Your True Calling: The Great Work of Your Life
- olivierbranford
- Mar 15
- 33 min read
Updated: Mar 18
What is your true purpose? Are you living it? Finding and living your true purpose is essential to your joy, peace, and abundance.
‘The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide For The Journey To Your True Calling’ by Stephen Cope is a fabulous book about finding your true purpose in life and how to live it. It is in my ‘Suggested Reading’ list. It is about discovering your deep purpose hidden at the very core of your BEing.
To know your true calling, your dharma, as the Yogis say - is perhaps the greatest desire within each of us. And yet, few can say that we know our purpose with absolute certainty. Viktor Frankl said “You don’t create your mission in life - you detect it... Ever more people today have the means to live but no meaning to live for.”
Fortunately there is a time-tested guide, an ancient map, for discovering and fulfilling your unique journey. Cope teaches that the secrets to unlocking the mystery of your dharma can be found in the classic spiritual text ‘The Bhagavad Gita’: See my ‘Suggested Reading’ list for this book too.
Ask yourself “Am I living fully right now? Am I bringing forth everything I can bring forth? Am I digging down into that ineffable inner treasure-house that I know is in there? That trove of genius? Am I living my life’s calling? Am I willing to go to any lengths to offer my genius to the world?” Your purpose and will to meaning activates the God-seed in you and enables you to realise your soul's immensity.
We work first because we have to work. Then because we want to work. Then because we love to work. Then the work simply flows from who we are BEing. Difficult at the beginning: Inevitable at the end.
The Bhagavad Gita (meaning 'God's song'), often referred to as the Gita, is a Hindu scripture, dated to the second or first century BCE, which forms part of the epic poem Mahabharata. It is a synthesis of various strands of Indian religious thought, including the Vedic concept of dharma (duty, rightful action); samkhya-based yoga, jnana (knowledge); and bhakti (devotion). It holds a unique pan-Hindu influence as the most prominent sacred text and is a central text in Vedanta and the Vaishnava Hindu tradition.
The Bhagavad Gita is arguably the most important treatise in the yoga tradition. It’s the treatise that every villager in India knows. And part of that is because there’s such great storytelling—everybody can relate to it. But it’s a treatise primarily about the path of action in the world. And so there’s just copious amounts of wisdom about action. That is to say, “How do I decide, in this moment, what actions to take?” And the view is that actions taken from a discerning mind have a mystical quality. They have a mystic effect on the field. The Bhagavad Gita is a timeless tale about the path to dharma, told through an instructive dialogue between the fabled archer and warrior Arjuna and his divine mentor, Krishna, who is actually God. Cope uses Arjuna’s journey as a framework for each of us to discover our own dharma, weaving together stories of Western lives. Throughout the book, Cope explores the ‘Four Pillars of Dharma’, or the stages we move through as we fulfill our own true callings. Cope teaches that we feel the happiest and most fulfilled when we bring highly concentrated effort to our true calling. ‘The Great Work of Your Life’ is a call to action and step-by-step guide for each of us to discover and embrace our dharma.
When we ask the question of, “How do I act in the world in a way that is aligned with my true purpose?”, the Gita has a number of responses to this and in a way, this is kind of starting in the middle of the book and of the Gita, because The Bhagavad Gita is basically divided into three sections. The first section is about action in the world. The second section, which is the second six chapters, is really about something we call jnana yoga, which is the yoga of wisdom, the yoga of the mind, the yoga of discerning intellect. And then the final six chapters are really about the wisdom of the heart, in other words, Truth. In yoga this is called bhakti. So, The Bhagavad Gita calls us to action, and invites us to transition from intellectualising life to feeling it: In other words, to take the short Hero's Journey of healing and recovery from the mind to the heart: From wisdom to Truth.
For my full article 'Wisdom From The Bhagavad Gita' click on this call to action button:
Famous Western examples
Cope discusses the little-known tale of Walt Whitman’s dharma discovery in the second half of his life. He also dives into Ludwig Van Beethoven’s triumphs over childhood abuse, depression, and going deaf. And now a surprise: Beethoven was deeply inspired by his reading of the Bhagavad Gita. He became a voracious reader - I really identify with that! Cope describes Mahatma Gandhi’s transformation from tongue-tied youth to leader of the Indian Independence movement. Gandhi, who wrote one of the most comprehensive commentaries on The Bhagavad Gita, said the battlefield in the Gita is actually the battlefield of life. It’s the battlefield of the afflictions, which in the yoga world, as well as the Buddhist world, are greed, hatred, and delusion. It’s the battlefield of separation. And I’ve really come to believe that every human being does have a calling to be someone. But that calling means that they’re going to be themselves: Utterly and uniquely themselves. That means that you and I each have our own particular melange of gifts that we’re given and are responsible to.
