The Great Work of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling (25 page)

It is during this part of the experience that I know for sure that this is not mere voodoo. Because when the needles are inserted, I feel the energy grid depicted on those wall hangings light up in my own body. With certain treatments, I go into a delightful altered state. This state sometimes lasts for hours (and in rare cases, days). At times, an acupuncture treatment with Lonny is like the very best drug experience you’ve ever had (or read about)—and it is all perfectly legal.

But I discovered over time that there was something much more profound going on here than just altered states. Indeed, over the course of months, I began to perceive some inner shift that I can only describe as leading me to a new state of wholeness—mental clarity, physical vitality, enhanced awareness. What was this magic?

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Camille Corot, the landscape painter, and Lonny, the acupuncturist, are separated by two hundred years and an ocean of cultural differences. And yet, they inhabit the same sphere: the sphere of mastery. One knows when one is in its presence. One can simply
feel
it. The master may be utterly like the rest of us in every other way, but
in his own domain he sees more deeply
. He perceives aspects of reality that are entirely outside our perceptual range. Thoreau, through his mastery of the forest, began to perceive aspects of the flora and fauna around Concord that no one had ever recorded. Jane Goodall, over the course of decades, learned to perceive the subtle language of the chimpanzee. Robert Frost tuned in to the ineffable syntax, rhythm, and song of the spoken word of New England—and mapped it in a way no one ever had.

Mastery. What is it, precisely? And what is its relationship to dharma?

Within the past decade, serious research into the characteristics of mastery has unearthed a surprising fact: Mastery is almost never the result of mere talent. It is, rather, the blending of The Gift with a certain
quality of sustained and intensive effort—a quality of effort that has now come to be called “deliberate practice.”

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot and Lonny Jarrett have dharma stories that perfectly exemplify deliberate practice, and the potent mix of
giftedness
and
effort
—fire and gasoline—that, over extended periods of time, may burst forth into a bonfire of mastery.

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When Camille Corot was twenty-nine years old—and well on his way to becoming a professional painter—he left France for a painting trip to Italy. A brief apprenticeship in Italy was part of the grand tour for all aspiring artists in those days. But Corot’s experience went well beyond the norm. He would stay in Italy for three years—moving back and forth between Rome and Naples, between the woods at Papigno and the banks of the Nera River—and would produce hundreds of sketches, drawings, and fully completed canvases. His paintings from this period would later be recognized as great early masterpieces. His efforts in Italy would be the crucible in which young Corot would begin his journey toward mastery and create the discipline that would take him to the pinnacle of landscape painting. What happened to him in Italy that transformed him into a master? And what set him apart from his many painter friends there who did not achieve mastery?

It all began with a quandary. From the very beginning, Italy provided young Corot with what he feared would be an insurmountable challenge: the Italian light. This damned Italian light was subtly but infuriatingly different from the light in France—and painting it required Corot to dig deep into his slim skill set (and his considerable resolve). Early on in his Italian adventure he wrote home to his friends:

Corot set to work to master this challenge. What followed were three years of intensive growth in his practice of capturing the subtle effects of light on stone and field—and an altogether different play of sky and shadow than he had known. He had an early breakthrough: After some initial investigation, Corot realized that the intense Mediterranean light did not actually strengthen bright colors as he had thought. Rather, it
bleached
them. He discovered, through systematic experimentation, that he could add white lead to his pigments, and thereby achieve a more accurate representation of the sun-drenched landscapes. But this was just the beginning. Breakthrough followed breakthrough as he bore down on his challenge.

In his attempts at mastery, Corot did something that was strictly forbidden by several of his teachers. He returned to the same scene day after day—and at several different times of day—attempting both to
see
and to
paint
the subtle variations of these scenes as they changed with the weather and the light. The most famous of these studies is a trio of finished paintings called
View in the Farnese Gardens
. For three weeks in March of 1826, Corot painted all day—every day—from the Palatine Hill in Rome. In the morning, he faced east-southeast toward the church of San Sebastiano in Palatino; at midday he faced east-northeast, toward the Colosseum; and in the afternoon he looked north toward the Forum.

In this series of paintings from the Palatine Hill, one can see something altogether new emerge in Corot’s work. He was learning, through practice, to capture astonishing subtleties of light and shadow—and a sense of the soul of the hour. These paintings are alive. There is both movement and quiet, and a kind of inner pulsation of energy. They are the fruit of a new quality of attention that the artist was developing. Corot was systematically training his attention to see more deeply into his subjects—to see them, and to master them.

With this series, Corot began to attract attention among the scruffy lot of landscape painters with whom he socialized every evening at Caffè Greco in Rome. Caruelle d’Aligny, one of the great young painters who
was carefully observing Corot’s progress in Rome, announced to the assembled landscapists at their mutual hangout one evening: “
Corot is our master.”

Why did Corot stand out from the crowd of his painter friends? Was it inborn talent? Genius? No. It was the
quality of his practice
. He was engaging in what some contemporary students of optimal performance now call “deliberate practice.” Deliberate practice is not just a laborious repetition of the tasks of artistry. It is, rather, a kind of sustained engagement in the work that is
aimed specifically at understanding and improving the work
. It is an intentional breaking down of the tasks of any domain into smaller and smaller components to see precisely how they work. And it results in steady and incremental improvements in performance.

Corot was engaging in deliberate practice of his art. On the Palatine Hill he had intentionally given himself an assignment to improve his capacity to capture difficult and subtle changes in light. He looked systematically at how he was mixing colors. At how he was composing scenes. At where he was standing. At how he was applying the paint. He made careful observations of his work as he went, and then examined it again every night with his friends, using their eyes to help him evaluate things he may have missed. He was working intentionally for new and more accurate, or more interesting, effects.

Corot’s finished work from this early Italian period has a lightness and ease that is disarming. But in spite of its apparent offhandedness it was actually very carefully composed. Corot developed a habit of working precisely. He stayed longer at each scene than the other artists. He persevered in his work from each station. He wrote in one of his notebooks: “
One must be severe in the face of nature and not content oneself with a hasty sketch. How many times in reviewing my drawings have I regretted not having had the courage to stay at it half an hour more!… One must not allow indecision in a single thing.”

Says critic Peter Galassi: “
Many of Corot’s best open-air paintings … possess a freshness and buoyancy that is closer to athletic grace than to intellectual deliberation. The study is a document of the liveliness—one is tempted to say, the abandon—of its own making. But like the athlete,
Corot did not depend on natural talent alone. A deep effort of preparation and concentration lay behind his spirited performance.”

Here was the key to Corot’s development: the discovery of the compelling fruit of “deliberate practice.”

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