Thank you all for joining me – all of you – those from the past, the present, and the future. Those here in embodied being, and those here energetically through universal connection. Those who are new, and those who I have known for years. I am Noel, and I am a teacher of paradigm shift dynamics. This is where my life work lies, and it is a work that I hope will contribute to each of your fulfillment of your own life’s work. Today I will talk about the development of our modern concept of “vocation,” and how it evolved.
When I talk about finding one’s vocation, I mean finding one’s life’s work and authentically living it in a way that supports both the growth and satisfaction of the soul and the continued growth of humanity in satisfying its authentic purpose. Today, it is uncommon to find anyone not in pursuit of vocation, and to the degree that there are those working at the older type of employment, it is usually still on path to vocational living. Or, at the least, we can say it is something of a true choice on the part of the individual about how to apportion their time based on their own setting of priority and focus. This is a recent phenomenon that, believe it or not, came out of the great paradigm shift of the 21st Century.
Before the shift, some people had vocations, but these were on the cusping edge of humanity. The vast majority of humanity lived and died having to work to survive. This meant there was little passion for their work, and the only possible path to “happiness” culturally supported was to accumulate material wealth and power over others. There was no passion in much of the work of humanity, and where there was passion, it was frequently temporary. “Burnout” was common. Even those seeking to be of benefit to society, and perhaps in some ways those even more so than the others, did not understand how to create benefit in the world without creating an enormous deficit within themselves. They were either pouring all their energy into their work in an obsessive way, or in building up a vast pool of resentments, hatreds, and judgements of all not engaged in the same work as them, or both. Authenticity was feared, and the secret to living a “good life” was to put one’s head down and work hard for the patriarchy. At this point, the dominator culture was eating humanity alive. Humanity was pushed to see this more and more, as societies, cultures, systems of government, and the very environment on the planet were breaking down.
The breakdown in the 21st century had been a long time coming (I must note, although it may be apparent, this was not an overnight event, but rather took several lifetimes of human time to complete and the ripples and reverberations of which we are still working on integrating to this day). And, of course, the shift with respect to work/career/vocation is only one strand of the story. So, while I will try to keep to today’s topic, it is, of course, integrally connected to the entire sea-change of the great shift!
Before the shift, the average human life did not touch vocation, and in fact, work was the only option for many, with career being the dream. Before I move on, let me give you some definitions for these terms, as I am using them:
- Work: human activity engaged in purely for the money. The activity may or may not be in alignment with the individual’s authentic being, however this is always beside the point. The usual expectation of “work” is that it is unpleasant and unfulfilling, but that it is what provides the funding for one to have a life. Work is not typically something that there is a long-term commitment to.
- Career: work that requires specific training, and holds the promise, explicitly or implicitly, of a known trajectory by which more money is awarded, along with more power over others, with experience as well as with further education in that career. A career is seen as a long-term commitment. It is also seen as something that humans generally move along in a linear fashion, with expected milestones and in general, while a career may be somewhat fulfilling, a career is still something one does to support their life, rather than an integral part of one’s life.
- Vocation: the conscious, balanced activity of the human in authentically fulfilling their life’s purpose, as articulated by the individuated soul (sometimes referred to as a “calling”). The path to and within vocation is a non-linear process of involution and evolution, and over a life time exactly what the vocation looks like will shift as it unfolds and is co-created by the human, their soul, and the universe.
As you are all aware, we currently see “vocation” as the usual way to live. In prior times, and particularly prior to the great shift of the 21st century, career was seen as the usual way to live, and in practice, work was the usual mode and attitude of much of human activity on this planet. So how was this old way-of-being transmuted into the new way?
First, it was through the courageous activity of those on the fringes of human society, those leading the way in the direction of evolutionary change. So rare was it, in fact, that when people came across someone engaged in truly vocational activity, there would be a very strong over-reaction to it. These came in two primary formats:
- A positive overreaction: putting the person seen on a pedestal; creating a prophet, guru, or a god of them; worshiping
- A negative overreaction: condemnation, demonization, extreme othering, persecution, murder
Of course, there were also those who could see and not react – see and turn inwards to ignite that same light within themselves, and to jumpstart their own evolution – but this was rare at first.