What is my responsibility to action? This is the same kind of question, for example, that Henry David Thoreau had to ask during the Mexican War and before the Civil War when he wrote his treatise on “Civil Disobedience.” What is my responsibility, in the face of this difficulty, to act in the world? Of course, he decided that he was complicit in the actions of his government, so he was called upon to act. So of course, he refused to pay his poll tax and he spent a night in jail. Thoreau was, of course, one of our greatest amateur philosophers, and he was all about the question of, “How do I act in the world in a way that is aligned with my true purpose?”
Cope also tells the story of Robert Frost. His whole story is a story of somebody who, at 18 years old, Tami, knew that he wanted to be a great poet. His family was totally against it. But you see in Robert Frost a guy who slowly peels away in his life everything that is not his dharma. For a while, he was a teacher and writing poetry. There was a huge dharma moment—I call this a “crossroads moment”—when he had to decide to give up teaching. He gave up teaching and what did he do? He bought a crazy farm in Dairy, New Hampshire. He had no intention of farming it. He said he bought it in order to farm poetry.
So, he gave up teaching. He makes this huge empty canvas of his life, goes up to New Hampshire, and basically he farms poetry. It’s only after Robert Frost makes those choices—and each one of those is a kind of jumping off a cliff, because you never really know when you give up teaching for poetry. Really? Are you crazy? Are you out of your mind? A paying job for poetry? There is something about that moment, about taking that risk, where the Universe starts to support you in ways you never could’ve imagined would happen. There’s something absolutely essential about the commitment of paring away what is not dharma. And I will tell you this: Usually, what you end up paring away is stuff that scares the bejesus out of you (your ego is terrified), because it’s about security and letting go of that with Faith that all will be well.
Mantras
In my previous article ‘From Focus to Freedom: From Will to Awakening‘ I have dived into the dangers of concentrating your focus of consciousness as it leads to a limited, false, ego self-concept. However, this is not the same as Cope’s emphasis on highly concentrated effort to our true calling and a call to action: In fact Cope’s work is synonymous with not being distracted by our likes and dislikes on our quest towards our dharma; which are also the basis of our self-concept. As such, it is entirely compatible with Michael Singer’s concepts around spirituality in my previous article ‘From Focus to Freedom: From Will to Awakening’.
Cope advises the use of mantras for highly concentrated effort. How important was mantra to Mahatma Gandhi’s transformation? Extremely. When done systematically, mantra has a powerful effect on the brain. It gathers and focuses the energy of the mind. It teaches the mind to focus on one point, and it cultivates a steadiness that over time becomes an unshakable evenness of temper. The cultivation of this quality of ‘evenness’ is a central principle of the Bhagavad Gita. It is called ‘samatv’ in Sanskrit, and it is a central pillar of Krishna’s practice. When the mind develops steadiness, teaches Krishna, it is not shaken by fear (dislikes - fear) or greed (likes - desire) as described in my article about Singer’s philosophy and spirituality.
In his early twenties, Gandhi had already begun to develop a still-point at the centre of his consciousness—a still-point that could not be shaken. This little seed of inner stillness would grow into a mighty oak. Gandhi would become an immovable object. Rambha had given Gandhi an enchanting and accurate image to describe the power of mantra. She compared the practice of mantra to the training of an elephant. “As the elephant walks through the market,” taught Rambha, “He swings his trunk from side to side and creates havoc with it wherever he goes—knocking over fruit stands and scattering vendors, snatching bananas and coconuts wherever possible. His trunk is naturally restless, hungry, scattered, undisciplined. This is just like the mind—constantly causing trouble.”“But the wise elephant trainer,” said Rambha, “Will give the elephant a stick of bamboo to hold in his trunk. The elephant likes this. He holds it fast. And as soon as the elephant wraps his trunk around the bamboo, the trunk begins to settle. Now the elephant strides through the market like a prince: Calm, collected, focused, and serene. Bananas and coconuts no longer distract.” So too with the mind: As soon as the mind grabs hold of the mantra, it begins to settle. The mind holds the mantra gently, and it becomes focused, calm, and centred. Gradually this mind becomes extremely concentrated. This is the beginning stage of meditation. All meditation traditions prescribe some beginning practice of gathering, focusing, and concentration—and in the yoga tradition this is most often achieved precisely through mantra. Later on silent meditation becomes more prevalent. The true contemplative is not one who prepares his mind for a particular message that he wants or expects to hear, but is one who remains empty because he knows that he can never expect to anticipate the words that will transform his darkness into light. He does not even anticipate a special kind of transformation. He does not demand light instead of darkness. He waits on the Word of God in silence, and, when he is answered it is not so much by a word that bursts into his silence. It is by his silence itself, suddenly, inexplicably revealing itself to him as a word of great power, full of the voice of God, in other words, intuition. When you begin meditating, you may need guided meditations and mantras.
