Great Work Of Your Life: A Guide For The Journey To Your True Calling (2013) - Plot & Excerpts
I enjoyed and am inspired by the short biographies of the individuals and wonderful exemplars in this book. From this point of view it is a great, entertaining read filled with gems of teachings and interesting revelations from the integration of the Bhagavad Gita with the lives of the individuals. However, since it is mostly the view of extraordinary exemplars, I am missing the biography of the average Joe-the-plumber and how he found and lived his Dharma. Or maybe it should have been even more emphasised that all the exemplars in this book had been the average Joe-the-plumber in their own rights before they got closer to their Dharma. All in all a recommended read with interesting examples of how to interpret the Bhagavad Gita. Finding this book was very crucial for me. For years, I've been trying to fit myself into an expected mold. My parents were born during the Great Depression. They came from very poor families, and to them, success was a job that didn't involve physical labor or coming home covered in dirt. My dad wore a suit and tie to work. That was a measure of success.I was raised to want to work in an office. Actually, my parents wanted me to become a pharmacist, but I couldn't imagine anything more boring. I was artsy. I majored in music. And then I ended up working in an office. This is what I was supposed to do.But it wasn't. And for twenty years, I forced it to work. But I was never completely happy. And over the years, I became ill. From the recycled air in building where you couldn't open the windows. From sitting 8+ hours per day, 5 or more days per week. We weren't made to do that. Our bodies were never meant to be so stagnant. Now that I'm finally healthy again, I don't ever want to go back to corporate. I don't want to sit for 8 hours per day. I want something that allows me to be active and yes, even to get dirty. Stephen Cope had a similar journey. Trained as a psychotherapist, he went to the Kripalu Center for Yoga & Health for a four month retreat...and never left. He found his dharma, his calling, there as the Director of the Institute for Extraordinary Living. Cope has written several books, but this was the first of his that I've read. I plan on reading the rest, too. This book focuses on the Bhagavad Gita and the lessons Krishna taught to Arjuna:1. Look to your dharma. Discern, name, and then embrace your own dharma.2. Do it full out! Do it with every fiber of your being. Commit yourself utterly.3. Let go of the fruits. Relinquish the fruits of your actions. Success and failure in the eyes of the world are not your concern. "It is better to fail at your own dharma than to succeed at the dharma of someone else."4. Turn it over to God. All true vocation arises in the stream of love that flows between the individual soul and the divine soul. Cope uses the stories of Jane Goodall, Henry David Thoreau, Walt Whitman, Ghandi and man others, as well as his own friends to illustrate what happens when dharma is embraced or pushed aside. There are so many great points in this book, I can't share them all, but here are a few favorites:•"Dharma," he says,"is the essential nature of a being, comprising the sum of its particular qualities or characteristics, and determining, by virtue of the tendencies or dispositions it implies, the manner in which this being with conduct itself, either in a general way or in relation to each particular circumstance." The word dharma in this teaching, then refers to the peculiar and idiosyncratic qualities of each being.•Remember Krishna's teaching: We cannot be anyone we want to be. We can only authentically be who we are. If you bring forth what is within you it will save you. If you do not, it will destroy you. And what, precisely is destroyed? Energy is destroyed first. Those shining eyes. And then faith. And then hope. And then life itself.•The false self is a collection of ideas we have in our minds about who we should be.•Furthermore, at a certain age it finally dawns on us that, shockingly, no one really cares what we're doing with our life. This is a most unsettling discovery to those of us who have lived someone else's dream and eschewed our own: No one really cares except us. When you scratch the surface, you finally discover that it doesn't really matter a whit who else you disappoint if you're disappointing yourself. The only question that makes sense to ask is: Is your life working for you?•With the name came a flood of regret. It was not the tidal wave of hope and relief he had counted on. Learning to embrace The Gift at midlife is complicated. Because naming The Gift and celebrating it also means grieving for lost opportunities. They mean facing squarely the suffering of self-betrayal.•We in twenty-first-century American have strange dreams and fantasies about retirement. We imagine a life of leisure. The Golden Years. But what is this leisure in the service of? •The fear of leaping is, of course, the fear of death. It is precisely the fear of being used up. And dharma does use us up, to be sure. But why not be used up giving everything we've got to the world? This is precisely what Krishna teaches Arjuna: You cannot hold on to your life. You don't need to. You are immortal. •"Like Henry James' obscure hurt and Dostoevsky's holy disease, even Beethoven's loss of hearing was in some sense necessary or at least useful, to the fulfillment of his creative quest." Mysteriously, The Gift issues forth out of The Wound. It does not quite heal The Wound, but it makes sense of it. It gives it meaning. And meaning is everything. •He teaches that our decisions about our actions flow inexorably from our understanding of who we are. And if we do not know who we are, we will make poor choices. •Ghandi was discovering the power of simplification and renunciation. He stumbled onto a truth widely known by yogis: Every time we discerningly renounce a possession, we free up energy that can be channeled into the pursuit of dharma. •"If you don't find your work in the world and throw yourself wholeheartedly into it, you will inevitably make your self your work. There's no way around it: You will take your self as your primary project. You will, in the very best case, dedicate your life to the perfection of your self. To the perfection of your health, intelligence, beauty, home or even spiritual prowess. And the problem is simply this: This self-dedication is too small a work. It inevitably becomes a prison."Even before I started this book, I had already begun to pare my lifestyle down. I had the lifestyle of someone who could buy many Kate Spade handbags and lots of pretty toys. But I don't want to do the work that brings that anymore. So, I have adopted a lifestyle that allows me to stay away from the corporate world (for now at least.) My goal is to live as simply yet comfortably as I can. And I no longer measure myself against other people's definition of success. It's okay if your definition of success means having a certain car, home, or lifestyle. It's okay, too, for me to define success as being able to breathe in fresh air, to go to the Yoga classes I want to, and to not be chained to an office. Highly recommend.
What do You think about Great Work Of Your Life: A Guide For The Journey To Your True Calling (2013)?
Provides a good understanding of dharma and great inspirational stories a long the way.
—Pinkiceyy
