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The Pain of Becoming For the flower, it is fully open at each step of its blossoming. We do ourselves a great disservice by judging where we are in comparison to some final destination. This is one of the pains of aspiring to become something: the stage of development we are in is always seen against the imagined landscape of what we are striving for. So where we are--though closer all the time--is never quite enough.
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Mark Nepo |
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integrity is an unending process of letting our inner experience and our outer experience complete each other, in spite of our very human lapses.
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Mark Nepo |
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Stranger still is how the very core issues we avoid return, sometimes with different faces, but still, we are brought full circle to them, again and again. Regardless of how we may try to skip over or sidestep what we need to face, we humbly discover that no other threshold is possible until we use our courage to open the door before us. Perhaps the oldest working truth of self-discovery is that the only way out is through. That we are retu..
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Mark Nepo |
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What it really comes down to is the clearness of heart to stop defining who I am by those who have hurt me and to take up the risk to love myself, to validate my own existence, pain and all, from the center out.
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Mark Nepo |
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Patience devastates us with the truth that, in essence, when we fear another, we fear ourselves; when we distrust another, we distrust ourselves; when we hurt another, we hurt ourselves; when we kill another, we kill ourselves.
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Mark Nepo |
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Living through enough, we all come to this understanding, though it is difficult to accept: No matter what path we choose to honor, there will always be conflict to negotiate. If we choose to avoid all conflict with others, we will eventually breed a poisonous conflict within ourselves. Likewise, if we manage to attend our inner lives, who we are will -- sooner or later -- create some discord with those who would rather have us be somethin..
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Mark Nepo |
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Live Humble as a Dog Live humble as a dog and the world will come alive in your mouth.
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Mark Nepo |
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I learned that everything is right where we are. No matter our pain or distress, all of life is in whatever moment we wake to. I could clearly see and feel how our fear of death makes us run, though there is nowhere to go. Yet mysteriously, I learned that there's a ring of peace at the center of every fear, if we can only get to it. Every time I shower now, I try to remember that we can-not live fully until we can first accept our eventual ..
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Mark Nepo |
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When the wind stops, the trees still move, the way my heart creaks long after it bends. Iam always surprised at the aftereffect of being moved deeply by something. I can be hurt or disappointed or feel the warmth of being loved or the gentle sway of being temporarily left, and then I'm ready to chew on something else, seldom allowing for the feelings to digest completely. In fact, I've come to see that much of my confusion in life comes fro..
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Mark Nepo |
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Let Go of the Rice In a world that lives like a fist mercy is no more than waking with your hands open. So much more can happen with our hands open. In fact, closing and stubbornly maintaining our grip is often what keeps us stuck, though we want to blame everything and everyone else, especially what we're holding on to.
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Mark Nepo |
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Breathe like a fallen leaf and think of nothing. Just breathe and let your heart and mind be carried, however briefly, by the spirit you can't quite see.
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Mark Nepo |
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Making Waves I would do anything for you. Would you be yourself? In the Hans Christian Anderson classic, The Little Mermaid, Ariel gives up her beautiful voice in exchange for legs. This is a seemingly innocent fable that captures our deal with the modern devil. For aren't we taught that mobility is freedom, whether it be moving from state to state, or from marriage to marriage, or from adventure to adventure? Aren't we convinced that upwar..
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Mark Nepo |
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Likewise, every disturbance, whether resolved or not, is making space for an inner engagement. As a shovel digs up and displaces earth, in a way that must seem violent to the earth, an interior space is revealed for the digging. In just this way, when experience opens us, it often feels violent and the urge, quite naturally, is to refill that opening, to make it the way it was. But every experience excavates a depth, which reveals its wisdo..
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Mark Nepo |
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JANUARY 25 Loving Yourself I begin to realize that in inquiring about my own origin and goal, I am inquiring about something other than myself.... In this very realization I begin to recognize the origin and goal of the world. --MARTIN BUBER In loving ourselves, we love the world. For just as fire, rock, and water are all made up of molecules, everything, including you and me, is connected by a small piece of the beginning. Yet, how do we l..
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Mark Nepo |
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It's like wearing gloves every time we touch something, and then, forgetting we chose to put them on, we complain that nothing feels quite real.
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reality
mindfulness
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Mark Nepo |
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As Martin Luther King Jr. prophesied, "I believe what the self-centered have torn down, the other-centered will build up."
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Mark Nepo |
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The truth is that life will break us and burn us at some point on the journey. This is not pessimistic or cynical but descriptive of the geography of being alive. It is part of how we are transformed by the journey. Yet when we're broken or burned by events, we feel betrayed by God. When we're broken or burned by people, we feel betrayed by other souls.
