How to Find Your Calling

The late James Hillman proposed that each of our lives is rooted in a single image that reveals our calling, much like the final structure of a giant oak tree emerges from a single acorn. As outlined in his book, The Soul's Code, Hillman's theory proposes an alternative to the nature vs. nurture debate. In this article, I'm sharing his words as published in two different interviews, one with Scott London and another with Mary NurrieStearns. I encourage you to follow the links and read each interview in full.

Sy Safransky, editor and publisher of The Sun, also interviewed Hillman, and said the experience was "like stepping off a bus into the clamorous, exotic, slightly menacing streets of a foreign city. You’re asked to leave behind fantasies of growth and self-improvement; to search the narrow, twisting alleys for better questions, not answers; to be prepared for trouble.”

All the text from this point on, except the bold headings, are James Hillman's...

On the Acorn Theory: It's more of a myth than a theory. It's Plato's myth that you come into the world with a destiny, although he uses the word paradigma, or paradigm, instead of destiny. The acorn theory says that there is an individual image that belongs to your soul.

The same myth can be found in the kabbalah. The Mormons have it. The West Africans have it. The Hindus and the Buddhists have it in different ways — they tie it more to reincarnation and karma, but you still come into the world with a particular destiny. Native Americans have it very strongly. So all these cultures all over the world have this basic understanding of human existence. Only American psychology doesn't have it.

It's important to ask yourself, "How am I useful to others? What do people want from me?" That may very well reveal what you are here for.

Discovering your calling: The first step (towards discovering our calling) is the realization that each of us has such a thing. And then we must look back over our lives and look at some of the accidents and curiosities and oddities and troubles and sicknesses and begin to see more in those things than we saw before. It raises questions, so that when peculiar little accidents happen, you ask whether there is something else at work in your life. It doesn't necessarily have to involve an out-of-body experience during surgery, or the sort of high-level magic that the new age hopes to press on us. It's more a sensitivity, such as a person living in a tribal culture would have: the concept that there are other forces at work. A more reverential way of living.

Free will versus fate: It isn't such an easy thing as the old argument of free will versus predestination. The Greek idea of fate is moira, which means "portion." Fate rules a portion of your life. But there is more to life than just fate. There is also genetics, environment, economics, and so on. So it's not all written in the book before you get here, such that you don't have to do anything. That's fatalism.

Why is there such a vast self-help industry in this country? Why do all these selves need help? They have been deprived of something by our psychological culture. They have been deprived of the sense that there is something else in life, some purpose that has come with them into the world.

My book is about a third view. It says, yes, there's genetics. Yes, there are chromosomes. Yes, there's biology. Yes, there are environment, sociology, parenting, economics, class, and all of that. But there is something else, as well.

If you come at my book from the side of science, you see it as "new age." If you come at the book from the side of the new age, you say it doesn't go far enough — it's too rational.

On "growing downward" instead of up: The myth says that the roots of the soul are in the heavens, and the human grows downward into life. A little child enters the world as a stranger, and brings a special gift into the world. The task of life is to grow down into this world. Little children are often slow to come down. Many children, between the ages of approximately six to fifteen, say, "I don't know what I'm doing in this family; I don't know how I ever landed here."

Parents say about children, "Boy, I don't know where this child come from. He's nothing like anybody else in the family," and so on. The perspective is that we came to earth as a stranger and slowly, as we mature, grow into the world, take part in its duties and pleasures, and become more involved and attached. In other cultures, the task of older persons is to not be selfishly concerned, but to grow down into the world to help the younger ones find their places. In other words, as you get older, you become more social, political and responsible.

We have to make it clear that this is a myth, not a truth. It doesn't have to be believed, and it's not a theory that has to be proven. It's a worldwide myth, and it's a way of thinking or reflecting about life. It's something you entertain to see what the story does for you. Plato said that those who think this way may find that their lives will prosper, meaning it's not a bad way to think.

How to find your calling: First of all, a person has to have this idea. As you noticed when you (Mary NurrieStevens) read the book, it was by getting the idea first that you began to see things differently. The word idea comes originally from Greek. Idein was a way of seeing. So, if this idea is held in mind and thought about and then used for looking at your past, you may begin to see things that you didn't see before. This is the basic way to answer the question of how.

It's not a technique; first of all, it's an idea. It helps us look back at all our disturbances and dysfunctions, at how they have been necessary, how they fit in. It helps us look at what we have been doing and what we do well, what the world wants from us. The world may want from us what we do best, which could well be an indication about our calling. It may be a service; it may be friendship. We don't all have to be a celebrity.

Bruce Kasanoff is a ghostwriter for thought leaders. He is the author of NEVER TELL PEOPLE WHAT YOU DO.