My Call, A Channel for Love
So what is my Call? I seem fine with helping out in administrative activities at the Sevenoaks Pathwork Center — serving on various committees, helping on financial spreadsheets, helping to organize events, etc. And so working on the basis of one’s calling being effortless effort, I could easily conclude that staying in this administrative vein is, in fact, my Call.
These administrative activities also match my passion for Pathwork and my passion for helping things happen, engaging people on matters spiritual and organizational. So of course, this administrative work is what my Call is, right?
And I recall my dread at going to assist on Pathwork workshops where I would be directly involved in the work of Pathwork. So this year I am not playing this assistant role. It feels good not to be in this hands-on end of Pathwork.
And yet when I get involved in this hands-on work, I love much of the engagement with students. So where does the dread come in?
I realize that part of this dread is about loss of control and appearance of competency. I love teaching, preparing PowerPoint presentations that communicate Pathwork concepts. And in this I feel safe — just pop up one slide after another. Engage the class, yes, but still I know where I am heading and what the next slide will be.
On the other hand when we are facilitating body work in Core Energetics or assisting in emotional processing work where there is no script to follow, I feel confused, scared, and lost, having no idea what the next “slide” in a work scene should look like. My inner images and beliefs come up. “I must appear competent in this work.” Yet I don’t know how to do competent in a work scene. I do not trust my inner Knowing and intuition to be PERFECT enough for achieving my inner standard of competence. My intuition might be wrong, a risk I find near impossible to take.
On the other hand, in a four-day weekend I often feel close to the students. When I pay attention in such times I can feel my love. But my ego does not trust, or value, love. Love is not helping me to appear competent, so I dismiss love as holding any value in facilitating a work scene! Yet at the end of a weekend I feel at ease. Somehow love has happened. Love has been enough, skillful process facilitating or not. In fact my learning edge is just that, “Love is enough!”
All of this complicates my sense of Call. Part of me says take the easy and comfortable way out — stay in administrative activities, not in the Pathwork work itself, directly engaged with students and workers. Administration is familiar, effortless effort, minimal risk. But administration also seems one or more steps removed from directly offering my love to the students or workers. The administrative road is safe, but is it my Call?
So I have to sit with this and feel into what my true call might be. For some reason, as I get comfortable with administrative tasks, I always keep coming back to a felt calling to jump into the fire of the work, the fire of the unknown, the fire through which, perhaps, love can flow through me.
I am scheduled to assist in a workshop this coming weekend at Sevenoaks. It may or may not happen based on numbers, but can I let myself jump into this opportunity and experience how love might flow in and through me? Fear or no fear, not taking this risk would be, as a Pathwork lecture says, “ungenerous.” So right now I plan to be open to whatever happens this weekend, and to look forward to this chance of experiencing being a channel for love! Of course this administrative work and direct work with students and workers is a both/and, not either/or situation. Both are calls. Both are channels for love to flow through me, if I dare risk it.