Finding One’s True Vocation with Psychophonetics
‘What I do is me. For this I came’
Gerald Manly-Hopkins
‘My known present wisdom is not wise enough to guide me about
my unknown future.
I have to go deeper than that for my present wisdom to be
relevant to my future life’.
Yehuda Tagar
We are born with serious intention for this life, of that I am sure.
Two major impulses drive us human being throughout our life:
one is the instinct and the desire to survive, like any other earthly animal;
the other is the drive, the wish, the inner necessity to remember-discover
the purpose of being born, the meaning, the task,
the unique human potential that each of us comes to this life to fulfil.
May be it is an illusion, may be there is no hidden purpose and meaning in human life other than to survive, to multiple and to die, like any other animal.
But we sure live as if this drive is as essential to us
as the instinct of physical survival, and human life and
history cannot be explained without it.
The drive for finding purpose, meaning and mission in one’s life is
inherent to our human constitution.
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Yet none of it, since at least the middle of the 20th Century – is
automatically given to by others. Our parents can no longer dictate and control what we choose to do in our life, tradition, class, culture, religion and
societal expectation cannot give purpose to our lives, and
21st century communications makes sure that everyone can find inspiration, role-models and ideas about one’s own future profession
from any source around the globe at a click of a button.
The individual has become one’s own parent, teacher, leader, guide.
We have to find and to determine our goals in life, our purpose and our task mostly on our own.
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At any point in one’s life everyone, in the middle of any occupation, work, profession or training, can stop and ask oneself:
“Am I doing what I was supposed to do in this life? Is what I am doing a real expression of my true individual nature, potential, task in this life?”
In the late years of high school and before or in the early years of academic or professional school – this question is expected of everyone:
you have so many options (some have more options than others) to choose from regarding your future career and training, and you have to choose.
But one choice is not necessarily enough: who you were and what calls you at age 17 – might not be the same four years later.
And what you think of yourself, your task and your profession in your early 20’s – may not be the same in your 30’s, 40’s, 50’s and 60’s.
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Most of us live more than one life time today in comparison to
the simpler lives of our fore-parents.
Yet there no one outside of me to tell me who I am and what is my task, profession, direction in this life. Who I truly am and what is my
true vocation in life – is one and the same.
I myself have to discover and to give direction to both.
As the process of individuation accelerates and becomes universal and
un-stoppable – the authority once invested in other people – parents, priests, teachers, leaders – is now vested in my own intuition, my own inner authority. Having to choose one’s professional direction, for the first time or later on -
can be a lonely threshold to cross for most of us.
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What is then to guide us in crossing by ourselves that threshold,
in choosing a direction, profession and vocation for our life?
Such decisions can determine our future, our fulfillment, our economy,
our future connections, our contribution to humanity,
the expression of our deep potential.
And every vocational choice that we will make – will determine a future me
in a future world that no one can really tell me about.
What can guide me on such a threshold, on my vocational threshold?
Many conventional vocational/career counselling approaches create some conceptual connection between one’s tested potential, talents, gifts and aspiration – with what professions and training exists in the adult education and labour market, trying to find the best matching between the person,
as they know themselves, and the world as it can be known now.
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The problem with this approach is that the decision made today about my vocational direction will effect a future of at least a few years ahead which
I do not know: I could be a different person, and the world, including the labour and training markets, the future of which no one knows.
My known present wisdom is not wise enough to
guide me about my unknown future.
I have to go deeper than that for my present wisdom
to be relevant to my future life.
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In Psychophonetics evolving methodology a process was created for ‘Vocational Counselling’ that attempts to go deeper than the present intellectual mind-set, desires and aspiration, and also deeper than
external observation of the labour market of today – in order to
find in one’s soul and spirit a deeper and a higher inner guidance
for one’s future vocation, that has a chance to be
highly relevant for one’s future reality.
We call it: “Psychophonetics Vocational Counselling –
Exploring the Roots of one’s tree’.
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I am the son of a fruit grower (citruses) and I was a fruit grower myself in my youth (citruses), so it goes like this: if you want to have a lot of good oranges
on the trees in early winter – you better take care of the roots and the soil all year round, especially in the summer when it is dry.
My father taught me this:
“My son we don’t grow fruits. We grow trees:
roots in a rich and healthy soil, with nutrition, water and fertilisers.
When the trees are strong and healthy – they will give us the fruits as a gift”.
The same apply to deep vocational counselling:
if you want the fruits of a fulfilling, rewarding, enriching profession and jobs that enable you to express your deep potential – you better take care of the roots
of your own growing human being, of your personal, social,
spiritual development, otherwise there will be no vocational fruits.
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In Psychophonetics we developed a special process for
the cultivation of people’s ‘Vocational Roots’.
First the counsellor has to identify that the topic the client brings with him/her is vocational: I want to find out my purpose in life, my task,
my professional direction, my work.
It is not always obvious from the start of the session.
People come asking for help for all kinds of unhappiness:
relationship, emotional issues, reactions, projections, parenting, trauma, abuse, childhood and psycho-somatic problems.
