Discerning Your Spiritual Calling: Plans, Processes, and Strategies
The Creative Life:7 Keys to your Inner Genius (Butterworth, 2003), uses the creation account to outline a seven-step meditational process for discovering your spiritual calling. The first four stages included Enlightenment, Expansion, Visualization, and Inner Guidance.
Enlightenment occurs when you first notice your spiritual call. You may not have the details of how it will manifest; but you feel a drive to respond. Then, in the second stage, your spiritual calling expands, and you become familiar with the larger goals. The third stage encourages visualization. The visualization fills in the details of your call.
Visualization moves from within outward and will take the form of pictures coming to your mind, imagining future activities, and re-occurring inspirational thoughts.
During the fourth stage of inner guidance, God provides the larger goals of your spiritual call, and you say, “I think I could actually do that”. Yet, the fourth stage remains aspirational; it is not until the fifth stage of your spiritual call that the processes, plans, and strategies for implementing your call occur.
Title: Bachelor, Author: Jonathan Miske, Source: Flickr is licensed by CC BY-SA 2.0
Plans, Processes, and Strategies for Your Spiritual Calling
In the Genesis creation, God commands the waters to abound with living creatures and for birds to fly in the expanse above the earth (Genesis 1:20-23, WEB). The waters and the swarm of fish and birds are important elements in this scripture.
The waters represent the unconscious energy from which your calling emerges (Butterworth, 2003). As your calling emerges from an inspiration to an idea; this is largely an unconscious process in the recesses of your mind. God has the most access to you in your unconscious mind. Thus, it is from within the waters of the unconscious mind that the strategies, processes, and plans of your calling begin to emerge and take shape. Unfortunately, this part of your spiritual call is often destabilizing.
The strategies, processes, and plans of your spiritual calling rarely come in a step-by-step organized manner. The schools of fishes in the sea and swarms of birds in the air represent this part of your spiritual calling (Butterworth, 2003). You become overwhelmed by the swarms of ideas, processes, and plans that emerge from your unconscious. Your thoughts race, and your mind moves a million miles a minute as you focus on all the possibilities of manifesting your call.
This is a time of perseverance and patience as the swarm of thoughts and ideas can be overwhelming. Just as a school of fish moves with precise movement and flow in one collective direction: your swarm of thoughts and ideas merge into a collective and cohesive whole. With patience, there will be answers from the chaos. The most important thing you can do is not allow the chaos of your thoughts to overwhelm you (Butterworth, 2003). Instead, sit with the chaos until your thoughts form a direction in the shape of strategies, processes, and plans. The key is to let the swarm of ideas work for you and not against you as anxious thoughts. The only way to deal with the overwhelming next steps and plans of your call is to simply, “Let Them Be" (Butterworth, 2003).
Dealing with the Swarm of Plans, Processes, and Strategies in Your Spiritual Call
When the swarm of potential actions comes to you, it is natural to want to fight the current of the swarm by prematurely selecting a plan and acting on it. Often, this is an attempt to ease your experience of anxiety, instead of allowing the natural flow and process of the swarm of ideas to lead you to the first steps of your spiritual call. If you look at a single fish, it doesn't stress about individual outcomes. It simply moves with the flow and current of the swarm by letting the swarm envelope them.
The first step to surviving the swarm of ideas is to simply, “Let them be" (Butterworth, 2003). Instead of anxiously responding to the thought as it emerges, simply notice it. As you answer God’s call; the next steps and actionable ideas will visit you at the oddest times. You may awaken in the middle of the night with one random idea, and another may emerge while you are doing mundane tasks such as loading the dishwasher. On your way to work or in the shower, the ideas may visit you. Ideas will visit you when your mind is calm and distracted by the mundane task of life. This mundane state allows the unconscious to emerge into conscious thought. This state can also be achieved in the process of meditation.
Your second step during the swarming of ideas is to collect the plans, processes, and strategies as they emerge. This doesn't mean you will use every idea that comes up. As you collect the ideas, you will see key themes emerge that reflect the next steps in your call. During this stage, keep a notebook, journal, or use diagraming to document ideas as they emerge.
This emergence from the unconscious swarm is easy to miss if you don’t take the time to write them down as they occur. The emergence of ideas can take time. Just keep collecting them until the swarm stops emerging. You will know when the swarm of ideas is fully expressed. Your thoughts will be repeats of those already listed. You may also experience a sense of peace that you have received every message the unconscious has sent you.
The third step is to develop a substantial list of potential plans, actions, and strategies. In step three, look for common themes of the next steps of your spiritual call. Maybe there is information to research, organizations to join, the beginning steps of changing your career. Whatever it may be; key themes can be formed into actionable plans and strategies.
Acting is the final step in dealing with the swarm of ideas. Once your list the next steps; you may attempt to argue against acting or procrastinating. As the ideas emerge from the unconscious, some of you will have difficulty listing them. This is because of over-intellectualizing and arguing with each idea as it emerges instead of identifying it and adding it to your collection of strategies.