Second, as more and more people became engaged in actualizing their soul’s purpose, there was a growing divergence from the idea that material wealth could make one happy, from the idea that humans must work to live, and, further, that work and life must forever remain separate, or, dis-integrated. In other words, there was a cultural shift towards integration across previously conceived of as separate areas of life.
Third, advancements in technology created an environment where much of the work historically done by humans was being done more and more by machines. This lead to an ever widening gap between those who had a lot of material wealth (much more than anyone would ever need, and enough to have provided resources for all on the planet was occasionally accumulated by just one human, while many were starving to death, houseless, or otherwise living in abject poverty).
Fourth, and largely in concert with the cultural shift away from the old ways of thinking about humanity and work, was the emergence of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) as well as individual and corporate income caps. Without this fourth element, the shift would have taken a lot longer and would have been a lot more painful than it was. Many more would have languished and died slaves to the capitalist, patriarchal, materialistic global economy, and culture. Given this significance, and the potential lessons there for us to consider today, I will now delve a little deeper into the emergence of UBI and income caps.
As income gaps continued to widen, as more and more humans were impacted by an inability to consistently make enough money to support themselves and meet their own basic needs, the concept of a UBI became more and more appealing to the people. The government slowly began to take notice. It was slow at first because the government was largely made up of people who were benefiting from the way things were, and who were influenced by the demands of corporations and the extremely wealthy. Nonetheless, more and more people marched and protested. More and more people talked with those in government, and the dialogue began to open. The first pilot programs for limited UBI granted to certain most vulnerable segments of the population began in the United States as early as the 1960’s and 70’s – coinciding with the first wave of the psychedelic renaissance, or revival, as well as large-scale political unrest. This was an era which ultimately could be seen as foreshadowing the deeper unrest and the larger resurgence of psychedelics in the first quarter of the 21st century.
The basic concept was this: by ensuring that all had access to at least enough money to meet their basic needs for shelter, clothing, food, and transportation humanity could put an end to the massive houselessness and poverty problems that plagued the entire world, but perhaps most troublingly at the time, still plagued the richest of countries as the middle class disappeared and the wealth disparity grew. At first the pilot programs were often limited to those with the greatest need, which was, of course, the most rational place to start. There was a great fear that humans would stop being productive members of society if they were given a universal income, but this fear was quickly dispelled with mounting evidence that, to the contrary, humans were more productive and would engage more in making positive contributions to society if they were guaranteed to have their basic needs met. Furthermore, the implementation of these programs ultimately lead to people building self-sufficient and resilient communities, new ways of living, and the programs were so successful they largely eliminated the need they were built to fill in remarkably short order.
Initially, non-profits and special interest groups funded the programs with grants. Over time, and in part to stem the flood of people leaving the big, once all-powerful, corporations, for profit entities also stepped up. Eventually, the massive surplus incomes of large companies and the ultra-wealthy few individuals became the monies needed to guarantee these incomes for all.
What started off as a movement to assist those in abject poverty slowly became a reality for everyone. The transition to a united humanity in balance with the natural world and participating in the natural growth and evolution of consciousness was underway. Humanity became un-stuck in their pattern of enslaving and dominating the other. And the freer humans were able to get creative, get in touch with themselves, and live into being the renaissance in which we currently exist.
In the United States, there was an additional mechanism that came into play in the late 2020’s, when a citizen group assisted in the filing of over 200 million simultaneous disability claims, flooding the system. The claims came after a time period in which well-over half of the population of the United States was being treated for addiction, depression, or anxiety due in large part to the breakdown of the political system through and following the COVID-19 pandemic earlier in the decade. Not to mention living during the largest mass extinction that we are aware of on earth, and knowing that we caused it. Not to mention the ecosystem collapse. And almost no one had developed the resiliency practices and tools to navigate all of this. People could not work, and the normal ways of life were failing almost everyone. The system was flooded. The agency could not possibly handle all the claims. State agencies were similarly flooded. Claims were denied.