But very often behind the conscious topic for which they came asking for help – there is a deeper one, the real cause of the unhappiness which they did not admit to themselves before, but it was revealed through the process of being well listened to with Methodical Empathy:
I have not found my work, my task, my professional direction, my purpose.
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Nothing can be ok if that is not found.
If the counsellor does not discover early enough that vocation is the real issue underneath the conscious presenting issues – in the cases when
vocation is their will issue – there will be no energy and no development regarding anything else that is being talked about.
Once the frustrated vocational energy is exposed – there is normally
a huge wave of will energy that was suppressed before.
Because vocational development is primarily a will topic.
Then we offer the client ‘the three vocational questions’:
1) What do you love to do?
2) What do you know that you have to do?
3) What in the world is calling you to service?
These are three potent questions, the answering for which can start
an awakening and an enlivening process for the will.
Let us look closer at them.
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1) ‘What do you love to do’ – touches the feeling life and the deep and rich life of the human soul that could have been
suppressed, blocked, dulled, numbed and covered up.
There are basically three options in regards to this question:
a) “I don’t know what I love to do” – in which case a process is provided for finding out what it is, even if you have never experienced and acted on it.
Often the opposite of love, of life, of self and of the joy of expression comes up to be confronted and overcome, before the answer could be found;
b) “I know what I love to do – but I don’t do it”. Self rejection and self hatred can block a healthy connection to one’s love-in-action, love for the deed itself,
which is a normal and healthy characteristic of children,
unless it is being destroyed.
In case a healthy block between one’s awareness and one’s expression -
a process has to be created for identifying
what is it that blocks the expression of doing what one loves to do,
and then acting on it;
c) "I know what I love to do and I do it” – in which case we know that this is not the ‘Vocational root’ to focus on, and we move to the next vocational question.
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2) ‘What do you know that you have to do’ – touches the will and the power that lays underneath one’s conventional habitual life on the surface.
The doing in this case is not necessarily directed at the action that
in the future will become one’s vocation.
It is a stream of will-life that has to be strong and healthy.
It is a threshold of self initiation: a journey to a far away country,
the completion of an academic degree, the writing of a book,
the starting of a course, an adventure never undertaken before,
learning to play a musical instrument, applying for a new job,
making order in one’s domestic chaos, making peace with one’s old parents, saying sorry to someone for something bad that you have done to them,
telling someone you love that you love them.
It could be anything that you know you have to do, and you have not done.
Most people know what it is in them that blocks their will to act in the world. When that deed, which is not yet done, is being acknowledged and acted on –
a huge will energy is being released into active action in the world,
effecting every aspect of one’s life, releasing vocational energy.
Self-Fear may have to be confronted and transformed
before the deed can be done.
Overcoming fear with new inner courage –
can be encouraged and supported by a skilled counsellor.
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3) ‘What in the world is calling you to service?’ - is touching directly
‘the calling’ that lives in the depth of the soul.
No one is born to live just for oneself and no one can find their true vocation
if they focus only on their own desires.
There is only one family: humanity, and we deeply know that only
through finding the right and beneficial and loving act of serving humanity –
one can hope to find a fulfilling true vocation.
It is in serving others well – that we can serve well our true spiritual being,
that we find our true worth and dignity.
No vocation can be found in isolation.
True vocation is true service.
Everyone knows it in the depth of one’s soul.
But years of cynicism, sarcasm, negativity and destruction of self-worth can cultivate the parasite of self-doubt:
Who am I to serve humanity? Who is anyone to serve humanity?
Why does it matters to serve anyone anyway? What is the point?
This is the voice of Self-Doubt, deeply entrenched in the distortion of
one’s thinking process, turning anything of value into nothing.
A process has to be created for the total confrontation with one’s self-doubt, awakening one’s creativity, which is the complete opposite of the doubt.
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Self-Hatred has to be transformed into love, self-fear has to be transformed into courage and self-doubt has to be transformed into creativity –
for the deep roots of one’s true vocation are be awakened to life again.
Healthy, living roots enable a healthy living tree to bear good fruits.
So it is with trees and so it is with human vocation.
Trees know their vocation before they sprout from the seed into being.
People need to discover their vocation by conscious effort.
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The counselling skill of helping people to create the right practical process for re-enlivening of the three vocational roots must be acquired by practitioners through professional Psychophonetics training.
But the awareness of the potential of the three vocational questions and
the reality and the power that can be created
through the process of answering them – is here being offered for everyone seeking one’s true vocation.
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This effort to find one’s true vocation can be assisted by a skilled counsellor
who understand that in order to grow higher – a human being has to wake up to one’s deeper dimension of feeling, willing and thinking,
to activate the soul into the noble human act of discovering and
fulfilling one’s true vocation.
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Published in Slovakia as:
Čo je moja úloha v živote?
Vitalita magazine, Bratislava Slovakia. Yehuda Tagar, October 2018
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Article in PDF-form here:
What is my task in this life
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