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Mark Nepo |
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Originally, the word power meant able to be. In time, it was contracted to mean to be able. We suffer the difference. Iwas waiting for a plane when I overheard two businessmen. One was sharing the good news that he had been promoted, and the other, in congratulation, said, "More power to you." I've heard this expression before, but for some reason, I heard it differently this time and thought, what a curious sentiment. As a good wish, the a..
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Mark Nepo |
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Help me resist the urge to dispute whether things are true or false which is like arguing whether it is day or night. It is always one or the other somewhere in the world. Together, we can penetrate a higher truth which like the sun is always being conveyed.
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Mark Nepo |
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There is no tomorrow, only a string of todays. Still,
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Mark Nepo |
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A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions. --OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES
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Mark Nepo |
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Now, I want only to give away all that I'm blessed to know and disappear in the stream.
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Mark Nepo |
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These bodies are perishable, but the Dweller in these bodies is eternal. --BHAGAVAD-GITA
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Mark Nepo |
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Living is a conversation with no end, a dance with no steps, a song with no words, a reason too big for any mind.
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Mark Nepo |
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But today you are precious and rare and awake. It ushers us into grateful living. It makes hesitation useless. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.
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Mark Nepo |
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Robert calmly, like an Oriental sage himself, treated the situation as if it were a koan, a riddle to be entered until its very assumptions shifted.
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Mark Nepo |
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What was amazing was that their small delicate hands were touching, their monkey fingers leaning into each other. It was clear that it was this small sustained touch that allowed them to sleep. As long as they were touching, they could let go. I envied their trust and simplicity. There was none of the human pretense at independence. They clearly needed each other to experience peace. One stirred but didn't wake, and the other, in sleep, kep..
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Mark Nepo |
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When feeling badly about ourselves, we often try on other skins rather than understand and care for our own.
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Mark Nepo |
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Havin loved enough and lost enough, I'm no longer searching, just opening, no longer trying to make sense of pain but trying to be a soft and sturdy home in which real things can land. These are the irritations that rub into a pearl. So we can talk for a while but then we must listen, the way rocks listen to the sea. And we can churn at all that goes wrong but then we must lay all distractions down and water every living seed. And yes, on n..
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pain
poetry
optimism
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Mark Nepo |
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Ubuntu--I am because you are, you are because I am.... --A DEEP AFRICAN WAY OF BEING
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Mark Nepo |
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Within Young Leaves Wrapped within young leaves: the sound of water. --SOSEKI This delicate observation by this Japanese poet is filled with the quiet hope that embedded in our nature, even as we begin, is our gift already unfolded. Embedded in the seed is the blossom. Embedded in the womb is the child fully grown. Embedded in the impulse to care is the peace of love realized. Embedded in the edge of risk and fear is the authenticity that m..
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Mark Nepo |
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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.
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Mark Nepo |
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If you had a sad childhood, so what? You can dance with only one leg and see the snowflake falling with only one eye. --ROBERT BLY
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Mark Nepo |
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JANUARY 26 Being Kind-I You often say, "I would give, but only to the deserving." The trees in your orchard say not so, nor the flocks in your pastures. They give that they may live, for to withhold is to perish. --KAHLIL GIBRAN The great and fierce mystic William Blake said, There is no greater act than putting another before you. This speaks to a selfless giving that seems to be at the base of meaningful love. Yet having struggled for a l..
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Mark Nepo |
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Perhaps one of the hardest remedies to accept for our pain of becoming is that wherever we are in our path--no matter how flawed or incomplete--is a blossoming unto itself.
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Mark Nepo |
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When we need it most, it is nearly impossible to see ourselves with compassion from the slit of a narrowed mind all tensed for battle.
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Mark Nepo |
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When we heal ourselves, we heal the world. For as the body is only as healthy as its individual cells, the world is only as healthy as its individual souls.
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Mark Nepo |
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We often mistake the journey of healing as one that covers over a wound. But as wounds need air and light to knit and heal, our pain and sorrow need to be brought out into the open so we can be healed by life
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Mark Nepo |
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Just as a vine or shrub--no matter how often it is cut back--will keep growing to the light, the human heart--no matter how often it is cut--can reassert its impulse to love.
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Mark Nepo |
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We are the stage and all the players.
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Mark Nepo |
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Kindness is the antidote to everything. Just as water soothes fire, kindness calms how we burn each other from time to time. And under all the ways we burn and hurt, there's the soft and lasting presence we were born with, waiting to blossom in the midst of any trouble.
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Mark Nepo |
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I tried so hard to please that I never realized no one is watching.
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Mark Nepo |
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Wisdom tells me I am nothing. Love tells me I am everything. And between the two my life flows. --NISARGADATTA MAHARAJ
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Mark Nepo |
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The inner life of any great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own.
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Mark Nepo |