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Abstract and Book Review
Callings
by Greg Levoy

Reviewed by Reg Harris

Abstract

In Callings, Greg Levoy explores how we are called to our "true" vocations. We must, he writes, learn to listen to our inner voice, which speaks to us through intuitions and longings, and to life's recurring and significant details, which give us clues to our true calling. He explains that we receive our calls through our passions, which echo our inner self, and through our dreams, which "contain an image of the way we're supposed to be" and point toward growth, integration and equilibrium. He also speaks of receiving calls through bodily symptoms, which "present information of which we're unconscious." He gives suggestions for drawing out our callings, separating them from the "background noise" of our lives. He devotes a whole chapter to how fear, duty or a desire for security may cause us to reject our calls, and he explores the dangers in this. Finally, Levoy outlines how we can say "yes" to our callings. He makes the point that our callings are "not so much something in our path as we are in its path," that we must be ready to sacrifice what we have for what we want or need.

Review

In Callings, Greg Levoy presents a stirring exploration of our search for an �authentic� life, a life where our work resonates with our inner being. But more than just an exercise in spirituality and metaphysics, Callings is an insightful and practical look at how we hear and respond to our calls, and how we translate that persistent inner voice in to fulfilling outer action. �This book,� he writes, �is about putting on a lens through which we can see our lives as a process of calls and responses.� (2)

Levoy breaks the process into five chapters. The first deals with actually hearing our calls. According to Levoy, any activity that strengthens ability to observe and to see the subtleties within ourselves will help us overcome inattention. Whenever we are able to step outside and look back through our own �window,� will help us better know ourselves. He suggests several techniques for doing this, including �power lounging� and �hushing,� to slow down and quiet the mind so that it can pay attention. This, he says, may be difficult in a culture that associates action with progress.

But hearing the call isn�t enough. We must actually receive it once it is heard. Levoy outlines how we receive calls through our passions and our dreams, and how we can define them through ritualization. But there are other clues, as well. He devotes a full chapter to listening to our bodies. He writes, ��use illness and pain for what they were designed for � to get your attention. Understand that though you may not have created them, your soul may still be attempting to communicate something to you through them.� (91)

One of the more interesting chapters in the book explores how the hero is willing to be nourished by all things, pleasant or unpleasant. He quotes Sam Keen (Hymns to an Unknown God): �Enter each day with the expectation that happenings of the day may contain a clandestine message addressed to you personally. Expect omens, epiphanies, casual blessings, and teachers who unknowingly speak to your condition.� (100) According to Levoy, when viewed through the right lens, all of our encounters will be full of instruction. He also writes that we must be attentive to synchronicity and pay our respects to the Trickster, both of which tend to appear at transition points in our lives.

Levoy devotes a chapter to evoking our calls, separating them from the �background noise� of life. He suggests various techniques for doing this, including art and free association. The idea is to make explicit that which is implicit in us. In this way, we better understand ourselves and our needs. He also suggests that we reopen our memories and become familiar with our own �personal myths� through various narrative techniques, including writing our story as a myth, with the crisis in the middle. What we will find are �the unlived parts of our lives.�

One of the most important sections in the book was �Saying No to Calls.� Perhaps it is the calls we do not accept which, more than anything, color our attitudes toward life. Levoy devotes several powerful chapters to the call refused. Explaining why we often refuse calls we know we should take, he writes:

�When we refuse a call, we�re stuck, and we�re stuck for a good reason. As long as we�re conflicted, our story won�t be complete, and we can�t unrestrainedly follow the call�. We�d rather dither for years than contend with the live wires of painful self-awareness and move through the resistance. We fear what the calling may ask of us, its consequences and responsibilities, and this fear of doing shows up as a fear of knowing." (195)

This fear of painful self-awareness leads us into many escapes, including workaholism and excessive analysis. The good news, however, is that �resistance is also a good omen. It means you�re close to something important, something vital for your soul�s work here, something worthy of you.� (197)

Levoy concludes with a section on how we can accept calls. He examines elements in our lives that might resist our calls, including security, duty, tradition, friendships. This is not a happy section. It lays bare the fact that accepting a call may mean upsetting our lives and the lives of those closest to us. He talks of fear, and he quotes philosopher and psychotherapist Karlfried Graf Durkheim: �Only to the extent that we expose ourselves over and over again to annihilation can that which is indestructible arise within us. In this lies the dignity of daring. We must have the courage to face life, to encounter all that is most perilous in the world.� (258) In short, we must be ready to give up something that we have for something that we want, something that we are for something that we want to be.

Callings is well written � perhaps too well written at times. Levoy has great skill with the language and can rise to levels of near poetry. However, I felt that much of the book was over-written, too poetic. At times I found myself skimming through long passages of eloquent prose to find something clear and substantive. If you are a pragmatic person, such as I am, you may find that there is a lot of �fluff� in the book. But it would be a mistake not to read it. Callings is rich, �thick� with ideas and insights that can make finding and following an authentic life a reality.

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