The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose(18)

ECKHART: Yes. We definitely have evolved in consciousness. But it does not go in a straight line upward. You regress, and then you go forward. You regress, and then you go forward a bit more. It goes in cycles. We need the crisis. There are two levels of truth. One is to see the craziness of what’s happening now. And another is to see, from a higher perspective, that what’s happening now is part of our evolution.

OPRAH: It needs to break down so that something else can break through.

ECKHART: Yes. That’s right.





Vice President JOE BIDEN


A tractor trailer broadsided and killed my wife and daughter, and my two sons were badly injured. As we walked out of the hospital, my mother grabbed my hand and said, “Joey, out of everything horrible, something good will come if you look hard enough for it.” I thought it was cruel at one point, but that was my mother’s notion. We were taught just to get up. When you get knocked down, just get up. And move forward. When you think about it, so many people, without the kind of help that I had, do it every day. Right now, somebody’s gone through something significantly worse than me, and they have nobody behind them, and they’re getting up and they’re moving. It gives me such overwhelming confidence in people. The ability to absorb pain and the spiritual reassurance that comes from knowing those we lost are still a part of us.





Father RICHARD ROHR


FATHER RICHARD ROHR: For a marriage to be successful, you’ve got to have someone who wants you to grow into who you really are. And if you don’t have that, I have seen people become smaller after marriage. But love has to expand. It always has to expand. I believe we each create our private salvation project—what will make me wonderful, what will make me look beautiful and be admired? And every time people have to let go of that in its present form and reshape it, they say, “Darn, I based my life on that salvation project and now it’s gone.” You know? “I based my life on looking good or being a priest or being married. And now that’s falling apart. That’s dying.” And you never go there voluntarily. You fall.

OPRAH: Yes. So this happens when you go through a divorce. At first you fight it, and you think it’s the worst thing that could ever happen to you. And then you come out the other side and you feel a greater sense of freedom and closer to your true self.

FATHER ROHR: Yes, it might take you five years to get there. But you wake up one day and say, My God, this is much better.

OPRAH: Or you lose your job.

FATHER ROHR: Yes, or your reputation or your money. You know, all of those tragedies. That’s the way the self expands. I’m sorry to say it’s true, but it’s true. It’s all what you do with suffering. If you don’t transform your suffering, Oprah, I always say, with 100 percent certitude, you will transmit your suffering to your family, your neighbors, even to your country.





ROB BELL


We always talk about marriage as a creative act. You’re creating something new in the world. For many people, that becomes heavy. It becomes, Well, let’s just try to stay together.

Duty. Obligation. As opposed to, We get to make something with this life. My wife, Kristen, and I now see that we get to go on an adventure and create something new. So every problem becomes not, Oh my word. Are we going to make it? But, Well, look what came down the road today. I wonder what this will produce. I wonder what we’ll learn through this. It’s just a shift in how you view life and life together. It’s an adventure in which you actually get to create and cocreate a life.





ALANIS MORISSETTE


ALANIS MORISSETTE: I thought that all would be helped and healed and soothed by fame.

OPRAH: Because you believed, When I get famous …

ALANIS: I will be less lonely. And I will be understood and I will be loved and that love will go in and heal any of the broken parts.

OPRAH: And the truth is, there’s no difference between fame or, thoughts like, When I get thin, or, When I get rich, or, When I meet the right guy.

ALANIS: When I get that job. Yes. When I have babies. When I retire.

OPRAH: Then I will be happy. I will be healed. It’s all the same thing.

ALANIS: And everything will be okay. Yes. As though somehow we as humans could be exempt from pain. You know, one of the big lessons I’ve learned has been that if I can be comfortable with pain, which is different from suffering, but comfortable with pain as just an indication. And, it’s potentially a daily thing, in my case, then there won’t be my living in the future all the time. That one day if and when I’ll be happy and that on the other side there is this great sense of peace.





CHERYL STRAYED


How long do we hold on to this old idea? I was going to do this job or I was going to go to this school or I was going to be married to this person. And it doesn’t serve us anymore.

I once wrote a letter to my younger self and told the younger me, It’s okay to rewrite my story from time to time. And not only okay, but necessary. Sometimes you have to see things through, even though they don’t cause you joy. But sometimes you need to say, You know what? I’m not going to surrender my joy. I’m not going to be this thing anymore. That story is no longer true. I’m going to be this other thing. This other way.