Well, as the agencies denied masses of claims, a flood of appeals overwhelmed the agencies. Within the federal agency, an administrative law judge determined that all of the denied claims were effectively the same claim – joining their decision to apply to all claims denied for anxiety and/or depression – and ruled to deny them all. Of course, the citizen group took this up to the federal court of appeals almost instantly – several class actions sprung up regarding the federal and state claims. Multiple class action law firms worked together, putting their best people on this case, mostly out of self-interest and ego, but the result was certainly in everyone’s best interest nonetheless. A federal judge certified a national class based on one of the federal actions. The judge then consolidated the federal actions along with the multitude of still pending state actions of the same type into one case. And the Federal Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia heard the case. By this time, of course, there were more and more citizens jumping on the case – rushing to file their own disability claims. The attorneys for the states and the federal government sought to enjoin further disability claims based on similar underlying facts until the consolidated federal case was decided. The attorneys worked tirelessly. They filed paperwork and motions back and forth, back and forth. The citizens’ attorney eventually filed a demand for a jury trial, and the state attorneys suddenly got scared.
At this point, over half the country considered themselves a party in interest to the suit. It would be hard enough to find a jury, but then to find a jury who would in fact be impartial… It seemed impossible. It probably would have been, but that theory was never tested, because after a lot of intense negotiation, the attorneys reached a settlement agreement that the judge signed off on. The settlement included Government-funded Universal Basic Income, with disability being on top of this benefit, and according to further need. It went beyond the class members, and it was set to create a Universal Basic Income in the United States for a hundred years. The non-profits who had been running UBI experiments around the country took the lead in developing and implementing the program. And the program aimed to ensure that all Americans had access to enough resources to live comfortable, safe lives, regardless of whether they worked or not.
At the same time, in the United States most prominently since it had gone the farthest to make education unaffordable and inaccessible, there was an evolution in the funding of higher education. The federal government forgave 100% of outstanding federal student loans, and did so without question. This further aided in people’s movement from work and careers that they felt completely trapped in and enslaved by to vocational occupations. People had the freedom to pursue paths of continuing growth that were non-linear.
Finally, the states and the federal government began imposing drastically higher taxes on corporations and the obscenely wealthy. Stakeholders challenged the taxes in court, and then the corporations and the obscenely wealthy lost. The government implemented the first accumulation of wealth caps. Accumulations beyond the caps automatically fed into the Universal Basic Income System.
The ways in which people contributed to society following all of this changed dramatically. People became more creative in their endeavors and contributions. They became more collective and heart centered – more eco-centered. More driven towards unitive, restorative, and abundant ways. A flurry of new businesses — and new types of businesses — emerged. Many people stopped working for the big corporations, working for “the man” as it was often referred to. As a practical matter, the patriarchy (political, economic, and social) began to crack and ultimately to fully breakdown. Without all the pressure, worry, and fear of not knowing where to sleep or whether one could eat today, or even whether one could put up with one’s abusive work situation long enough to take care of one’s children, humans were more likely to go inside themselves and heal and grow as individuated beings.
And, further, in the decade or so that it took from first lawsuits filed to the actual implementation of a nation-wide Universal Basic Income in the United States, other countries had implemented similar programs to serve as examples of policies and procedures. Also, there had been a simultaneous movement away from the traditional “careers” within, particularly, the younger adults in the country, but ultimately spanning all demographics. Leaders and way-showers stepped forward. Citizen groups developed new types of businesses that were not for profit, but not non-profits. People connected and formed closer bonds than ever at a hyper-local level. Thought leaders, scientists, philosophers, and visionaries all played a role in ushering in a new type of human consciousness. The very fabric of society was re-woven from the inside-out.
Ultimately, the governmental Universal Basic Income Program ended, and it didn’t actually take 100 years. It ended naturally, as people found new ways to live and distribute resources. As an additional factor, the self-organization of small, hyper-local, yet permeable interdependent communities emerged. This meant that people were mostly working together to meet their basic needs, rather than looking to an “income” for these needs. This looked like the transition from private residential property ownership to community ownership, the coordinated growing of food forests in neighborhoods, and the rise of a self-organized way in which communities largely met their own needs for place, food, and connection. Over time governments stopped being governments, and instead became emergent organizing structures, existing purely to keep track of things, and never to impose. But, of course, I will speak more thoroughly to this in other lessons.
This has been one strand of the story of the great paradigm shift through the lens of the work-to-vocation transition. If you keep coming back, you will eventually hear the story through many other lenses. It is all the story of how we as humanity navigated the shift in consciousness from individual to individuated, from separate to unitive, and from parasitic to symbiotic, with respect to our planetary environment.