The whole of Chapter Six in the Bhagavad Gita is devoted to Krishna’s teachings on this practice: “Whenever the mind wanders, restless and diffuse in its search for satisfaction without, lead it within; train it to rest in the Self,” instructs Krishna. “When meditation is mastered, the mind is unwavering, like the flame of a lamp in a windless place.” The elephant metaphor reminds me of when I give a ball to my dog to hold as we walk through the park: She does not bark at foxes (fear), and stops chasing pushchairs, looking for pastries often hidden underneath them (desire).
As someone with ADHD, hyperfocus is my superpower, which I can apply to my dharma of coaching and writing in order to change my corner of the world for the better.
Bring forth what is in you
The most striking quote that I found within the text of Cope's book was from the Gospel of Thomas, which states that Jesus said that “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” Wise words to heed indeed. I rather like this statement instead “If you bring forth what is within you, it will save you. Now we can add a codicil: If you bring forth what is within you, it will save the world.”
Take action: There is a certain kind of action that leads to freedom and fulfilment,” Krishna begins. “A certain kind of action that is always aligned with our true nature.” This is the action that is motivated by dharma. This is the action taken in the service of our sacred calling, our duty, our vocation, our divine purpose. In dharma, it is possible to take passionate action without creating suffering. It is possible to find authentic fulfilment of all human possibilities.
The impulse to eschew the unpleasant leads to avoidance (resistance and suppression); avoidance leads to aversion; aversion leads to fear; fear leads to hatred; hatred leads to aggression. Unwittingly, the oh-so-natural instinct to avoid the unpleasant becomes the root of all hatred. It leads to war: War within, war without. Entertaining aversion is a slippery slope.
Krishna would teach that grasping and aversion are twins: They are mirror images of each other. They both involve a rejection of how it is in this moment. The grasping mind says, “I long for that to happen (likes and preferences) and I long for that not that (dislikes and aversions).” So we suppress our dislikes as they come in and cling to our likes.
Be your Self
Every man has a vocation to be someone: But he must understand clearly that in order to fulfil this vocation he can only be one person: Him Self.
The very central teaching of the Gita is to “Let go of the outcome.” Let go of any clinging to how this all comes out. You cannot measure your actions at this point by the conventional wisdom about success and failure. Letting go of outcomes means that you stop holding back with taking action as a negative outcome will begin to feel the same as a positive outcome. Nothing happens in God’s world by chance or by mistake: God doesn’t play dice. Nothing is either good or bad. The act of moving forward is what matters.
How to focus? How to, as we might say these days, “Bring it.” Like Katsushika Hokusai, their lives begin to look like guided missiles. How exactly do they accomplish this? How do you get from where most of us live—the run-of-the-mill split mind—to the gathered mind of a Hokusai? Krishna articulates the principle succinctly: Acting in unity with your purpose itself creates unification. Actions that consciously support dharma have the power to begin to gather our energy. These outward actions, step-by-step, shape us inwardly. Find your dharma and do it. And in the process of doing it, energy begins to gather itself into a laser beam of effectiveness. Krishna quickly adds: Do not worry about the outcome. Success or failure are not your concern. It is better to fail at your own dharma than to succeed at the dharma of another. Your task is only to bring as much life force as you can muster to the execution of your dharma. In this spirit, Chinese Master Guan Yin Tzu wrote “Don’t waste time calculating your chances of success and failure. Just fix your aim and begin.” Longing for our idealised images of life, our likes and desires, separates us from our true Selves and from our true callings.
