The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling

by Stephen Cope

What is your biggest fear?

afraid that I may be missing some magnificent possibility. That perhaps I have not risked enough to find it. That maybe I’ve lived too safe a life.

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.”

seems that it was the effort required to bring them forth itself that saved

They are living out their vocations. And let me tell you, they are lit up.

But still. There is a vast difference between the desert experience of the saints and watching endless reruns on TV, isn’t there?

Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health.

jivan mukta—the soul awake in this lifetime. The soul awake. I like this aspect of yoga, because it means awake in this lifetime—not in some afterlife, or heavenly realm, or exalted mental state. And so these contemporary seekers come to yoga, seeking—as I did, and do—inspiration for living.

every single human being has a unique vocation. They call this dharma. Dharma is a potent Sanskrit word that is packed tight with

Dharma means, variously, “path,” “teaching,” or “law.” For our purposes in this book it will mean primarily “vocation,” or “sacred duty.” It means, most of all—and in all cases—truth. Yogis believe that our greatest responsibility in life is to this inner possibility—this dharma—and they believe that every human being’s duty is to utterly, fully, and completely embody his own idiosyncratic dharma.

Bhagavad Gita, or Song of God. It is the world’s greatest scripture on dharma.

Arjuna is the archetype of the spiritual man in action.

In these fantasies, a fulfilling life is one in which we acquire so much freedom and leisure that we no longer have to work and strive. Finally, once we’ve worked most of our lives to extricate ourselves from the demands of ordinary life, we can relax by our own personally monogrammed swimming pool—with the gates of our country-club community firmly locked behind us—and there, at last, find true happiness, and real fulfillment, perhaps contemplating the clear blue sky.

People actually feel happiest and most fulfilled when meeting the challenge of their dharma in the world, when bringing highly concentrated effort to some compelling activity for which they have a true calling.

experienced moments when effort becomes effortless: joyful, gifted, and unbounded. These moments of effortless effort are so sublime that they draw us even more deeply into the possibilities of our vocations.

Fulfillment happens not in retreat from the world, but in advance—and profound engagement.

This is because dharma draws forth an ardency so deep—and sometimes so secret—that it often cannot be detected by ordinary eyes. Perhaps the neighbor who you think is profoundly strange because he stays inside and collects stamps and sometimes forgets to put out his garbage and doesn’t come to the annual block party—perhaps he is utterly involved in his sacred calling.

Their own sacred calling is hiding in plain sight. They keep just missing it. And, as we will see, when it comes to dharma, missing by an inch is as good as missing by a mile. Aim is everything.

Arjuna’s dilemma: How do we choose between two difficult courses of action? What are the consequences of an inability to choose, or of choosing poorly? Who can effectively guide us in making these choices? Finally, in any ultimate sense, does it really matter what choices we make with our life?

“Doubt afflicts the person who lacks faith and can ultimately destroy him.”

“a thought that touches both sides of a dilemma at the same time.” In yogic analysis, doubt is often called “the paralyzing affliction.” Paralysis is, indeed, its chief characteristic. It follows, then, that doubt is the central affliction of all men and women of action.

Katherine’s version Fear of Closing the Door. I see this version quite frequently. Someone has had a profound taste of living their dharma, maybe even for decades. But now that particular dharma is used up—lived out. You can smell it. This person knows that a certain dharma moment is over but has only the vaguest sense of what must be next. It increasingly begins to dawn on her that in order to find that next expression of dharma she is going to have to take a leap of some kind. She knows that she is going to have to close a door behind her before she will find the next door to open. And gradually she comes to the edge of a cliff, where she knows a leap of faith will be required. This is where she sets down in her folding chair. Will she ever get up?

Fear of Closing the Door is one version of dharma paralysis.

Let’s call this one Denial of Dharma.

