1
2
3
5
8
12
20
33
52
83
133
213
340
543
867
1384
2208
3346
3522
5443
5619
5639
5640
5641
5642
5643
6757
7581
8098
8422
8625
8752
8832
8882
8913
8932
8945
8953
8957
8960
8962
8963
8964
8965
▲
▼
| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 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 | ||
| 77a9634 | JANUARY 24 Miracle Thinking There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle. --ALBERT EINSTEIN There is no end to worry, because there is no end to what exists out of view, beyond our very small eyes. So worry is a way to gamble with what might or might not happen. It reminds me of a friend who had a flat tire on a country road. After finding he had no jack, he bega.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 3f21c99 | If you place two living heart cells from different people in a Petrie dish, they will in time find and maintain a third and common beat. --MOLLY VASS This biological fact holds the secret of all relationship. It is cellular proof that beneath any resistance we might pose and beyond all our attempts that fall short, there is in the very nature of life itself some essential joining force. This inborn ability to find and enliven a common beat .. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 79d6e83 | And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk to bloom. --ANAIS NIN | Mark Nepo | ||
| dfc0c97 | feelings and times long gone come and live again, or basic truths hard to keep in view return. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 678f609 | a living symbol that can call into my moment of sadness a deeper sense of plenitude and generosity that is always there, but not always accessible. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 8b9a06a | JULY 12 Making Waves I would do anything for you. Would you be yourself? n 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 tha.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 170be74 | So many times, in our despair, we see our pain as something that will never end. In fact, this often defines our moments of despair: when we believe that our pain contains the rest of us. In contrast, there is this sense of peace to work toward: the belief that our life contains our pain. | Mark Nepo | ||
| e72f17a | We tend to make the thing in the way the way. | Mark Nepo | ||
| ef02863 | FEBRUARY 2 Two Heart Cells Beating If you place two living heart cells from different people in a Petrie dish, they will in time find and maintain a third and common beat. --MOLLY VASS This biological fact holds the secret of all relationship. It is cellular proof that beneath any resistance we might pose and beyond all our attempts that fall short, there is in the very nature of life itself some essential joining force. This inborn ability.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| a185e90 | we must turn water into air in order to live, which for us means turning our experience into something that can sustain us. It means turning pain into wonder, heartache into joy. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 663bbf3 | It is a mysterious and strenuous and simple practice: to walk when we are able and be still when we are not, to bleed the dark that builds within us, and trade it for the light which is always waiting. Despite | Mark Nepo | ||
| cb692db | We are so achievement-oriented that we often surge right by the true value of relating to what's before us, because we think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will. | Mark Nepo | ||
| f1a40fd | Stop talking, stop thinking, and there is nothing you will not understand. --SENG-TS'AN | Mark Nepo | ||
| b7fcaea | Misery If peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 5c1b4a2 | How often do we lose sight of what we're really after, insisting on all or nothing, when there is so much abundance wherever we are and so many opportunities that can help us on our way? | Mark Nepo | ||
| 0d0f2b7 | I discovered that living is the original art. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 6022115 | The Necessary Privilege Not to feel is to stop the heart from breathing. So often, we war against sadness as if it were an unwanted germ, and pine after happiness as if it were some promised Eden, whose gate is keyed to the one secret flaw we need to rectify in order to be worthy. Even our Constitution attempts to rescue us from the hard full journey of individuation, ensuring what no government can ensure, the soul's contentment; suggestin.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| d44a187 | We are all made up of yearning and light, searching for a way out, afraid we will be shut in or cut off or repelled back into the ground from which we are reaching. This is enough to begin: To know, before all the names and histories drape who we are, that we want to be held and left alone, again and again; held and left alone until the dance of it is how we survive and grow, like spring into winter into spring again. As | Mark Nepo | ||
| 371b9c7 | The heart doesn't know it's expanding with compassion anymore than a hawk spreading its swings knows it's being a hawk. Nor does someone acting out of love often realize they are being kind. | love thoughtful-reflection | Mark Nepo | |
| c7cc1a7 | I am more than I have shown you and more than you are willing to see. Let's work our love and know each other more fully. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 8edae09 | The Chick Being Born 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 i.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 6363fb8 | The Heart's Pleasure We are born with this need to cry our naked cry inside each other. We are so shy about our sexuality that we often miss the quiet teachings that overcome us in moments of true intimacy. The deep intensity of sensitivity during orgasm, for instance, is a sweet paradox in how we all cherish that moment and want to return there, over and over, and yet none of us can endure that ecstasy for very long. This heightened moment.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| a87f976 | Preparing the Way 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 To die is not a bad thing. Cells die every day. Paradoxically, it is how the body lives. Casings shed. Coverings fall away. New growth appears. It is how we stay vital. Likewise, ways of thinking die like cells, and we suffer greatly when we refuse to let what's growing underneath make its way as the ne.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 3ff3ba5 | The poet Mark Nepo defines sacrifice as "giving up with reverence and compassion what no longer works in order to stay close to what is sacred." So recognizing when habits are no longer working for us and sacrificing them is a cornerstone of wisdom." | Arianna Huffington | ||
