Quotes From "Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life"...Part 2

I continue here with the passages that are marked in my copy of this book by Gregg Levoy:

On the "Past":

"The past contains hints about "the deeper-than-conscious goals toward which the movement of our lives is trying to take us."

* * *

"The past reminds us of our struggles with our destinies."

* * *

"By opening the inactive file...we may discover the lost opportunities of our lives."

* * *

"...our past begs the question inherent in any history: Does it have a goal?"

* * *

"The past can't be changed, only your attitude toward it can."

On "Calls" and "Callings":

"In a sense, patterns are calls."

* * *

"The dream that won't go away is a call, as is the symptom that recurs, the section of the bookstore you always go to first, and the lesson you've endlessly had to learn or are intent upon impressing on your children."

* * *

"...it often turns out that calls are echoes coming out of the chasms in our lives."

* * *

"We decline the invitation of our callings because we feel inadequate to the task, but the opposite is also true. We're afraid of our own power."

* * *

"Sometimes we're robbed of our calls by the fate into which we fell headlong at birth."

* * *

"When the brass ring comes around in life, kiddo, you'd better grab it, because it may never come around again."

* * *

"Much of the pain associated with callings comes from avoiding them, from not surrendering to them."

On "Shadows":

"...it is what we despise in people, or envy, or worship, or become obsessed with."

On "Healing":

"...once he had touched the wound in himself, he could bring healing touch to that same wound in others."

On the "Right Path":

"If it feels safe, it's probably not the right path, but if it scares you, it probably is."

On our "Power":

"It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us."

On "Conformity":

"Don't sit down in life. All through your life you're going to be asked to sit down, to conform, comply, and compromise, and it can be very deadly if you get in the habit of doing that."

* * *

"Be leery of the price of conformity. Stand up, create things, do things."

On the "Mind":

"The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."

On "Freedom":

"Until you actually make a choice, freedom is only potential energy, energy in abeyance, in waiting."

On "Other's Opinion":

"...in the course of life a small number of people will like you, a small number will dislike you, and the vast majority won't care one way or the other."

* * *

"If we look only to others to show us who we are...then the reflections we'll have of ourselves will always be distorted a little."

On "Parents":

"When we attempt to carry our parents' unfulfilled lives, we squeeze out our own."

On "Self-esteem":

"Ironically, it's a function of self-esteem that we resist our callings."

On "Insincerity":

"The most exhausting thing in my life is being insincere."

On "Timing":

"The skill that seems most essential for such leaps is a certain feel for ripeness."

On "Change":

"If you're taking chances and making changes just for the sake of not standing still, your action may be more about running away from something than moving toward something."

* * *

"Motion is not necessarily progress any more than noise is necessarily music."

* * *

"By trying to shelter ourselves from change, we isolate ourselves from living."

* * *

"An ordeal may serve the purpose of shaking us loose from our moorings in order to set us up for important changes we can't see or imagine yet."

On "Risk":

"Is the payoff worth more than the pain?"

* * *

"...the important risks we don't take now become the regrets we have later."

On "Sacrifice":

"Sacrifice is the shadow in the calling."

On "Fear":

"Fear is a signal that you're close to something vital and that your call is worthy of you."

On "Life":

"Your life mirrors what you put into it or withhold from it."

* * *

"...the purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things."

On the "Secret to Success":

"You've got to ask! Asking is, in my opinion, the world's most powerful--and neglected--secret to success."

On "Best Mentors":

"The best mentors are also those who are students at the same time, other people's mentorees."

On "Great Struggles":

"Great struggles aren't inevitably followed by great triumphs and then great vacations. Sometimes great struggles are followed by more great struggles. Maybe triumph and reward ensue,and maybe not."

--Gregg Levoy

Quotes From "Callings: Finding and Following an Authentic Life"...Part 1

It seems I have spent the better part of my adult life trying to divine what my true calling in life is. When I was much younger, this search had led me to astrology, palm reading, numerology, runes and tea leaves. I have a small collection of books devoted to these esoteric arts, no kidding.

I was about to turn next to tarot cards when I stumbled upon this book by Gregg Levoy. I consider it my best find on the subject of calling and destiny. Let me share with you the passages that I marked in this book and see if you can relate to the wisdom contained therein. Actually, by selecting these quotes, I am not doing justice to Gregg Levoy’s book. If I only had my way, I’d quote everything here! That’s a measure of just how much I liked this book, which I bought on December 30, 1997. Here goes:

On “Breakthroughs”:

“The great breakthroughs in our lives in our lives generally happen only as a result of the accumulation of innumerable small steps and minor achievements.”

