Mark Nepo Quotes

Rather than finding heaven on earth, we are asked to release heaven by living on earth. ~ Mark Nepo

When we heal ourselves, we heal the world. ~ Mark Nepo

I didn't know the language of my own wisdom. I wanted to be loved and after all the various relationships I went through, I finally realized I am love. I carry love. ~ Mark Nepo

The extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. ~ Mark Nepo

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. ~ Mark Nepo

Is it possible that, with each inhalation, we take in the world and awaken our soul? And with each exhalation, do we free ourselves of the world, which inevitably entangles us? Is this how we fill up and empty a hundred times a day, always seeking the gift of the two breaths? Perhaps this is the work of being. ~ Mark Nepo

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 us direction, giving us a clue to the story we are in. ~ Mark Nepo

Though the Earth is touched by everything alive, it never stops turning around the fire at its center, and though we are touched by the stories of strangers and the far-off songs of birds lost in wind, we find our way by following the spirit's voice at our center. Too much is lost in waiting for someone else to tell us that what moves us is real. ~ Mark Nepo

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 ~ Mark Nepo

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

When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it. ~ Mark Nepo

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. ~ Mark Nepo

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. ~ Mark Nepo

I have found that life is alive and we are requested to have a friendship with it, to have a conversation with life and that conversation is restorative and healing and always nearby. ~ Mark Nepo

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 nights like tonight
I too feel along. But seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it's a door
into the endless berath
that has no breather,
into the surf that human
shell calls God. ~ Mark Nepo

What is not ex-pressed is de-pressed. ~ Mark Nepo

The only response to adversity or misunderstanding is to be more completely who we are - to share ourselves more. ~ Mark Nepo

When feeling badly about ourselves, we often try on other skins rather than understand and care for our own. ~ Mark Nepo

In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones. - PABLO NERUDA ~ Mark Nepo

Who's to say the effort to be real isn't the beginning of wings? ~ Mark Nepo

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 something else. ~ Mark Nepo

The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased. ~ Mark Nepo

Water reflects everything it encounters. This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when in fact it has no color ... But the water, the glorious water everywhere, has taught me that we are more than what we reflect or love. This is the work of compassion: to embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are. ~ Mark Nepo

The flower doesn't dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes. ~ Mark Nepo

No bird can fly without opening its wings, and no one can love without exposing their hearts. ~ Mark Nepo

The many ways to listen have been reaching into me for years. To enter deep listening, I've had to learn how to keep emptying and opening, how to keep beginning. I've had to lean into all I don't understand, accepting that I am changed by what I hear. ~ Mark Nepo

Every human has an unfathomable gift that only meeting life head on will reveal. ~ Mark Nepo

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: Which defines our day - the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening?

It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we're miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn't seasoned just the way we like.

When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we're up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first.

In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we m ~ Mark Nepo

Each of us is born with an incorruptible spot of grace. ~ Mark Nepo

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

The Art of Facing Things What people have forgotten is what every salmon knows. - ROBERT CLARK ~ Mark Nepo

We tend to make the thing in the way the way. ~ Mark Nepo

These bodies are perishable, but the Dweller in these bodies is eternal. - BHAGAVAD-GITA ~ Mark Nepo

A love astounds us or a pain consumes us and we forget that we glow on our own. ~ Mark Nepo

The gift of patience opens when our body, heart, and mind slow enough to move in unison. ~ Mark Nepo

When we don't get what we want, there's a legitimate grieving, and then the spiritual journey truly begins, because not getting what we want breaks our self-reference; and once that is broken, we are aware that we are a part of a larger whole. It changes everything. ~ Mark Nepo

The real & lasting practice for each of us is to remove what obstructs us so we can be who we are ... ~ Mark Nepo

Practicing As a man in his last breath drops all he is carrying each breath is a little death that can set us free. Breathing is the fundamental unit of risk, the atom of inner courage that leads us into authentic living. With each breath, we practice opening, taking in, and releasing. Literally, the teacher is under our nose. When anxious, we simply have to remember to breathe. So often we make a commitment to change our ways, but stall in the face of ~ Mark Nepo