| cb666e6 | This is enough to begin: To know, before all the names and histories drape who we are, that we want to be held and left alone, again and again; held and left alone until the dance of it is how we survive and grow, like spring into winter into spring again. | Mark Nepo | ||
| a823237 | It's such a simple thing, but in a moment of ego we refuse to put down what we carry in order to open the door. Time and time again, we are offered the chance to truly learn this: We cannot hold on to things and enter. We must put down what we carry, open the door, and then take up only what we need to bring inside. | Mark Nepo | ||
| e8c4785 | Perhaps the shortest and most powerful prayer in human language is help. --FATHER THOMAS KEATING A hardness we can't see, cold and rigid, begins to form between us and the world, the longer we stay silent about what we need. It is not even about getting what we need, but about admitting, mostly to ourselves, that we do have needs. Asking for help, whether we get it or not, breaks the hardness that builds in the world. Paradoxically, asking .. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 9acbcb3 | Most sacraments are acts of breathtaking simplicity: a simple prayer, a sip of wine and a piece of bread, a single breath in meditation, a sprinkling of water on the forehead, an exchange of rings, a kind word, a blessing. Any of these, performed in a moment of mindfulness, may open the doors of our spiritual perception and bring nourishment and delight. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 0018798 | the humanitarian Carol Hegedus reminds us, "Our purpose is that which we most passionately are when we pay attention to our deepest selves." | Mark Nepo | ||
| 5b08f49 | In loving ourselves, we love the world. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 5dc9bf2 | Sit with a trusted loved one and take turns: Name one defining trait of who you are that distinguishes you from others. Name one defining trait of who you are that you have in common with others. Discuss how you cope with the loneliness of what makes you unique from others, and how you cope with the experience of what makes you the same as others. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 4315aaa | To move from controlling to trusting life is like exhausting ourselves by trying to put our arms around a river until we realize we have to enter the river and let the current take us. | Mark Nepo | ||
| acf11de | JANUARY 10 Akiba When Akiba was on his deathbed, he bemoaned to his rabbi that he felt he was a failure. His rabbi moved closer and asked why, and Akiba confessed that he had not lived a life like Moses. The poor man began to cry, admitting that he feared God's judgment. At this, his rabbi leaned into his ear and whispered gently, "God will not judge Akiba for not being Moses. God will judge Akiba for not being Akiba." --FROM THE TALMUD We .. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 9df3668 | The wildflower's reward for trusting what it senses but doesn't yet know is to become what is was born to be--a flower whose inevitable place is realized in a small moment of Oneness, as it joins with elements that were here before it came alive and which will live on once it dies. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 908d05f | The hard and stiff will be broken. The soft and supple will prevail.... Whoever is stiff and inflexible is a disciple of death. Whoever is soft and yielding is a disciple of life. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 307b326 | To know God without being God-like is like trying to swim without entering water. --OREST BEDRIJ | Mark Nepo | ||
| a96999f | In a Burst of Oneness When wax and wick work best, light and heat are all that's left. Like a candle, our wick of spirit is encased in our humanity, and when our spirit is touched, we light up until all we know melts and changes shape for the burn of our experience. Repeatedly, our sweat and struggle burns our sense of self and world away, so that our Divine spark can be released, again and again. These moments of Spirit-Lighting-Up not onl.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| 538e90d | dialogue with this feeling and ask why it will not go; just what does it need in order to leave? | Mark Nepo | ||
| 353e12b | Reflex or Response I did not survive to be untouched. The emotional patterns of our lives are very strong. They often come into being because we've needed them to survive. But sooner or later, we all arrive at moments where the very thing that has saved us is killing us, keeping us from truly living. Being invisible once kept us from being hurt, but now we are vanishing. Or listening once kept us in relation, but now we are drowning in our .. | Mark Nepo | ||
| a331040 | Inside Gravity Inside gravity, the same things happen, just slower. When a plate breaks, we call it an accident. When a heart breaks, we call it sad. If it is ours, we say tragic. When a dream breaks, we sometimes call it unfair. Yet ants drop dirt and manage more and birds drop food and peck again. But as humans, when we drop what we need, philosophies and complaints abound. It's not that we moan, but that we stop living to hear ourselves .. | Mark Nepo | ||
| ba3d7e0 | I have found that hesitation, more than anything, has been the invisible hitch that has kept me from joy. I've found that the moment with all its meaning often moves on by the time I've reconsidered whether or not to enter it. I am not saying we should always be impulsive. More to the point, I have discovered, again and again, that I usually know what I need to do but just deny it, and it is this small hesitation, this small resistance to e.. | Mark Nepo | ||
| cd188c8 | Beginning Again The glory around you is born again each day. --THE MUPPETS' VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL Creation is ongoing. The world begins anew each day. This is the miracle that makes not a sound, but which changes everything, if we can be quiet enough to feel it happen. When we can participate in this, we begin anew each day. Consider how the sun washes the Earth with its heat and then clouds dissipate, and grasses grow, and stones cr.. | Mark Nepo |