is your opportunity to share your unique contributions and gifts with others. A craving is a fear that there is “not enough”—a hole that you must fill. A calling arises naturally from your sense of completeness. A craving arises from a sense of lack and grows out of the imperfections you may feel.
A craving is a nagging sense of scarcity, and an unconscious reaction to an imagined deficit that you obsessively need to overcome. When trapped in a craving, you may experience these signs:
- You might say to yourself, “If I just had this thing or that, I’d feel better.”
- You may crave a project, or anything, that will take you away from uncomfortable feelings.
- You may want something, anything, to fill a personal deficiency.
- You might feel pressure from others that you should want something.
If you respond to life through your cravings, you may develop a fear that, when you get them, you may also lose them, shutting yourself off from the joy of having them.
Cravings arise from a deep conditioning that says you will be fulfilled when you achieve the object of your desire. That is why cravings are so seductive. They offer a temporary feeling of pleasure. When it is achieved, the fulfillment wanes and you may be pulled into your next craving, keeping you on a roller coaster of action and inaction.
A calling, however, arises from a completely different point of reference. It comes from a conscious awareness of your wholeness as a Creator. When you live life from your callings, you enthusiastically share your gifts without wanting something in return. When you respond to a calling, you may notice these qualities:
- You sense a movement toward something that you want to create and bring into being.
- You derive joy both from the object of your calling, as well as the actual creating process itself.
- You experience a knowing that the calling arises from your true self and not from who others want you to be.
- You feel fulfillment by simply following the call, knowing it is a journey rather than a destination.
When you respond to a calling, your actions often unfold with ease, grace, and joy. Colossal tasks may become simple or at least evolve a Baby Step at a time. You glow with an excitement which encourages others to support you.
Both a calling and a craving spur you to action and you may tell yourself, “I cannot, not do it.”
However, from a craving, the compulsion to react comes from fear. When answering a call, you respond from love. You untie the importance that you’ve placed on what you crave, and instead allow love to guide what you most authentically care about.
By relinquishing attachments that feed your cravings, you surrender to higher motives, and therein lies your true satisfaction of living from your calling as a Creator!
