|
bb65c3b
|
FEBRUARY 16 Misery 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 vi..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
171fca6
|
Weakness Our strength will continue if we allow ourselves the courage to feel scared, weak, and vulnerable. --MELODY BEATTIE This is a prayer for the ages. In fact, it helps to define weakness, in spiritual terms, as any habit of mind or heart that prevents us from seeing things exactly as they are, or in their entirety, or with our entire capacity to feel. These are the blindnesses that continually keep us from Truth, Oneness, and Compassi..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
6d36495
|
The eye can see what we have in common or focus on what keeps us apart. And the heart can feel what joins us with everything or replay its many cuts. And the tongue can praise the wind or warn against the storm, can praise the sea or dread the flood.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
9513de3
|
Integrity Integrity is the ability to listen to a place inside oneself that doesn't change, even though the life that carries it may change. --RABBI JONATHAN OMER-MAN Much of our journey throughout this book has been about discovering that place inside and cultivating the ability to listen to it, while having compassion for the life that carries it. It moves me to share the story of a troubled man who, exhausted from his suffering and confu..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
b307ffe
|
Whatever is held and listened to will show us where it lives in the world and in us.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
3f4799a
|
over time, staying real becomes the work of keeping our actions in the world connected to the truth of our inner being, allowing our True Self to see the light of day.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
4f5140c
|
Fearful people do not want to sit with broken people because they don't want to be slowed down - don't want to look at what is broken in themselves... When we dare to hold those forced to the ground, dare to hold them close, the truth of holding and listening sings & we are carried into the wisdom of broken bones and how things heal. There are the quiet braves we all need: the courage to wait & watch with all of who we are, the courage to ..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
af623bb
|
In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible. --BUDDHA
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
592a0b6
|
What is most healing about bearing witness to things exactly as they are, including my own part in my pain, is that when the voice of the pain fits the pain, there is no room for distortion or illusion. In this way, truth becomes a clean bandage that heals, keeping dirt out of the wound. To voice things as they are is the nearest medicine.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
e447a50
|
being articulate is not a facility of language but a fidelity to vision. And so we are all articulate when finding the courage to say what we see.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
537f197
|
COMING OUT While there is much to do we are not here to do. Under the want to problem-solve is the need to being-solve. Often, with full being the problem goes away. The seed being-solves its darkness by blossoming. The heart being-solves its loneliness by loving whatever it meets. The tea being-solves the water by becoming tea.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
efc97ed
|
There is a gravity of spirit that pulls the essence of who we are into being. Our job, like all our sister creatures, is to find the abundance of air and water and light, and to unfold what is already within us.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
77a79b7
|
At the Pace of What Is Real Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. --SENG-TS'AN Like most people I know, I struggle with taking too much on, with doing too many things, with moving too fast, with overcommitting, with overplanning. I've learned that I must move, quite simply, at the pace of what is real. While this pace may vary, life always seems vacant and diminished when I accelerate beyond my capacity ..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
b3c4b55
|
the work of prayer, when we feel least like praying, is neither to inflate or deflate the world or ourselves, but to restore our connection to the powerful currents of life.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
acf7e58
|
If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
9b9fffb
|
Being human, we struggle constantly to stay with the miracle of what is and not to fall constantly into the black hole of what is not. This is an ancient challenge. As the Sufi poet Ghalib said centuries ago, "Every particle of creation sings its own song of what is and what is not. Hearing what is can make you wise; hearing what is not can drive you mad."
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
e3d8b14
|
Yet beneath all the talk of tragedy and grace, I have come to believe that we are destined to be opened by the living of our days, and whether we like it or not, whether we choose to participate or not, we will, in time, every one of us, wear the deeper part of who we are as a new skin.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
e3772d4
|
I was born with the ability to see in metaphor.