The leap of Faith
Robert Frost's life is a treasure trove of stories about dharma. The most interesting story is the series of courageous early choices Robert Frost made in support of his dharma. When one examines Frost’s life closely, it becomes clear that this man became more and more himself through a series of small decisions that aligned him with his voice. He had a gift, of course. But his power came into focus through his commitment to this gift, and through a series of decisive actions taken in support of it. Each one of these acts was, for him, like jumping off a cliff. He jumped not entirely blind—but not entirely seeing, either. And each of Frost’s leaps of Faith ignited more of his power. In retrospect, it is clear that each one of Frost’s difficult decisions helped create the perfect conditions for the full flowering of his genius. Leap, for you will grow wings thanks to Grace, a net will appear, and a bridge will appear. So you are triply safe.
You have already succeeded
“How we spend our days,” says author Annie Dillard, “Is, of course, how we spend our lives.” Once the mature Susan B. Anthony had fully organised her life around her dharma, she declared, as I have said, “Failure is impossible.” She had grasped the central principle: As long as you are living your dharma fully, you cannot fail. Indeed, you have already succeeded. At this point we no longer need to let go of outcomes as we know that we cannot fail.
A corner of the world is yours to transform
Dharma is born mysteriously out of the intersection between ‘Your Gifts’ and ‘The Times’. Dharma is a response to the urgent—though often hidden—need of the moment. Each of us feels some aspect of the world’s suffering acutely. It tears at our hearts. Others don’t see it or don’t care. But we feel it. And we must pay attention. We must act. This corner of the world is ours to guide and transform.
Dharma brings spiritual bliss
We waste our time seeking pleasures and our wants, which only give us a temporary high. Why do you want to get high when you can BE high all the time? We derive the greatest pleasure and fulfilment when all our faculties are drawn together into our life’s work. In this state of absorption, we experience extraordinary satisfaction, even bliss. We human beings are attracted to the experience of intense involvement. The outcome of this involvement, says Hokusai, is sublime.
Keep going
If you are tired, keep going; if you are scared, keep going; if you are hungry, keep going; if you want to taste freedom, keep going. When you are following your calling, everything will become effortless as the Universe will support you. Concerning all acts of initiative, and creation, there is one elementary Truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: That the moment one definitely commits oneself then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favour all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would come his way. It also results in many synchronicities. I have learned a deep respect for one of Goethe’s concepts: ‘Whatever you can do, or dream you can do, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.”
An ardent life
Fulfilling your dharma leads to a very enthusiastic and passionate life. Cope states that “I sat down on the bench in front of the print and made some notes. “Katsushika Hokusai. 1760–1849. Japanese printmaker. Leading Japanese expert on Chinese painting. Master of the Ukiyo-e form. Nichiren Buddhist.” Later, at home, I Googled Hokusai. He died at eighty-nine, and sure enough, on his deathbed—still looking to penetrate deeper into his art—he had exclaimed, “If only heaven will give me just another ten years!… Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter.” Hokusai was a man who saw his work as a means to “Penetrate to the essential nature” of things. And he appears to have succeeded. His work, a hundred and fifty years after his death, could reach right off a gallery wall and grab me in the gut. More than anything, I was intrigued by the quality of Hokusai’s passion for his work. He helped me see that a life devoted to dharma can be a deeply ardent life.”
Our true Self remains deeply hidden, incognito, submerged beneath a web of mistaken identities as our subconscious, waiting to be awakened. One should be always on the trail of one’s own deepest nature. For it is the fearless living out of your own essential nature that connects you to the Divine. When consciousness is disturbed, Pure Awareness cannot be distinguished from the waves of mind. The restlessness of the mind, like a choppy pond, fractures the reflection. When consciousness is stilled, however, a great mystery is revealed: Pure Awareness abides in its very nature. And what is this nature? This consciousness, when stilled, has two remarkable characteristics: it is reflective, reflecting Pure Awareness back to itself; and it is transparent, allowing itself to be completely seen and penetrated. Gandhi talked about the fact that only the human being who acts in a way that is empty of self can be the instrument of Soul Force. And it is only Soul Force that can establish a harmonious world. Human beings alone are helpless to resolve conflicts without it.
Do not follow others,” Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot exhorted. “He who follows is always behind. You must interpret Nature with entire simplicity and according to your personal sentiment, altogether detaching your Self from what you know of the old masters or of contemporaries. Only in this way will you do work of real feeling.
