4.  Personal Responsibility and Commitment

And how does this philosophy figure into the question of spiritual vocation?

Simple. With the feelings I have on these issues, I have a share of responsibility for what happens in the world, based on how I live my life and how I affect others. The world will not change unless I change myself.

Different people have different views and understandings about God. My own feeling – again, an oversimplification – is that God is the most expansive love you can possibly imagine, and beyond that. Some people take actions in order to experience heaven or paradise when they die. My idea is that it is possible to bring heaven to earth, not for myself, but in general. This can be accomplished when a sufficient number of people have worked on self-transformation to an extent sufficient to place their negative tendencies under control and make themselves a point for the expression of an expansive kind of love.

The word "vocation" means something that one is called to do. I feel the calling to this kind of self-transformation.

Do you hear a voice that calls you to do this?

More a sense of responsibility than an actual voice. When I began to understand things in the way I’ve described, it was like being marked or branded in some way. Distilled to its essence, the knowledge I gained was that how I live my life has a consequence not only for myself, but also for those around me and the entire world. There’s no way I could turn my back on this knowledge and say to myself I could continue to live without thought for the larger consequences.