Procrastination is simply a fear of failure
As your calling emerges from the swarm, don’t argue with the ideas. In addition, as themes of plans, processes, and strategies emerge, don’t procrastinate! Procrastination is simply a fear of failure (Butterworth, 2003). Instead, pull each theme and idea from your collected list and develop a goal and subsequent action steps to take in the next thirty, sixty, and ninety days. It is at this point that the unconscious swarm of ideas emerges into actionable plans, processes, and strategies to accomplish your spiritual calling.
Moses and the Emergence of Plans, Processes, and Strategies in His Spiritual Calling
Just like you, Moses went through the seven stages of the creative process in his calling to free the Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. First, Moses received the initial illumination through the burning bush. Then God expanded his calling by showing Moses he would deliver the Hebrews to a land of opportunity and abundance. During the third phase, Moses envisioned the release of the Hebrew slaves. In the fourth stage of his call, God redirected Moses’s ego to a complete dependence upon God. With the freedom from his ego, Moses moved into the fifth stage of his calling: Plans, Processes, and Strategies.
In Exodus 2:16-23 (WEB. 2022), God provides Moses with the swarm of ideas to free the Hebrew slaves. While the Bible, for the sake of clarity, provides a list of actionable steps that Moses must accomplish in the next phases of his call; I want to remind you that Moses likely went through the same creative process as you and me. The revelation of his next steps was not immediate, but likely emerged from his unconscious to the conscious in snippets.
Bit-by-bit, God moved the plan of action from Moses’s unconscious to conscious thought. First, the Elders of Israel were told that God had seen their plight as slaves. Then God plans to use Moses to deliver them from their captors to a future homeland of abundance. Moses was to request permission to go on a three-day journey into the wilderness to worship God. The Pharaoh wouldn't let the Hebrews go, so God informed Moses of the future plagues that would force the hand of Pharoah to release the Hebrews. The final step of the plan included the Hebrew slaves asking the Egyptians for valuable jewels clothing upon release. God wasn’t letting his people leave Egypt empty-handed.
The biblical narrative seems to imply God just gave Moses each direction step-by-step in an orderly manner. I would like to challenge the fact that God laid it out so matter of fact. Instead, Moses goes through the same process as you. He had a call, and bit-by-bit, a swarm of ideas emerged that informed him of God’s plan for himself and the Hebrews. Think of Moses sitting contemplatively under the burning bush; receiving the next steps in unorganized segments and chunks until the full plan emerged. Just like Moses, God’s plan, process, and strategies of your spiritual calling may come to you via glimpses and snippets in a swarm of ideas.
Conclusion
After you receive inner guidance; you will experience the emergence of ideas from your unconscious to the conscious regarding plans, processes, and strategies to accomplish your spiritual call. At first, these ideas manifest as a disorganized swarm from your unconscious and may overwhelm you. Overtime as you simply “let the ideas be” and collect them by listing them on paper. The ideas, like a swarm of birds, take shape and direction.
You will be tempted to intellectualize the ideas as they emerge from the unconscious and develop internal arguments against them; simply don’t! Let the ideas emerge as you experience a sense of peace. Identify themes and categories of your ideas into actionable plans, processes, and strategies. Then develop a thirty, sixty, and ninety-day plan to complete your initial tasks.
Reflection Questions for Plans, Processes, & Strategies in Your Spiritual Calling
In what ways do you know your spiritual calling, but still do not have a full understanding of the plans, processes, and strategies?
Has God been sending you plans, processes, and strategies in snippets, but a complete vision of the next steps has yet to emerge? What messages have you been receiving in these glimpses and snippets of insights?
How could beginning a list, journal, or diagram of the snippets of God’s plan for your calling help organize the swarm of ideas emerging from your unconscious to your conscious thought?
If you are seeing a plan emerging, then what actions steps do you need to take to create a plan for the next thirty, sixty, and ninety days to accomplish the initial steps of your spiritual call?
In what ways are you allowing procrastination and fear of failure to stop you from developing your initial plans, processes, and strategies for accomplishing your spiritual call?
Activity for Developing Plans, Process, and Strategy for Your Spiritual Calling:
Notice the glimpses of “next steps” and “action strategies” God is revealing to you in snippets regarding your spiritual call. Remember, these are initially unorganized thoughts, but overtime take on a direction to form a plan, process, or strategy. Begin a journal, list, or diagram to keep track of these thoughts; don’t argue with them as they emerge; simply write them down.
As your list grows, notice themes and categories and next steps. If something doesn’t fit, simply know God will use it later in the process of your calling. From these themes and categories, identify your next action steps for your spiritual call.
Finally, based upon your next action steps, develop a thirty-, sixty-, and ninety-day plan to accomplish the next steps of your spiritual call. This will help keep you accountable in fulfilling each of the steps. This is a preliminary plan to get you started. The plan will need to be adjusted as you pursue your calling.
By: Heath B. Walters, Ph.D.
Copyright January 17th, 2023, Heath B. Walters DBA Spiritual Life Resources, All Rights Reserved
Reference
Butterworth, E. (2003). The Creative Life: 7 Keys to Your Inner Genius. Tarcher-Perigee.
World English Bible (2022). WEB Online. https://ebible.org/study/