Many of us have precisely this experience of dharma: A lifeboat! You cling to it because it is the only boat you have and the storm is rising. You work at it—you row as hard as you possibly can against the storm, because you have to survive. But gradually the seas calm, and you don’t have to row quite so hard, and you actually begin to enjoy the exercise. You get stronger from the exertion—as Gandhi did. Finally, the storm abates. You have a spell of beautiful weather. You feel your strength. You begin to love this rowing. You begin to love the sea itself. You see things in the waves that others do not see. You begin to see that rowing this little boat of dharma connects you to very life. Gradually the task of rowing itself begins to ease. At times it is effortless. There are moments of rapture.
When God is moving you toward a new consciousness, you need to recognise the winds of change at once, move with them instead of clinging to what is already gone.
The fundamental experience of human suffering is the experience of alienation from the self, from the source—from God.
When all is said and done, most of the stages of spiritual practice are stages of grief work. We have to let go of our deeply cherished dreams and illusions. And there’s no way we’re going to let them go until we have pretty much worn ourselves out trying to make them work. As Trungpa Rinpoche said, “The shoe of ego is only worn out by walking on it.” The moment of raising the white flag, then, is a precious one, one that usually comes only as the fruit of exhaustion. Finally, we step deeper and deeper into the reality project not because we should or because we want to, but because we have to. The shoe is worn out.
If you don’t find your work in the world and throw yourself wholeheartedly into it, you will inevitably make your self (your ego) your work. There’s no way around it: You will take your self as your primary project. You become self-obsessed. You will, in the very best case, dedicate your life to the perfection of your self. To the perfection of your health, intelligence, beauty, or home. And the problem is simply this: This self-dedication is too small a work. It inevitably becomes a prison. Why act so big when you are not so small? You are not your ego, that’s just a false Self concept. “You are a spiritual BEing having a human experience, not a human being having a spiritual experience” as said Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.
The most profound change I’m aware of just now is a growing realisation that life is not personal (the ego). This may seem a surprising or even strange view to those unfamiliar with Eastern spirituality, but it has powerful implications. It’s very freeing to see that events in my life are arising because of circumstances in which I am not involved, but that I’m not at the centre of them in any particular way. They’re impersonal. They’re arising because of causes and conditions. They are not “me.” There is a profound freedom in this. It makes life much more peaceful and harmonious because I’m not in reaction to events all the time.
To some extent, most of us are unconsciously driven by our ego-ideal. The ego-ideal is simply a set of ideas in the mind about how we should show up, how we should look, feel, behave, and think. This collection of ideas and mental images is created out of fragments of highly charged experiences with important love objects in our lives, and out of the messages we receive in our interactions with the world as we grow. It remains mostly out of our awareness. The blueprint for the ego-ideal is first laid down by parental and societal injunctions about how to be, or how not to be, in other words, conditioning. These highly charged messages are taken in whole. They become the foundation of our scripts for life. The ego-ideal is certainly capable of modification and change, but for most of us it's deeply hardwired into our unconscious by the time we enter early adulthood, and it matures only marginally in later life. We have work to do on the ego as I described in my previous article ‘From Focus to Freedom: From Will to Awakening.’
We are already inherently perfect; we have already arrived; and we have the potential in each moment to wake up to our true nature. When people have woken up they have a light in their eyes and you just know that they are on the spiritual path of their dharma. These may be people that you know, come across, who you are called to or who are drawn to you in some inexplicable way, or you may meet them in places of healing such as recovery, during yoga, and during visits to meditation centres.
Beethoven
In effect, by following his dharma, Beethoven became a musical seer (a person credited with extraordinary moral and spiritual insight). Like the mystical rishis of ancient India, he perceived aspects of reality that were beyond the perceptual range of ordinary people. Very few of his contemporaries could understand the musical leaps he had made. And of course, not seeing the genius of his refined perception, his critics called him ‘mad’. The best people are: A sure sign of pure genius!
Intensive practice provided Beethoven with the tools to symbolically and energetically transform his experience. It gave him an increasing experience of self-efficacy and self-esteem, and provided him with an experience of pure joy. Finally, it came to provide him with a profound sense of purpose, accomplishment, and meaning. It turns out that these qualities of dharma can rescue even a life in peril.
It is the night sea journey that allows us to free the energy trapped in cast-off parts—trapped in what Marion Woodman and Carl Jung would call “The shadow.” The goal of this journey is to reunite us with ourselves - the shadow, our Higher Self, and our inner child. Such a homecoming can be surprisingly painful, even brutal at first, as we often carry so much shame around our shadow. In order to undertake it, we must first agree to exile nothing.
