― Darrell Calkins
Quotes
“In the construction of one’s life, we define ourselves largely by the problems we engage and the debts we incur. The greater and more sophisticated the problems, the greater and more sophisticated the person. True resolution, or transcendence of endless dichotomy, is rare indeed. To truly make a debt vanish requires, in a way, a certain kind of magic. In all traditions, this is looked upon as one of the great mystical tricks. It is not forgotten, fixed, or hidden perfectly; it disappears. To have this occur, one must do more than simply forgive (another or oneself), although in action that’s an important step. One intuits the value of the problem as the birth of possibility.”
― Darrell Calkins
“By its nature, what you yearn for is most often intimidating. It produces, and itself is, a question, and one that is not easy to engage or answer.”
― Darrell Calkins
“Think clearly here—desire does not produce fun, but yearning does. To identify the transition point between these two, look at desire as accumulating or consuming, and yearning as letting go of or giving. You don’t collect truth or love, for example, you give them, and in the giving they come into being. And you have fun. Real fun, guilt-free fun, resentment-free fun, doubt-free fun; you experience and become the questions you engage—discipline and strength, imagination, independence, fearlessness, trust and freedom, knowledge, truth.”
― Darrell Calkins
“If you’re ignoring a high percentage of the elements of your entire being, and the range of qualities they can naturally engage, there will be no real recovery or progress until you do. The typical relentless worker is just as lazy as the typical indulgent idler; they’re both just going through the habitual motions. To break the repetitive pattern, and discover more energy and effectiveness, one simply must stretch out in all directions, rotating focus and application of the qualities that make up one’s natural versatility.”
― Darrell Calkins
“Well-being, or wholeness, implies integrity and harmony between all existing elements, providing freedom for the whole.”
― Darrell Calkins
“Perhaps the best we can do is to work to uphold the human virtues and qualities we most value, even in the face of everyone’s cynicism, skepticism and distrust, including our own.”
― Darrell Calkins
“Real giving, clean, humble, precise, requires at least some anonymity. You do your job, and you’re not going to be paid for it. That’s the point in a way; you were already paid for it…Greatness, if you want to shoot for that, is the ability to do this and not have resentment or any other dis-ease accumulate.”
― Darrell Calkins
“If you ever get a single wish from a genie, wish that what you know you should do and what you really have fun doing become one and the same. Whatever grand vision you may have, for you, those you love, or all of humanity and beyond, it becomes attainable there. Indeed, when these two become one, you yourself become the genie.”
― Darrell Calkins
“Mastery of anything is, more than anything else, the transformation of work into play. Giving orders and answers, never making mistakes, and having around you others with the opinion that you are great has nothing at all to do with it. Read carefully: to yearn for, to be compelled by, is being called to play.”
― Darrell Calkins