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

For being human, we remember and forget. We stray and return, fall down and get up, and cling and let go, again and again. But it is this straying and returning that makes life interesting, this clinging and letting go - damned as it is - that exercises the heart. ~ Mark Nepo

This is the ongoing purpose of full attention: to find a thousand ways to be pierced into wholeness. ~ Mark Nepo

I was raised Jewish by atheistic-agnostic parents. During this journey, I had people from all walks and all faiths try to help. A Jewish priest who I was friends with wanted to lay hands on me - I didn't ask questions about how - I just said when and where and how often do you want to do it? I didn't argue. ~ Mark Nepo

Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond. ~ Mark Nepo

Each soul on earth is complete unto itself. ~ Mark Nepo

I was a very driven person, wanting to help and to do good, hopefully to write and teach in a meaningful way - wanting to make change. And I discovered humbly that life was changing me. ~ Mark Nepo

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

The humility of wonder opens everything. ~ Mark Nepo

There are many ways that we grow, but there are two major ways: We shed what no longer works, or we're broken open. If we're unwilling to shed, then we will be broken open. Through shedding, we are worn down, just as nature is eroded to its beauty. I think that through suffering, human beings are eroded to our beauty. ~ Mark Nepo

Repetition is not failure. Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind. ~ Mark Nepo

We are the stage and all the players. ~ Mark Nepo

Whether you find it through mediation or sighing over tea or just turning all your devices off for five minutes, listening is an ancient lifeline by which we are awakened time and again. Once reawakened, we more easily find our way to each other, and so help each other live. ~ Mark Nepo

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, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows it is coming to an end. Its sky is falling. As the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its shell. In that moment - growing but fragile, starving and cramped, its world breaking - the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet once everything it has relied on falls away, the chick is born. It doesn't die, but falls into the world. ~ Mark Nepo

I don't personally believe in an arrived state of enlightenment. I feel that being human is a constant practice of return. We have moments of clarity, and then we're confused. We have incredibly sensitive periods of being awake, and then we're numb. Being human is a very universal and a very personal practice of learning how to return when we can't get access to what we know. ~ Mark Nepo

A successful creative expression is one in which the person who has expressed it was transformed for having encountered it ~ Mark Nepo

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. ~ Mark Nepo

By our very nature, we are a human paradox. We are a human being. The being is infinite and the human is very finite. We walk around like lightening in a bottle. ~ Mark Nepo

Now, I want only to give away all that I'm blessed to know and disappear in the stream. ~ Mark Nepo

Let the miracles, even the ones we don't want or see, unfold. ~ Mark Nepo

Birds learn how to fly, never knowing where flight will take them. ~ Mark Nepo

Can we listen to each other the way veins listen to blood? ~ Mark Nepo

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, kept their fingers touching. How deeply rewarding the life of touch. ~ Mark Nepo

Once waking into the realization that eternity is waiting in every moment, I discovered that wealth is time, not money. ~ Mark Nepo

Living is the original art. As a young man I wanted to be a poet and I learned along the way that I already was a poet. ~ Mark Nepo

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 confusion, asked a sage for help. The sage looked deeply into the troubled man and with compassion offered him a choice: "You may have either a map or a boat." After looking at the many pilgrims about him, all of whom seemed equally troubled, the confused man said, "I'll take the boat." The sage kissed him on the forehead and said, "Go then. You are the boat. Life is the sea." As we have discovered so many times, we have everything we need within us. This ability to listen inside is our oldest oar. You are the boat. ~ Mark Nepo

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 put down, diminishes our chances of joy.
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. Our challenge each day is not to get dressed to face the world but to unglove ourselves so that the doorknob feels cold and the car handle feels wet and the kiss goodbye feels like the lips of another being, soft and unrepeatable. ~ Mark Nepo

To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. ~ Mark Nepo

... I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky. (p.275) ~ Mark Nepo

To love by admitting our connection to everything is how we stay well. ~ Mark Nepo