At the heart of the unconscious mind (where the Higher Self resides) there is a panoramic intelligence that is deeply connected with fundamental human Universal consciousness.
The third way
Holding an inner or outer conflict quietly instead of attempting to resolve it quickly is a difficult idea to entertain. It is even more challenging to experience. It is the cause of much anxiety and neurosis. However, as Carl Jung believed, if we held the tension between the two opposing forces, there would emerge a third way, which would unite and transcend the two. Indeed, he believed that this transcendent force was crucial to individuation - becoming who we truly are. Whatever the third way is, it usually comes as a surprise, with clarity, because it has not penetrated our defences until now. A hasty move to resolve tension can abort growth of the new. Instead, we can give birth to something new in ourselves. You are not stuck.
Struggle
Struggle,” says Swami Kripalu, “Changes an ordinary human into a spiritually awake person.
Our suffering appears to be a key ingredient in finding the meaning of life. Sigmund Freud wrote that “One day in retrospect the years of struggle will strike you as the most beautiful.” Albert Einstein agreed, saying “There is only one road to human greatness: Through the school of hard knocks.” Have you had yours yet? Oprah Winfrey wrote “Challenges are gifts that force us to search for a new centre of gravity. Don’t fight them. Just find a new way to stand.” Maya Angelou reminds us that the caterpillar literally has to dissolve to become a butterfly “We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”
What according to Viktor Frankl are the three main ways to find meaning in life?:
• By performing a deed or creating something – taking action.
• By coming into contact with someone or experiencing something.
• By experiencing unavoidable suffering, and the attitude we take toward it.
Freddie Frankl (Viktor’s nephew) said that to achieve greater meaning and purpose in life you need to “Suffer well, love well, and work well.” If you learn to suffer well, you can learn from your suffering, you can grow through it, and ultimately, you are liberated from it. You can use your suffering to experience a greater connection with life, to enjoy deeper and more meaningful relationships, and to continue to step into your soul's immensity. How is this even possible? It is not possible without love. Viktor Frankl, the psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor, recognised love as a Higher Power that lives in the "Innermost core" of your BEing. He taught that when you meet suffering with enough love, you can find a meaning for it that helps you to survive and grow. Love has the power to give meaning to your life and it can use your suffering for a higher purpose. Of course, it's impossible to do this on your own. We all need help, and we are here to play a part in each other's healing and liberation. Loving ourselves and each other is our salvation and our shared purpose. This is why we need compassionate guides and Enlightened Witnesses in our quest for meaning.
Viktor Frankl observed that "Ever more people today have the means to live but no meaning to live for." Why do we go to work? What is the real meaning of work? Do we work simply to earn money and acquire wealth, or is there a higher purpose to it?
Eckhart Tolle wrote “You are present when what you are doing is not primarily a means to an end (money, prestige, winning) but fulfilling in itself, when there is joy and aliveness in what you do.”
Abraham Maslow wrote “In any given moment we have two options: To step forward into love, openness, and growth or step back into contraction, fear and safety.” The choice is up to you.
In the Athlete Stage and Warrior Stage of Carl Jung's work, we mainly use work to win medals, climb a ladder, earn a promotion, and rise to the top, but it's never enough. You may end up burying yourself in your work in an effort to avoid your suffering and to compensate for the lack of love in your life. Your real work is far greater than learning a trade, having a job, pursuing a career, getting published, being the boss, or owning your business. Yes, it may include some of that, but beyond that, the real work of your life is more about who you are, what you stand for, how you meet your suffering, and how you choose to express your love. It was time for me to trust that I carried the answer to my own questions. And that it was time for me to start living some of those answers.
I knew instinctively that it was something to do with love. Marianne Williamson, the American Presidential candidate, and author of ‘A Return to love’, wrote "Love is the essential reality and our purpose on Earth. To be consciously aware of it, to experience love in ourselves and others, is the meaning of life. Meaning does not lie in things. Meaning lies in us." The soul craves meaning the way the body craves oxygen. She continued "As we let our light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence actually liberates others." Williamson argued that we might "Only do what you feel called in your heart to do, and then give all of your Self to the task… There is nothing Enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do." She reminds us not to wait for a purpose "Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself."
Carl Jung wrote “Do not compare, do not measure. No other way is like yours. All other ways deceive and tempt you. You must fulfil the way that is in you. The world will ask you who you are, and if you don't know, the world will tell you.” Jung wrote “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.”
