We all have moments in our life when a shift into a new direction seems inevitable, and we feel deeply called toward something. But how do we recognise and answer a true calling? And what’s the difference between a calling and compulsion, or ambition of the ego?

Satish Kumar should know. He experienced his first calling at the age of nine. 

A calling is something which you feel in your deepest soul … not from the brain, not from thinking, not from ideas … you just feel it in your deep heart.

From a childhood decision to join the Jain Monk order in India to peace activism in the Gandhian movement, to an 8,000-mile walk for peace with no money, each step of Satish Kumar’s life seems to be a response to a deep calling.

In order to practice spirituality, you don’t have to forsake the world, you have to transform the world, you have to transform yourself and you have to serve the world.

In this episode, Satish Kumar, editor of Resurgence, shares how we can know the difference between a desire of the mind and a true calling. And we hear from Australian Earth Hour Ambassador, Zoe Gameau on the tenth anniversary of the grassroots campaign, now a global phenomenon.

About Our Guests

A former monk and long-term peace and environment activist, Satish Kumar is famous for his 8,000-mile peace pilgrimage in the 1960s. He is the editor of Resurgence Magazine and a Visiting Fellow at Schumacher College in South Devon.

Zoe Gameau is an Australian Actress, Activist, Mother, and Earth Hour Ambassador. Zoe has always been environmentally aware, her father was involved in an NGO and she grew up in South East Asia, living in Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Solomon Islands, and Burma.