On “Passion”:

“Passion—or as Plato said, Eros (Love)—moves instinctively toward the creation of form.”

On “Calls” and “Callings”:

“Calls are essentially questions. They aren’t questions you necessarily need to answer outright; they are questions to which you need to respond, expose yourself, and kneel before.”

* * *

“Callings keep surfacing until we deal with them.”

* * *

“Generally, people won’t pursue their callings until the fear of doing so is finally exceeded by the pain of not doing so.”

* * *

The truest calls seem not only to keep coming back but also to make their way to us through many different channels, so we can use this as a starting point.”

On “Enemies”:

“…our ‘enemies’—whatever forces thwart us—provide us with the true tests of our spirit.”

On “Stage Fright”:

“..stage fright only happens to people who have something they desperately want to say, otherwise they don’t have enough at stake to warrant being scared.”

On “Paradox”:

“If you can hold paradox…you can hold tremendous energy within you and be a force for mediation to the world.”

On “Dreams”:

“To ignore dreams is to hide the sculptor’s tools, to tear out pages from our own stories, to drive with our tailpipes dragging on the ground. If we ignore dreams we cut ourselves off from the place from which calls emanate.”

* * *

“They’re meaning machines, and they never lie.”

* * *

“Dreams tell us how we really feel about something.”

On “Sickness”:

“ …sickness is often the soul’s way of indicating that something is missing in our lives.”

On “Chance”:

“Chance favors the prepared mind.”

On “Synchronicities”:

“Synchronicities are minor miracles, little mysteries that point to a bigger one, perhaps a central one, of which we are a part.”

On “Impulses”:

“ If you feel two impulses, go with the one that has the greatest risk for you. It will be by far the most interesting.”

On “Journeys”:

“A geographical journey is symbolic of an inner journey for which we long.”

* * *

“Spiritual journeys, like stories, have at their core a central question—as do our lives—and if we understand not even the answers but merely the questions that animate our own journeys, we’ve understood a lot.”

* * *

“At a deep level, we all associate journeying with circularity.”

On “Fear”:

“…the thing we most fear is the thing we must do.”

* * *

“Wherever our most primal fears reside….chnaces are good that beneath them lie gems of wisdom and maybe a vision or a calling.”

* * *

“Wherever you stumble—on a tree root, on a rock, on fear or shame or vulnerability, on someone else’s words, on the truth—dig there.”

On “Life”:

“…the way we spend our days is the way we spend our lives. The way we live our lives also depends on the questions we ask.”

On “Opposites” and “Contrasts”:

“..after big openings often come big closings. After highs, lows. After breakthroughs, breakdowns.”

* * *

“Intense fights often follow intense intimacy.”

On “Vision”:

“Vision, if it is anything, is your life story in action.”


--Gregg Levoy

Quotes From "The Five People You Meet In Heaven"

This is another of those books I bought on impulse, based on its author's reputation and the reading enjoyment its title promised me. I liked Mitch Albom's "Tuesday's With Morrie" so, having caught my interest in his writing, this book was easier to sell to me. As for the title, I have always wondered how other people (authors, in particular) thought about life after death. From what I scribbled on the book's flyleaf, I bought this on December 20, 2003. Very close to Christmas, so we must have been on another of those shopping-cramming jaunts when I spotted this volume. Here are my bookmarked passages:

On Endings:

"...all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time."

On True Love:

"Every life has one true-love snapshot."

On Life Stories:

"No story sits by itself. Sometimes stories meet at corners and sometimes they cover one another completely, like stones beneath a river."

On Final Words:

"How do people choose their final words? Do they realize their gravity? Are they fated to be wise?"

* * *

"...when your time came, it came, and that was that. You mght say something smart on your way out, but you might just as well say something stupid."

On Heaven and birth places:

"People often belittle the place where they were born. But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners."

* * *

"...that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth."

* * *

"People think of heaven as a paradise garden, a place where they can float on clouds and laze in rivers and mountains. But scenery without solace is meaningless."

* * *

"That's what heaven is. You get to make sense of your yesterdays."

On the Greatest Gift from God:

"This is the greatest gift God can give you: to understand what happened in your life. To have it explained. It is the peace you have been searching for."