Your purpose is to be you
Freddie Frankl said "The purpose of life is to work out what the real work of your life is." Your real work is far greater than learning a trade, having a job, pursuing a career, getting published, being the boss, or owning your business. Yes, it may include some of that, but beyond that, the real work of your life is more about who you are, what you stand for, how you meet your suffering, and how you choose to express your love.
There is a 'spiritual blueprint' to your life: In Proverbs 19:21 it states "Many are the plans in a person's heart, but it is Lord's purpose that prevails." Pray, and say "Thy will, not mine, be done." Say thank you in your prayers as though it has already happened. And it will. This is what Jesus did - he knew his prayers would be answered.
How do you know that you are on the right track?
This is an easy one. The closer you get to the meaning of your life, the more the ego screams with its loud brash voice as it is terrified of dying. For Enlightenment signifies the death of the ego. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote “Difficulties increase the nearer we come to our aim.” Our aim is to dissolve the ego. It ultimately wants to kill us.
It’s a long game, and one which we work on every day of our lives. André Gide wrote that “One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”
The steps to dharma
The very first thing, and of course, as you know, the two main protagonists in this ancient treatise, The Bhagavad Gita, are Krishna, who’s actually an avatar of Vishnu, in other words, he’s God; and Arjuna, who’s kind of this neurotic dude we’re all meant to really identify with, because this whole scene is set at the beginning of a huge battle. Krishna, God, and Arjuna are having a dialogue on the field of Kurukshetra, where in the morning, at first light, a huge battle will commence.
And Arjuna’s question to Krishna is, “I don’t know how to act. How do I decide how to act?” And Arjuna falls to the floor of the chariot, Krishna is his charioteer—he doesn’t know until the middle of the book, by the way, that Krishna is God. Arjuna, at the beginning, is paralysed by doubt. Just as maybe you and I and many other people watching this are paralysed by doubt. Krishna pulls Arjuna back up: That first chapter is called “The Depression of Arjuna.” It’s the paralysis of action. Doubt paralyses us from action because we have one foot on one side of a dilemma and another foot on the other side. We are not in the present moment. Krishna pulls him up and says, “I am now going to instruct you in the path of action in the world—how you decide how to act.” And of course, Arjuna’s facing the most difficult of all possible actions. He’s going to go into battle, where he might kill somebody or he might actually be killed.
So this whole dialogue takes place at the edge of the most difficult social event of the epic, which is the battle of Kurukshetra. This whole teaching, in a way, is geared to help us figure out this whole question of action. What am I called upon to do? The answers aren’t easy. Krishna gives Arjuna, at the beginning of the book, basically a four-stage path of action. First of all, discern your true calling in the world. What are you called to do? That is to say, you are a person with unique gifts and possibilities that nobody else has. Given that, what are you called on to do? What’s the special offering that you can make into the current difficulty that nobody else can make? That’s what you’re called to do.
And on the second pillar of that path is, once you figured out what you’re called on to do, then you do it, full-out. This is called the doctrine of unified action. That is to say, once you’re clear about what you’re called to do, you bring everything you’ve got to the table. Don’t leave anything on the table: Take unified action.
The third point is: Let go of the fruit. That is to say, Krishna actually says to Arjuna, “Whether you are successful or whether you’re a failure, whether you achieve your particular goal in this action is none of your business. You have to let go of the outcome. Your only business is what are you called to do and are you doing it?” Now let go of the fruit, let go of the outcome, this is called relinquishment of the fruit.
“And finally,” says Krishna to Arjuna, “Turn the whole thing over to me.” Turn the whole thing over to God. That is to say, this particular kind of Enlightened action that Krishna’s calling Arjuna to lives on the stream of love that flows between the illumined mind, the divine mind, and the Higher Self, if you will. Or the soul and God, depending on how you want to talk about these things.
The very first thing that Krishna says is the first thing you’re called on to do is to dive deep into your connection with the divine mind—with the awake mind, with soul, with your Higher Self, whatever you want to call it, whatever is “source” for you. The very first thing you have to do when you meet a challenging time is to dive, to take a deep dive—whether it’s your own spiritual tradition or a new one that’s calling to you—and listen carefully.
