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

by Stephen Cope

He named his great poem “The Road Not Taken,” precisely because of his awareness of the possibilities lost when one chooses. Frost was properly fascinated with the process of choice. If one looks closely at “The Road Not Taken,” one discovers the many ambiguities written there about choice. The “two roads” are, after all, not that very different. “Both that morning equally lay in leaves no step had trodden black,” he writes. The signs were vague, indistinct.

What Frost makes clear in his poem is that the act of choosing is the most important thing. The act of moving forward is what matters. He might have chosen either teaching or poetry. But he had to choose one or the other. He looked long down each path. He understood the loss involved—the cutting off of possibilities. He saw clearly that options once discarded are usually gone forever. Way leads on to way.

But Krishsna writes: Concerning one’s dharma, one sho...

Actions taken in support of dharma change the self. The act of commitment itself calls forth an unseen dharma power.

can do, or dream you can do, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.’ ”

life is built on a series of small course corrections—small choices that add up to something mammoth. What string of fateful decisions had landed Ethan so very far from home?

The choices made at each crossroads are cumulative—and irreversible.

his willingness to create the right conditions for his dharma to issue forth. His dharma required a farm—and so he bought one. His dharma required him to give up teaching—and so he relinquished it. His dharma required a period of intense work in England—and so he went.

our job is to make choices that create the right conditions for dharma to flourish. The Gift is indestructible. It is a seed. We are not required to be God. We are not required to create the seed. Only to plant it wisely and well.

Having first named and claimed our dharma, we next begin to systematically organize all of our life’s energies around our calling. The dharma gradually becomes a point of radiance that focuses and unites our life force. Our lives begin to move into orbit around our vocation.

Life’s energies are most fruitfully focused around dharma. Krishna is concerned with the unification of thoughts, words, and actions in alignment with our soul’s highest calling.

Bringing forth what is within you is mostly about creating the right conditions. These conditions themselves give birth to dharma. The farmer tills the soil, waters, fertilizes, and weeds. The

“Take a concrete issue, such as intemperance; analyze the problem, formulate a specific demand … then urge women to take practical, confrontational and effective action that logically followed from her analysis of the issue. She was determined

“Forgetting self” would become one of her principal mantras. She knew that “the work” had energy and a power of its own, and was only undermined by any hint of self-aggrandizement.

The Tao te Ching says, “[The Master] doesn’t glitter like a jewel … [but is] as rugged and common as a stone.” This is a predictable characteristic of those who have matured into their dharma. We see it in every other character we’ve examined: Goodall, Thoreau, Whitman, and Frost. Rugged and common as a stone. As the inner life of the practitioner of dharma becomes more complex, the outer life becomes simpler.

central teaching of the Bhagavad Gita: Complete devotion inexorably brings its own fulfillment. “When a person is devoted to something with complete faith,” said Krishna to Arjuna, “I unify his faith in that form … Then, when his faith is completely unified, he gains the object of his devotion. In this way, every desire is fulfilled by me.”

saw that a great work can only be accomplished through a series of small acts. She called these small acts “subsoil plowing”—a wonderfully agricultural

believe our happiness is increased by yielding momentary self-gratification and doing all in our power to render others happy.” In its most mature form, dharma inevitably puts the energies of self in the service of others—in the service of something bigger than self.

“When a person is devoted to something with complete faith,” said Krishna to Arjuna, “I unify his faith in that form.”

Unification means simply that everything in your life must line up around the spine of your dharma. Eventually, everything that is not dharma must fall away—as it did in the life of Susan B. Anthony. Any life of dharma will demonstrate this principle.

writing room. You’ll have to be relentless. Because the book will not fulfill

will require you to reach—to work at your maximum potential. In order to do this, you will have to learn to take better care of yourself. You will have to sleep and eat properly. (In the case of a writer, you will have to stop abusing your mind with poorly written books.) You will probably have to create a regular schedule. And one day you’ll realize you’re in training like an Olympic athlete. But not any old training—a particular kind of training, the particular kind of training that will support your dharma and no one else’s.

Mastery is almost never the result of mere talent. It is, rather, the blending of The Gift with a certain quality of sustained and intensive effort—a quality of effort that has now come to be called “deliberate practice.”

Why did Corot stand out from the crowd of his painter friends? Was it inborn talent? Genius? No. It was the quality of his practice. He was engaging in what some contemporary students of optimal performance now call “deliberate practice.” Deliberate practice is not just a laborious repetition of the tasks of artistry. It is, rather, a kind of sustained engagement in the work that is aimed specifically at understanding and improving the work. It is an intentional breaking down of the tasks of any domain into smaller and smaller components to see precisely how they work. And it results in steady and incremental improvements in performance.

