The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose(25)

Like so many of us, Dorothy believed she needed something outside herself—in her case, the Great and Powerful Oz—to bestow the cherished virtues on her friends and bring her home.

But, in what I believe is the most powerful moment of the film, Glinda the Good Witch says the words that spiritual teachers have been trying to convey for thousands of years.

“You don’t need to be helped any longer,” Glinda tells Dorothy. “You’ve always had the power.”

Dorothy’s most trusted companion, the Scarecrow, asks Glinda, “Then why didn’t you tell her before?”

And Glinda replies, “Because she wouldn’t have believed me. She had to learn it for herself.”

This was probably the greatest aha moment of my life.

No matter how far away from yourself you may have strayed, there is always a path back. You already know who you are and how to fulfill your destiny. And your ruby slippers are ready to carry you home.

Just before Dorothy clicks her heels, she shares the universal lesson that applies to each and every person here on earth: “If I ever go looking for my heart’s desire again, I won’t look any further than my own backyard. Because if it isn’t there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

The final chapter of this book is meant to illustrate that you have the power to discover your purpose and live your greatest truth. It doesn’t matter how many yellow brick roads you encounter—it has always been right there, at home, in your heart.

—Oprah





Father RICHARD ROHR


All spiritual knowledge is not cognition. It’s recognition. You’re reknowing what you deeply already knew. What you deeply intuited, suspected, desired, hoped for, that’s the soul. The discovery of yourself and the discovery of God will eventually be parallel movements. You fall deeper into yourself. You fall deeper into God. You fall deeper into God, you have permission to fall deeper into yourself.





SUE MONK KIDD


I have this phrase I use: the old woman. I say that with great fondness. My daughter and I once went on travels. On those journeys, I was searching for that old woman. The woman I wanted to grow into. She’s wise. She’s bold. She’s strong and resilient. She knows her voice, she speaks it, and she stands by it. This is the old woman for me. She’s distilled down. In my novel The Invention of Wings, there’s a moment at the end where Handful looks at Sarah and says she’s been boiled down into a good strong broth. I want to be that. I want to be a good strong broth that has those qualities of the old woman I went off searching for.





ELIZABETH GILBERT


OPRAH: What did you discover that you never knew you had?

ELIZABETH GILBERT: I discovered I could take care of myself completely. I’ve got my own back. And I don’t just mean financially. I mean emotionally. I know that I became a responsible enough adult to be allowed to be alone with the child who is inside of me.

OPRAH: And you know that no matter what, you’re going to be all right.

ELIZABETH: I’m going to be all right.





ELIZABETH LESSER


OPRAH: I know the lesson you wish for all of us is to live each day from the marrow.

ELIZABETH LESSER: Yes. We think that the answer to life is complicated or you’ve got to go on some big quest to find out who you are. But it turns out that deep inside you are already enough, just because you are.





STEVIE NICKS


My life is a testament to believing that if you want something, you can make it happen. So hope springs eternal. Yes, you will take another beautiful picture. Yes, you will walk onstage in a long black skinny dress again. It’s possible. So I think what you just have to tell people is, “It’s all possible.”





SIDNEY POITIER


I am most proud of being accepted as a useful human being. Useful to my children, to my parents, who are no longer here, to my friends, to my environment. I am not the human being that I would one day hope to be, but I have come a long way. I really have come a very long way. And I’m proud of that, because I am indeed a better person than once I ever was. We are imperfect creatures. We are, that’s what it is. But we should try reaching for the better you, the better me. There is pain and there is difficulty, and there is fear and all the kinds of things that we live with. But it is through them we have to reach. We have to reach out, not just to each other, but to the Universe.





JACK CANFIELD


My belief is that the whole purpose of life is to gain mastery, mastery of our emotions, our finances, our relationships, our consciousness through meditation, things like that. And it’s not about the stuff we achieve or amass in life. All the stuff can be taken away. People lose their fortunes. They lose their reputation. Beautiful spouses can die or leave you. But the mastery you achieve and who you became in the process of achieving those things can never be taken away. Never.





MITCH ALBOM


Morrie said the reason people were unhappy was because they walked through their lives like they were sleepwalking. They were following orders about what they should do with their life based on our culture. They weren’t finding the meaning in their life through giving to other people, being involved with their community, or finding something creative, an outlet for themselves. They were busy trying to be somebody else’s version of what they thought they should be. He ended up describing not only me, but an awful lot of people that I knew at that time. And I think he’s right. And then, we get to the end and we’re like, Whoa, that can’t be it.