On Random Acts:

"...there are no random acts...we are all connected...you can no ore separate one life from another than you can separate a breeze from the wind."

On Fairness:

"Fairness does not govern life and death. If it did, no good person would ever die young."

On Life and Death:

"...all lives intersect...death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small distance between being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

On Strangers:

"Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know."

On What We Waste:

"No life is a waste. The only time we waste is the time we spend thinking we are alone."

On War, Courage and Cowardice:

"Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because hey want to. Always, they feel they have to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down.

* * *

"War could bond men like a magnet, but like a magnet it could repel them too."

* * *

" In the middle of a big war, you go looking for a small idea to belive in. When you find one, hold it the way a soldier holds his crucifix when he's praying in a foxhole."

On Sacrifices:

"Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else."

On Parents:

"All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair."

* * *

"Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away."

On Sons and Fathers:

"...sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behavior. It is how they learn devotion."

* * *

"Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation."

On Love:

"People say they 'find' love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes any forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love."

On the Secret of heaven:

"...each affects the other, and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one."

--Mitch Albom

Quotes From "The Choice"

The mid-80s was a particularly difficult period for me. I was then a young father of three small boys faced with problems about getting for them the best early education I could afford as a junior bank officer. The really good schools were quite far from where we lived, so we were forced by circumstances to uproot ourselves just so we could reside nearer these schools. It was a costly decision, to say the least. This was also a time when my bank was hit by financial losses big time so much so that it had to be bailed out by government. And as part of the bail-out plan, the bank implemented a retrenchment program with an attractive financial package.

I was mulling over this retrenchment package when I came upon this Og Mandino book. As you can see, the title is a teaser. I was attracted by the title and was hoping then that I could find the wisdom and inspiration here that I so badly needed at that time. Tonight, as I skimmed through the book to check the passages that I marked, I was struck by a number of interesting parallels (not really exact coincidences) between Mark Christopher's (the book's main character) personal circumstances and my recent predicament--something not obtaining at the time I bought the book. With the passage of time, life seems to have caught up with art, or so it appears to me. Maybe it's just my imagination. Maybe I'm just ...uhm...oh, forget it. Here goes my favorite passages:

On Choices:

"Every day all of us make hundreds of choices, most of them so menial and habitual that they are almost as automatic as breathing."

On Lack of Direction:

"Since so many don't know where they are, or where they're going, they are always struggling merely to survive, always on the razor's edge of disaster, forever on the defensive. When one must live that way, one's options are limited."

On Absentee Fathers:

"What they have is a money-machine that drops in now and then, change its clothes, and leaves again."

On Living Life:

"I'm going to drop this silly rat race I've managed to get myself into, count the blessings I already have, and let the rest of you keep running in your non-stop marathon to the rainbow."

On Time:

"The passing of time usually dulls the memories of our saddest moments..."

On Which Way to Go:

"...when one's avenue of retreat is cut off there is only one way to go--forward."

On New Books:

"A new book is very much like a child. Sooner or later it must go out into the world and succeed or fail on its own, leaving behind one or two loving people filled with concern and guilt and wondering if they had truly done all they could to prepare their issue for the cruel marketplace of life."

On Christopher:

"...the word Christopher means Christ-bearer."

On Road of Life:

"...all of us...start out on this uncertain road of life with a dream, an ambition, a goal. A fortunate few manage to survive all the hazards, roadblocks, and potholes along the way to reach their objectives. Most of us, however, get sidetracked on our journey and stumble through our alloted years with our hopes and dreams eventually fading from our memory."

On Legacy:

"I am convinced that the greatest legacy we can leave our children are happy memories: those precious moments so much like pebbles on the beach that are plucked from the white sand and placed in tiny boxes that lay undisturbed on tall shelves until one day they spill out and time repeats itself, with joy and sweet sadness, in the child now an adult."

On Vanity:

"Vanity is an almost incurable disease..."

On Human Race:

I don't know if the human race is worth saving, and fortunately, I don't have to make that decision."

On Man:

"Man is the only animal that blushes and laughs, and yet this creature, who can be so tender and loving , is the only living thing that constantly preyson its own species."

On Failure:

"Those who live in unhappy failure have never exercised their options for the better things of life because they have never been aware that they had any choices!"

On Work:

"So any of us count the hours of work as slavery."

--Og Mandino