Ellen lives with the sense that she does not have a calling, simply because her calling is not dramatic—like Henry’s. But she most certainly does have a calling. It’s clear to everyone around her. Her dharma work is everywhere. It saturates her life. She lives so much in the center of her calling that she doesn’t see it. For Ellen, her life is her dharma. It is not just about her job, or even her career, though in her case, that career, too, is part of her dharma. Ellen is

This one we will call The Problem of Aim.

Brian almost made it squarely to the center of his vocation. But not quite. Close—but no cigar. Brian lives in close proximity to his dharma—to his passion. But not in the passionate center of it. It has taken him quite a few years to realize this.

This is a problem of aim. How important is it that we live squarely in the center of our dharma? How many of us get it almost right, but not quite right? And is a miss by an inch really as good as a miss by a mile?

This apparent path of inaction is full of action. Says Krishna, “No one exists for even an instant without performing action.” Arjuna’s inaction—our inaction—on the floor of the chariot, the center of the intersection, is action motivated by confusion, paralysis, disorder. It is full of action and the consequences of action.

“look to your dharma.” And with this, Krishna launches into the first of many speeches about the most revolutionary teaching of the Bhagavad Gita: the Path of Inaction-in-Action.

“There is a certain kind of action that leads to freedom and fulfillment,” 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. In dharma, it is possible to take passionate action without creating suffering. It is possible to find authentic fulfillment of all human possibilities.

Here are the central pillars of the path of action—the path of karma yoga—as expounded by Krishna. Here are the keys to Inaction-in-Action: 1. Look to your dharma. 2. Do it full out!

3. Let go of the fruits. 4. Turn it over to God.

First: Discern your dharma. “Look to y...

Then: Do it full out! Knowing your dharma, do it with every fiber of your being. Bring everything you’ve got to it.

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.

Look to your dharma! And what is this dharma that can save Arjuna? The Sanskrit word “dharma,” as used in the Bhagavad

“Dharma,” he says, “is the essential nature of a being, comprising the sum of its particular qualities or characteristics,

Scientists now tell us that every brain is like a fingerprint—utterly unique. So, too, every nervous system has its own complex idiosyncrasy, every human mind, every human body, every spirit. We might say that every person’s dharma is like an internal fingerprint. It is the subtle interior blueprint of a soul.

They are not, in the ways that really count, our own choice—not based on our own ideas, wishes, or concepts. They are based, as Arjuna’s was, on what is already mysteriously within us at birth: our fingerprint.

You cannot be anyone you want to be.

Actually, you can only expect a fulfilling life if you dedicate yourself to finding out who you are. To finding the ineffable, idiosyncratic seeds of possibility already planted inside. There is some surrender required here.

“Every man has a vocation to be someone: but he must understand clearly that in order to fulfill this vocation he can only be one person: himself.” This quote is enshrined as the Epigraph to this book—and for a good reason. Its wisdom is at the very heart of dharma.

Trust in the gift. 2. Think of the small as large. 3. Listen for the call of the times.

Said Krishna to Arjuna, “It is better to fail at your own dharma than to succeed at the dharma of someone else.” Better to fail at your own dharma? Better to fail at the pursuit of one’s own puny inner genius than to succeed in any other, however exalted? Better to find your own inner fingerprint, no matter what the outcome? Really that important? Krishna teaches Arjuna that our gifts are sva dharma—literally, “one’s own dharma.” Yoga sages later went on to teach that sva dharma, your own dharma, is equivalent to sva bhava, your own being. These gifts are somehow close to the very center of who we

The Gift is not itself dharma. It is only, as the old saying goes, a finger pointing to the dharma. On the other hand, Randy does work for a large trucking company—still

Was it because I stepped for a moment back onto the road not taken? Are there roads not taken that occasionally light you up? Do you ever fantasize about what might have been had it all gone differently?

As a child, her gifts were named, celebrated, cherished, and nurtured.

despite her worry, when Vanne [Jane’s mother] saw the excited little girl rushing toward the house, she did not scold me. She noticed my shining eyes and sat down to listen to the story of how a hen lays an egg: the wonder of that moment when the egg finally fell to the ground.