Mark Nepo's Blog, page 21

The Art of Encouragement: How to Encourage Yourself & Others

via InnerSelf.com

There is an art to imparting strength and confidence, to inspiring and heartening what is already within us. In many ways, to encourage is to help the heart unfold. And each time we do so, another aspect of our true self unfolds. Very often, the art of encouragement is needed to counter some sort of fear, which blocks us from what we already know. Fear makes courage forget itself. Encouragement reminds us of what we're capable of.

In the modern classic The Wizard of Oz, the lion is afraid of everything and is sorely in need of courage – not to be heroic, but simply to make it through the days. So he joins Dorothy, the tin man, and the scarecrow – all off to see the wizard. In particular, the lion hopes the wizard can magically give him some courage. En route, he is tested in unexpected ways, and, though afraid, he manages to cope quite bravely.

Read more.

Foreign editions of The Book of Awakening

Top, left to right: Dutch, Italian, Slovenian, Danish, Portuguese, Spanish, Bulgarian, French

Beneath the Chatter

Archie loves Betty, but Betty loves Petra

and Danny wants whatever the person next

to him has. And the poor want to be rich

and the rich want to live forever. And Henry

fears Miguel and Miguel who has done nothing

fears the white police. And Jorge tries to explain

to his son what a border is, why this handful of

dirt is different than the dirt across the river.

Yet in the dark soil we finger when no one is

looking, we're silent as trees; inching through

the earth while growing toward the light.

Mother at 85

We haven't spoken in years.

My father says her memory is

shrinking. After five minutes

she's unsure what conversation

she's parachuted into. She can't

remember what she went down

the mayonnaise aisle for. It softens

me and I wonder: what crumbles

first, the hard times or the soft?

Has she lost her version of why

I left? Of when she slapped me

in the eye? Of her darkly whis-

pering, "I wish I could hurt

you more."

Tonight I visit her in dream,

watching without her knowing.

This time I see through

my version of things.

As she's going, I want to

see her more clearly. The only

time I might get close to her

is when she no longer

remembers who I am.

Listening to Others

Still enough and we break surface

like small fish wanting to eat light.

In that moment, we're up in the air,

eyes wide, our mouths open, our

bodies shining from the deep.

Sometimes we even touch before

going back down. When in the

deep, we long for the breach,

when in the air, we dread the

fall. But this is life: the leap for

light, startled to find each other,

the plunge back down, the leap

for light, startled to find each

other… Listen… We are coming.

The Necessary Rain

The sparking flame holds against the necessary rain.

—Robert Mason

The human and the being must reach an agreement with each other or there will be no peace for the life that carries them. The human in us must accept that it will never transcend this life into what its heart knows is eternal. It can feel and taste what is limitless but never stay there because being human by definition is to live here with limits. And the being in us, which flies like a bird, must accept that what carries it walks; must accept that while it lives in the sky, the life it is incarnated to help lives on the ground. Our being will always see more and move faster than our humanness, which must step over rocks and through mud. If we don't accept this imperfect marriage, we will never know its gift. Instead, our being will break our body, insisting that it catch up, and our heart will drag us into impossible situations, insisting that the sun can fit in a thing as small as a dream. And refusing our smallness, we will burn the things we love along the way. Reaching this agreement between what is human and what is spiritual is the practice of meeting the world with vulnerability until who we are releases what we know.

The Empty Necklace

We each have one, made over a lifetime

of the empty moments in between, when

everything is still and complete, each a

clear bead strung on the invisible chain

of our experience.

I'm thinking of the long silence after

we talked for months about what it's

like to be alive.

Or the time in winter when the snowy

pines were creaking and swaying a

hundred feet up like the eye of the

earth opening slightly.

Or the time in early fall when you

were pinching a pot in the sun

and our dog was chewing on a stick

and I started to cry.

And the moment I woke from surgery

too soon and my soul had to decide

which way to swim.

And sometimes, when the wind sweeps

the next task from my mind, I am

returned to the moment before I

was born: floating with a brief sense

of all there is, just as I was ushered

into the world with our need to

find that feeling between us.

Thinking Like a Butterfly

Monday I was told I was good.

I felt relieved.

Tuesday I was ignored.

I felt invisible.

Wednesday I was snapped at.

I began to doubt myself.

On Thursday I was rejected.

Now I was afraid.

On Saturday I was thanked

for being me. My soul relaxed.

On Sunday I was left alone

till the part of me that can't

be influenced grew tired of

submitting and resisting.

Monday I was told I was good.

By Tuesday I got off the wheel.

Before the Waterfall

The art of living isn't that simple. But honesty makes it bearable and everything stripped of its film is bare and sincere. The tree limb cracking in the storm is as honest as the drop of rain coating a sad girl's lip. We have been misled to think that meaning can be debated. We build meaning by being sincere, by listening to what every simple thing has to offer—letting all the meanings merge. Each sincerity is a language. When what I empty and what you empty find each other, a fullness is born. When the pain that I share finds the pain that you share, love is born. When we can face what is ours to face, and feel what is ours to feel, the heart of our heart throws itself before the waterfall where blessing after blessing is ladled on our sores till we wake and stand full term in the bliss of being ordinary.

Mark in conversation with Marianna Caccaitore

The Journey of Awakening: Conversation with Mark Nepo

Read the full transcript here.

A poem from the interview:

Winter Confession

I've tried to follow every wind and

listen for its source. I've tried to follow

every light, and with my face in the sun,

all the things we carry that are afraid of

the light scurry to the back of my mind.

I've tried to find the truth and when I

have, I've found it's everywhere, and that

I step over it in my pain or want for some-

thing I can't have. Thankfully there have

been ordinary blessings. When I followed

your presence into what would be our love.

When I took a left in the path that led to

the sea and stayed there for days, putting

down all the names I'd been given. How

months later, while dropping a book of

poems by George Seferis, a wet clump

of grass stained his instruction to speak

plainly. And the small light that brought

me back while I was in surgery. It was a

crack of dawn promising so much, if I

could just get up and walk beyond death's

slim tree. And here I am, all these years

later, mouth open, still in awe. Yesterday,

in the pines, my dog put her nose in the

snow. What a teacher. I slipped to one

knee and did the same.