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We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved, and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed and beneath every sadness is the fear that there will not be enough time. When we hesitate in being direct, we unknowingly slip something on, some added layer of protection that keeps us from feeling the world, and often that thin covering is the beginning of a loneliness which, if not p..
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Mark Nepo |
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there are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths.
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Mark Nepo |
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The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where ..
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life
inspirational
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Mark Nepo |
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If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe. Our vigilance becomes: Wh..
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enlightenment
mark-nepo
joy
happiness
perspective
misery
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Mark Nepo |
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I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky." (p.275)"
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fish
sky
teacher
water
learn
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Mark Nepo |
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Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are
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Mark Nepo |
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Whatever truth we feel compelled to withhold, no matter how unthinkable it is to imagine ourselves telling it, not to is a way of spiritually holding our breath. You can only do it for so long.
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Mark Nepo |
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If I dare to hear you
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Mark Nepo |
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Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.
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Mark Nepo |
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there is a great choice that awaits us every day: whether we go around carving holes in others because we have been so painfully carved ourselves, or whether we let spirit play its song through our tender experience, enabling us to listen, as well, to the miraculous music coming through others.
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Mark Nepo |
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The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.
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Mark Nepo |
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Each person is born with an unencumbered spot, free of expectation and regret, free of ambition and embarrassment, free of fear and worry; an umbilical spot of grace where we were each first touched by God. It is this spot of grace that issues peace. Psychologists call this spot the Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu masters call it Atman, Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardnes..
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Mark Nepo |
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Let's be in awe which doesn't mean anything but the courage to gape like fish at the surface
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Mark Nepo |
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Just as life is made up of day and night, and song is made up of music and silence, friendships, because they are of this world, are also made up of times of being in touch and spaces in-between. Being human, we sometimes fill these spaces with worry, or we imagine the silence is some form of punishment, or we internalize the time we are not in touch with a loved one as some unexpressed change of heart. Our minds work very hard to make some..
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Mark Nepo |
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Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need.
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Mark Nepo |
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We are broken open, or we willfully shed.
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Mark Nepo |
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But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.
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Mark Nepo |
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Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so--just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up.
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Mark Nepo |
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In a world that lives like a fist
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Mark Nepo |
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For though we stubbornly cling, believing in our moment of hunger that there is no other possibility of love, we only have to let go of what we want so badly and our life will unfold. For love is everywhere.
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Mark Nepo |
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Even if one glimpses God, there are cuts and splinters and burns along the way.
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Mark Nepo |
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Burying and Planting The culmination of one love, one dream, one self, is the anonymous seed of the next. There is very little difference between burying and planting. For often, we need to put dead things to rest, so that new life can grow. And further, the thing put to rest--whether it be a loved one, a dream, or a false way of seeing--becomes the fertilizer for the life about to form. As the well-used thing joins with the earth, the old ..
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Mark Nepo |
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life is always where we are.
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Mark Nepo |
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We often move away from pain, which is helpful only before being hurt. Once in pain, it seems the only way out is through. Like someone falling off a boat, struggling to stay above the water only makes things worse. We must accept we are there and settle enough so we can be carried by the deep. The willingness to do this is the genesis of faith, the giving over to currents larger than us. Even fallen leaves float in lakes, demonstrating how..
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Mark Nepo |
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Often we find it easier to think our way around things rather than to feel our way through them:
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Mark Nepo |
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The only response to adversity or misunderstanding is to be more completely who we are--to share ourselves more.
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Mark Nepo |
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My friends are the beings through whom God loves me.
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Mark Nepo |
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Whether through the patterns left in snow, or geese honking in the dark, or through the brilliant wet leaf that hits your face the moment you are questioning your worth, the quiet teachers are everywhere, pointing us to the unlived portion of our lives. When we think we are in charge, the lessons dissolve as accidents or coincidence. But when we're humble enough to welcome the connections, the glass that breaks across the room is offering u..
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Mark Nepo |
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quiet pain that comes from not honoring what we know to be true, even if all we know to be true are the questions we are asking.
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Mark Nepo |
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Every crack is also an opening. When in the midst of great change, it is helpful to remember how a chick is born. From the view of the chick, it is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark shell, half-formed, the chick eats all its food and stretches to the contours of its shell. It begins to feel hungry and cramped. Eventually, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever-shrinking space of its world. Finally, it..
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Mark Nepo |
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When wiggling through a hole the world looks different than
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Mark Nepo |
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It seems that intuitive listening requires us to still our minds until the beauty of things older than our minds can find us.
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Mark Nepo |
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The pain of life is pure salt; no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of things.... Stop being a glass. Become a lake.
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Mark Nepo |
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Memories are not images of loved ones returning to us. They are the spirits of loved ones visiting us.
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Mark Nepo |
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we can go below our hardened ways to the soft impulses that birth them. Instead of breaking the bone of our stubbornness, we can nourish the marrow of our feeling unheard. Instead of breaking the bone of our fear, we can cleanse the blood of our feeling unsafe. Instead of counting the scars from being hurt in the world, we can find and re-kiss the very spot in our soul where we began to withhold our trust.
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Mark Nepo |
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The hard things break. The soft things bend. The stubborn ones batter themselves against all that is immovable. The flexible adapt to what is before them. Of course, we are all hard and soft, stubborn and flexible, and so we all break until we learn to bend and are battered until we accept what is before us. This brings to mind the Sumerian tale of Gilgamesh, the stubborn, hard king who sought to ask the Immortal One the secret of life. He ..
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Mark Nepo |
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we may spend much of our time unaware and unenlightened, yet the presence of Truth and God, like a deep and ancient friend, can shape our entire lives. So the inner task becomes how do we make a lasting friendship with the Unities that are larger than us? How do we keep their light in our heart when no stars appear in sight?
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Mark Nepo |
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Being a Pilgrim To journey without being changed is to be a nomad. To change without journeying is to be a chameleon. To journey and to be transformed by the journey is to be a pilgrim. We all start out as pilgrims, wanting to journey and hoping to be transformed by the journey. But, just as it is impossible when listening to an orchestra to hear the whole of the symphony for very long before we are drawn to hear only the piano or the violi..
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Mark Nepo |
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When the Path Is Blocked When the path is blocked, back up and see more of the way. We are each a mountain for the other to climb, and often our path to love is interrupted by a mishap or a problem or something unexpected that needs attending. We tend to call these unexpected things in life "obstacles." Often the thing in the way comes from another person: a stubbornness falls like a tree blocking where we want to go, or a sadness comes lik..
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Mark Nepo |
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The things that frighten us just want to be held.
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Mark Nepo |
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To Marry One's Soul Being true to who we are means carrying our spirit like a candle in the center of our darkness. If we are to live without silencing or numbing essential parts of who we are, a vow must be invoked and upheld within oneself. The same commitments we pronounce when embarking on a marriage can be understood internally as a devotion to the care of one's soul: to have and to hold ... for better or for worse ... in sickness and ..
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Mark Nepo |
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It takes six million grains of pollen to seed one peony, and salmon need a lifetime of swimming to find their way home, so we mustn't be alarmed or discouraged when it takes us years to find love or years to understand our calling in life. Everything in nature is given some form of resilience by which it can rehearse finding its way, so that, when it does, it is practiced and ready to seize its moment. This includes us. When things don't wo..
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Mark Nepo |
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The human soul is to God is as the flower to the sun; it opens at its approach, and shuts when it withdraws. --BENJAMIN WHICHCOTE
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Mark Nepo |
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And where is home? Is it where we begin or where we end up? Is it where we long to be or where life puts us to make good use of our gifts?
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Mark Nepo |