A deep effort of preparation and concentration lay behind his spirited performance.” Here was the key to Corot’s development: the discovery of the compelling fruit of “deliberate practice.”

Sustained and intensive practice of a skill for several hours a day

Practice with the specific intention of improving, not just repeating

Practice that is sustained in this manner for a matter of years—in most cas...

A considerable amount of time spent within the so-called “domain of the task.” For Corot, for example, this meant hanging out with other painters—talking about his art, talking about trends in art, getting support for the lifestyle of the artist.

training of attention. It involves learning to sustain attention on a complex task, and to come back to that task over and over again; to stay with it just a little bit longer each time. (Remember Corot’s telling comment: “How often I had wished I had stayed

Corot, however, saw that it was not the volume, but the quality of his practice. He had to try to make every canvas better than the last—and he worked to understand

when attention begins to penetrate the object of its interest in an entirely new way. With sustained practice, the

simply the inevitable result of sustained concentration on an object of intense interest.

expert writers focus on global problems, while novice writers focus on local problems. Novice writers spend the bulk of their time assessing whether they are using the correct word or phrase, or in evaluating the structure of a sentence. They become easily lost in the details, and lose the global view of the whole argument. In contrast, expert writers constantly evaluate the form or shape of their argument. Expert writers focus on making sure that their global meaning is communicated through the words and sentences. The meaning is primary, and every word, sentence, and paragraph in a polished work must support this meaning.

knowing. It is the profound pleasure in knowing the world more deeply that creates authentic fulfillment. This is what dharma is all about.

describes the key to his happiness thus: “Ceaseless work, either executing or observing,” he wrote in one of his sketchbooks. And he added: “An invulnerable conscience.” Corot was a fulfilled man if ever there was one.

to know the world is the chiefest delight in life. I do not mean to know it cognitively. I do not mean to “have knowledge about it.” It is not that kind of knowledge that frees. Rather, it is direct knowledge of the world—penetrating underneath the appearance of things to their essence, to their soul. For when one penetrates to the soul of any object, one also penetrates one’s own soul. This is a central principle of the Bhagavad Gita, and one that

Krishna teaches over and over again: The whole world is inside each person, each being, each object. To know any part of the world deeply, intimately, is to know the whole.

as Krishna teaches Arjuna, when you come to know the world, you also come to love it. It’s simple: You love what you know deeply.

First—look to your dharma. Then—do it full out! Now he presents Arjuna with a third and most puzzling lesson: “Let go of the fruits of your actions.”

“You have the right to work,” says Krishna to his bewildered student, “but never to the fruit of work.”

“You should never engage in action for the sake of reward, nor should you long for inaction. Perform work in this world, Arjuna, as a man established within himself—without selfish attachments, and alike in success and defeat.”

the power of nonattachment. Give yourself entirely to your work, yes. But let go of the outcome. Be alike in success and defeat. Krishna is emphatic on this point: You cannot devote yourself fully and passionately to your dharma without engaging this principle.

clinging to outcome has a pernicious effect on performance. Clinging (or grasping) of any kind disturbs the mind. And this disturbed mind, then, is not really fully present to the task at hand. It is forever leaning forward into the next moment—grabbing. And, not being present for the moment, it cannot fully devote its powers to the job at hand. We find ourselves, at this point, right back to our old friend, doubt.

“Those who are motivated only by desire for the fruits of action,” he teaches, “are miserable, for they are constantly anxious about the results of what they do.” The yoga tradition systematically investigated this anxiety about outcome. It found that grasping has three pernicious effects on the mind. They are: first, disturbance; then, obscuration; and finally, separation.

When the mind is craving a particular object or outcome, that object looks “all good” to the mind. When the mind is craving, say, a bowl of chocolate fudge brownie ice cream, the ice cream seems all good. In that moment of grasping, we do not see that there are perhaps pros and cons to this bowl of ice cream. (Perhaps we’re committed to a diet, or we’re not eating sugar, or we

the experience of craving intensifies the split between subject and object (between “me” and “the ice cream”), so that it appears that without the object of my grasping I am unwhole. Without the object of my desire I am bereft. Empty. Unfulfilled. Grasping amplifies the sense of separation from the object.

Attachment breeds desire, the lust of possession that burns to anger. Anger clouds the judgment; you can no longer learn from past mistakes. Lost is the power to choose between what is wise and what is unwise, and your life is utter waste.”

“detachment.” “Seek refuge in the attitude of detachment,” he teaches, “and you will amass the wealth of spiritual awareness.” But here is an important proviso: not detachment from the passionate involvement in the task at hand; not detachment from one’s dharma. Detachment from the outcome.

When there is no obsessive concern with outcome, with gain of any kind, we are able to become completely absorbed in what we’re doing—our actions and thoughts undivided by worry. All of our energy can become concentrated on the task at hand.