On Reading Gregg Levoy's book "Callings. Finding and Following an Authentic Life"

I am reading Gregg Levoy’s book for the umpteenth time. Every time it’s like it’s a brand new book, except for the fact that someone (uh, me) made all sorts of notes in the margins and underlined whole paragraphs so wildly that half the time the lines cut straight through the words.

Levoy asks, “What are you willing to give up to ensure your own unfolding, and the unfolding of what is holy in your life?” 

 Levoy wrote that Paul Tillich said the first duty of love is to listen. 

 Levoy also wrote this: “A psychologist of my acquaintance, Eric Maisel, whose practice is devoted to people in the arts who are struggling with the vicissitudes of that blood sport, has a technique he calls ‘hushing’. Of all the exercises in his new book, Fearless Creating, hushing is, in his estimation, the most important probably because it’s the most difficult. Hushing is what we do when we meditate; when we go to a museum and sit before a painting for fifteen minutes; when we succumb to the lazy lure of a spring afternoon spent in our own backyards watching the shadows of clouds bend in the folds of the hills. It’s a quieting and an opening, a way to stop the mind of operating on autoscan. ‘Hush your thoughts just as if you were comforting a baby,’ he says. ‘A wild person with a calm mind can create anything.’”

Sometimes I think I became a teacher because people were trapped in a room with me and had to listen. It was a way for someone who generally lacked confidence while speaking to get an audience: it the kids did not pay attention, I COULD FAIL THEM.

Oh, the power! Listen up, dear students, I have shit I want to say. 

I have to watch myself: Are you saying these things for yourself or for the students? Are you teaching or unloading? Are you talking just to hear the sound of your own voice and to feel important? 

What if the way to show my love to the world is to talk less and listen more?

I actually don’t love to talk. I think it’s exhausting, and most of the time I don’t have much to say. Give me someone who dreams of being a writer but fears it’s a dream for others to chase, then I’ll have no problem talking like a speed train for long periods of time, but throw me and you together for a day, and I’ll probably feel like I’m going to die after about an hour. 

I asked some people during a class to write about what 2021 would be like for them if they knew their job was just to listen to others. Everyone talked about feeling lighter, happier. 

This shocked me for it was my reaction, too. 

 I thought I had a problem with listening. I thought I wanted to learn how to speak more, but the truth is I just don’t want to. If we spend time together, I want to feel connected to you, but I don’t want to have to reach deep inside and look for something to say for the sake of connection. 

I realized I want to be able to talk one-on-one more with people because I want to feel important, valuable, and seen, and I think the way to do that is to tell stories, to say things that make me look smart, to try to make others laugh so they want more of me. 

When I learned Reiki, I’d be walking down the street and I’d pass someone and my hands and lips would start tingling. The energy in my body would turn on and all I had to do was be in proximity to another body. Our bodies affect bodies of strangers, wake them up, turn them on. 

If I didn’t have to speak during 2021, I would sit at your feet and listen to you, your communion of speech a doorway to the divine. 

If we have nothing to prove, there is so much less we need to do, so much more we get to feel. 

I so look forward to 2021. 2020 taught me what it is like to be alone. I hope 2021 teaches me what it’s like to be with others. 

“A wild person with a calm mind can create anything.”

What happens when you calm the wild in your mind to open to the silence?

Can you bear it?

And then what?