The broken door lets in the light. The broken heart lets in the world. ~ Mark Nepo

The life of expression is the tuning fork by which we find our way to the sacred. ~ Mark Nepo

It has always amazed and humbled me to how the risk to bloom can seem so insurmountable beforehand and so inevitably freeing once the threshold of suffering is crossed. ~ Mark Nepo

Through the opened heart, the world comes rushing in, the way oceans fill the smallest hole along the shore. It is the quietest sort of miracle: by simply being who we are, the world will come to fill us, to cleanse us, to baptize us, again and again. ~ Mark Nepo

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

Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak. ~ Mark Nepo

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

Perhaps the noblest private act is the unheralded effort to ... open our hearts once they've closed, to open our souls once they've shied away. ~ Mark Nepo

Given to air alone, the cuts of this world burn. But when we dare to enter what is deep, the bruises we carry soften and glow. In truth, the more we accept our limitations and surrender to the depths below our woundedness, the more the vastness holds us up. There is no way to know this but to dive. ~ Mark Nepo

The paradox is that we have this amazing capacity in our minds and hearts to learn and gain insights and then to build a kind of personal storehouse of knowledge. The underside is that those insights harden and fill the spaces in our hearts and minds. They become assumptions, conclusions and judgments. ~ Mark Nepo

No amount of thinking can stop thinking. ~ Mark Nepo

To listen also means to stay in relationship, the central challenge of our time, and this requires us to constantly minimize whatever stands between us and life. ~ Mark Nepo

The sun doesn't stop shining because some people are blind. ~ Mark Nepo

If we devote ourselves to the life at hand, the rest will follow. For life, it seems, reveals itself through those willing to live. Anything else, no matter how beautiful, is just advertising. ~ Mark Nepo

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

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

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

In this way, I've learned that loving yourself requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world - our own self-worth. ~ Mark Nepo

Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the process of return, whether brought about through suffering or love, is how we unlearn our way back to God. Close your eyes and breathe your way beneath your troubles, the way a diver slips to that depth of stillness that is always waiting beneath the churning of the waves. Now, consider two things you love doing, such as running, drawing, singing, bird-watching, gardening, or reading. Meditate on what it is in each of these that makes you feel alive. Hold what they have in common before you, and breathing slowly, feel the spot of grace these dear things mirror within you. ~ Mark Nepo

As the seed buried in the earth cannot imagine itself as an orchid or hyacinth, neither can a heart packed with hurt imagine itself loved or at peace. The courage of the seed is that once cracking, it cracks all the way. ~ Mark Nepo

At the heart of each spiritual tradition is the question of how to be in the world without losing what matters, and whether living an awakened life is of any use if we don't bring what matters to bear on the world. ~ Mark Nepo

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. ~ Mark Nepo

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 Inwardness, Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the Center of our Love.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work or what we wear or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible spot of grace at our core.

When the film is worn through, we have moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness, moments of Satori as the Zen sages term it, moments of clear living when inner meets outer, moments of full integrity of being, moments of complete Oneness. And whether the film is a veil of culture, of memory, of mental or religious training, of trauma or sophistication, the removal of that film and the res ~ Mark Nepo

Doing small things with love is the atom of bravery. ~ Mark Nepo

I looked a hundred times and all I saw was dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air. ~ Mark Nepo

We need to meet, embrace and work with what we're given. For what we want and what we're given often serve two different gods. And how we respond to their meeting determines our path. ~ Mark Nepo

Living is a conversation with no end, a dance with no steps, a song with no words, a reason too big for any mind. ~ Mark Nepo

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 makes life worth living. ~ Mark Nepo

We are love. But in an everyday setting we have to make choices. We have limits. We can love everyone and we can't love everyone. ~ Mark Nepo

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

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 we are. ~ Mark Nepo

Essentially, the life of expression is the ongoing journey of how we heal each other ... for by telling our stories and listening to the stories of others, we let out who we are and find ourselves in each other, and find that we are more together than alone. ~ Mark Nepo