An example of this is Mahatma Gandhi. Gandhi, of course, went to South Africa. He spent almost 20 years in South Africa, where he developed satyagraha, or the 'Force of Truth'. Then 20 years in, after really refining and mastering some of the techniques of civil disobedience in satyagraha in South Africa, he comes back to India and people see him as a kind of saviour, because India is suffering under the British Raj at that point. What does Gandhi do? So interesting. The first thing he does is he takes a massive, month-long trip around Mother India and all he sees is suffering everywhere. And he’s pissed off and he’s angry. But rather than go right into action, what does he do? He goes into retreat. He goes into seven months of retreat, when he meditates, he prays, he spins—which was, for Gandhi, a form of meditation. Gandhi, as you know, prescribed for every Indian adult the art of spinning; because it was meditative, it was a way to calm the mind, it was a way to dive inwards so deeply. So Gandhi doesn’t go straight into action. Gandhi goes into meditation. Meditation puts you in touch with your intuition. It was out of that choice that emerged the great decision on Gandhi’s part to make his first act to be the march to the sea to make salt. It was out of that deep dive inside—to God, to spirit, to soul—that Gandhi comes back up with, “This is the most discerning idea that I have about how to move forward, about how to act.” Meditation tells you how to act, with clarity. He did not react, he prayed and meditated, and then responded in his own time with clarity.
So, Krishna says to Arjuna, the very first thing to do is, essentially, pray, meditate, and allow the mud to settle. The great Dao De Jing says, “Before you act, let the mud settle.” Let the mud of your mind settle, and in Gandhi’s case, for example, this was the mud of anger, of rage, of aversion. He didn’t want to act out of that. He wanted to act out of clear mind.
So, first: Discern your dharma. “Look to your own duty,” says Krishna in Chapter Two. “Do not tremble before it.” Discern, name, and then embrace your own dharma. Then: Do it full out! Knowing your dharma, do it with every fibre of your BEing. Bring everything you’ve got to it. Commit yourself utterly. In this way you can live an authentically passionate life, and you can transform desire itself into a bonfire of light. Next: Let go of the outcome. “Relinquish the fruits of your actions,” says Krishna. 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,” he says. Finally: Turn your actions over to God: “Dedicate your actions to me,” says Krishna. All true vocation arises in the stream of love that flows between the individual soul and the divine soul. All true dharma is a movement of the soul back to its Ground, your true home. Rumi said “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.”
The questions that I ask during coaching with regards to your purpose are a very fruitful hunting ground for dharma.
So, I ask first, “What’s lighting you up?”
Second, “What do you feel is your deepest duty in your life right now?” In The Bhagavad Gita, the word dharma, or “calling” also means “sacred duty.”
The third question I always ask is, “What is it that, if you do not do it in this life, you will feel a profound sense of self-betrayal?” What would you have wished that you had done on your death bed?
Brené Brown wrote “If you own this story you get to write the ending.” Oprah Winfrey wrote “You define your own life. Don’t let other people write your script.” So, what is my script?
My journey through The Dark Night of The Soul brought meaning through suffering. In taking the Hero’s Journey I realised that my primary, inner purpose was to awaken, and that my secondary, outer purpose was to serve and guide others in doing the same through compassion and presence. The meaning of my life was to achieve these, with my inner and outer purpose being in alignment. This is where I have found my vulnerable yet courageous authenticity. This place takes me to a mindful, meditative state, where I can feel and hear the love, joy, and peace inside me speaking softly to me. The key for me is then to take intuitive action based on my inner voice, and to never get up from the seat of my soul. To do this, I unhook my Self from my conceptualising mind and drop into my heart. This is what inspires me and makes me feel alive, with a sense of wonder like the very first time I remember having seen snow or my first Christmas.
We have been given a treasure trove of unique talents that give your life meaning that should be accepted with responsibility and gratitude. Pray to God, that your gifts may flourish in great Faith and Grace, so that they may also benefit and serve others. Love who you are, for who you are, the Universe loves.
What is the meaning of life for you? Remember that the creation of a thousand forests is in one acorn. I see the highest version of you in you. Let me be your guide on this journey. Take action, and let go of the outcome. Turn it over to God. I know the way...
George Bernard Shaw wrote that “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.” Are you ready to change your mind?
Namaste.
Olly
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My gift is to be your guide on your very own 'Hero's Journey'...
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I am delighted and enchanted to meet you. I coach men with 'Deep Coaching', 'Supercoaching', and Transformative Life Coaching (TLC). Thank you for reading this far. I very much look forward to connecting with the highest version of you, to seeing your highest possibility, and to our conversations. Please do contact me via my email for a free connection call and a free experience of coaching on Zoom or in person.
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