|
|
metaphor
seeing
writing
listen
experience
listening
|
Mark Nepo |
|
995a172
|
there are countless stories of people whose lives truly find their meaning after events force them to give up careers that they have been devoted to.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
23e566d
|
The courage to hear and embody opens us to a startling secret, that the best chance to be whole is to love whatever gets in the way, until it ceases to be an obstacle.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
e291450
|
For only when we can outwait the dark will the sharpness of experience recede like a tide to reveal what has survived beneath it all. Often what seems tragic, if looked at long enough, reveals itself as part of a larger transformation.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
ab3628e
|
The gift of patience opens when our body, heart, and mind slow enough to move in unison.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
4de7639
|
Whatever our path, whatever the color or grain of our days, whatever riddles we must solve to stay alive, the secret of life somehow always has to do with the awakening and freeing of what has been asleep.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
588c149
|
There's no need to seek the truth-just put a stop to your opinions! -SENG-TS'AN
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
ee04e98
|
We are so unused to emotion that we mistake any depth of feeling for sadness, any sense of the unknown for fear, and any sense of peace for boredom.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
5636117
|
Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. --HOWARD THURMAN
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
94172e8
|
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. --MARCEL PROUST
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
02ca7c1
|
Being human, we are constantly broken apart by experience. To reconcile our humanness means we are ever learning how to accept our suffering and to restore our Wholeness.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
f04904a
|
Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
4f3e3a5
|
So what does it mean to be a spiritual warrior? It is far from being a soldier, but more the sincerity with which a soul faces itself in a daily way. It is this courage to be authentic that keeps us strong enough to withstand the heartbreak through which enlightenment can occur. And it is by honoring how life comes through us that we get the most out of living, not by keeping ourselves out of the way. The goal is to mix our hands in the ear..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
47a4b70
|
Having an honest friend-one before whom you can dump all your heart's pockets and still feel that you are worth something-is a form of wealth that will buy you nothing but will give you everything. And mysteriously and rightly, to find such a friend, we must be such a friend.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
e7ef035
|
Where love is deep much can be accomplished. --SHINICHI SUZUKI
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
33a9ddb
|
Healing Ourselves In this world, hate never yet dispelled hate. Only love dispels hate. This is the law, ancient and inexhaustible. --BUDDHA One of the most difficult things about healing from being hurt by others is how to put wounds to rest when those who have hurt us will not give air to the wound, will not admit to their part in causing the pain. I have struggled with this deeply. Time and again, I find myself confusing the want for jus..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
3b736a0
|
Can we listen to each other the way veins listen to blood?
|
|
spiritual
listening
|
Mark Nepo |
|
9ae950b
|
Despite all consequence, there is an inevitable honoring of what is true, and at this deep level of inner voice, it is not a summoning of will, but a following of true knowing.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
b3bc463
|
Now I want to stand naked before every wind; and though I'm still frightened I will break, I somehow know it's all a part--even the fright--of the rhythm of being alive.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
43d0fbf
|
So long as you haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth. --GOETHE
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
a5c7133
|
Our crucial task when in pain or despair is not to let the sour feelings spill into everything, so that we stain our sense of the world. Yet we must also take care not to so contain our feelings that they fester and infect our sense of ourselves. Somewhere between these two extremes waits the life of healthy expression, not personalizing everything and not painting the world with our troubles.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
4770d54
|
This is why finding what we love, though it may take years, is building a life of passion. For what makes you come alive can keep you alive, whether you are paid well for it or not. And beyond the fashion of the job market, a life of passion makes us a healthy cell in the body of the world.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
4c4fbf9
|
Reframing what happens to us can be a healthy way to survive terrible things, or it can become a veil of denial that keeps us from moving on. Often, we simply have to trust that we will see the truth of things when we are strong enough and ready. Yet the danger in not seeing things as they are or were is that we can start to believe that in order to learn something we need someone to throw us off the boat, or out of the relationship. If we ..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
d2fafe7
|
FEBRUARY 17 Endgame Now there's nothing left but to keep dancing. I don't know if it is human nature or the way of life on Earth, but we seldom become all of who we are until forced to it. Some say that something in us rises to the occasion, that there is, as Hemingway called it, "a grace under pressure" that comes forth in most of us when challenged. Others say this talk of grace is merely a way to rationalize hard times and painful experi..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
463d5dc
|
It doesn't have to be pretty or smart, just honest and true. For many a dance starts with a trip, and many a song finds its opening through a cough.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
295febc
|
The Beauty of It If all I have is Now, where will I look for Joy? Without hope for the future, without hope that things will change, with no hope of finding what's been lost, and no hope of restoring the past, with only the risk to crack open all that has hardened about me, what will I do with what I have? At first, this might seem scary or sad, but as a tired swimmer comes ashore surprised to find pearls washing through his legs, I lift my..
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |
|
fad782e
|
But when we believe that only what we want holds the gold, then we find ourselves easily depressed by what we lack. Then we are pained by what we perceive as the difference between here and there, between what we have and what we need.
|
|
|
Mark Nepo |