Mark Nepo's Blog, page 23

In the Hut We Call the Self

I've been listening way inside where the Universe rushes up through me like wind through a hole in an old door in a hut near the edge of a cliff. It is an ancient door, the one inside, and an ancient hole in the hut we call the self. I've been going there and listening, sitting on the inner edge of everything. There, I've heard two irrevocable truths: the truth of life, the very fact of it, how it comes out of nowhere like a strong breeze to lift our faces, how it goes on its way; and the truth of how life like a storm can rough up our hearts, how we have no choice but to feel that wind move through us and around us. Trying to give words to this is difficult. But the first truth can be inferred as the truth of things as they are, and the second as the experience of being human. These have become my teachers: trying to accept the nature of what is before me and trying not to deny its impact.

So when you ask, "What are we here for?" I'm stopped by this wind which rushes up through the hole in my heart. From this far down, it's like asking the cliff itself what is it here for. We might say, to hold up the world. The cliff might say, to be the world. I can only say that my heart and eyes and mind keep forming.

Let me tell you what life is like in the hut these days. Like many of us, I have known centeredness as a calm and the experience of difficult feelings as forms of agitation. Like many of us, I swing between these poles: needing to calm down when stirred up and wondering how long the calm will last before I'm stirred up again. Like many of us, I've come to associate the lack of agitation (lack of pain, fear, confusion, or anger) with peace and the presence of such agitation as being pulled into the tangle of the world.

I'm learning, though, that the absence of agitation alone is not necessarily peace and that the presence of such difficult feelings does not mean we are necessarily off-center. Rather, the task of being fully alive challenges us to stay in the center while feeling the full range of life on earth. This is quite a task, which I'm not sure how to do. Nonetheless, listening way inside to these two teachers—the truth of things as they are and the experience of being human—I find myself here.

This all descended on me recently when I found myself drawn, again, into relationship with a person who didn't mean what he said. The details don't matter. Just that this person was unreliable and won't accept that he broke his promise. There are a thousand reasons and, for sure, I have not lived up to all the promises I have made. But this time, it ripped me. I could feel my heart tear like old denim in the same spot it has torn before. And for all my practice at not having expectations, at letting go, at surrender and acceptance—this disappointment ripped me.

What's most interesting here is how I've been jarred, after flipping back and forth, into feeling both centered and hurt at once: accepting that the situation won't change and, at the same time, not shutting down what the disappointment feels like. I'm not trying to run from the agitation in the name of peace, but trying to relax my being until I'm spacious enough to be a container for both: the peace and the agitation. This is new and I'm not doing it or being it well.

Not surprisingly, this race between peace and agitation, whatever the cause, has reached its limits. For the peace and the agitation are stitched together and, tugged on, they unravel a thread of Oneness. It's enough to make me break down the ancient door in the hut of my self, so the wind of life can bluster through. But then, the whispers that arrive one by one through the ancient hole way inside, the whispers we know as truth, would be lost in the unfiltered fury of the wind.

An Interview with Marianna Cacciatore and Mark Nepo

Bread for the Journey R A D I O presents:

Mark Nepo ~ Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

Saturday, December 10 @ 9am Pacific Time

VoiceAmerica Variety Channel:VoiceAmericaVariety.com

Join your host Marianna Cacciatore as she interviews poet, teacher, and New York Times best selling author Mark Nepo.

We're Intimate Now

It's early March, the snow almost gone. From my upstairs window, the old ragged oak, leafless. It just happens that the sun is rising right behind its trunk and now the hot star slips between its upper fork, the light splitting everything. Just for this moment, the old naked tree seems to be crucified on the dawn of another spring. And the light has enhanced everything for spilling through the tree. It blinds me as it illumines the world. As I start to see again, I think of Leonardo's drawing of man, arms and legs spread; bringing into view a circle that connects our small heart spinning in the center to everything. So maybe this is how it works. Sooner or later, we must spread ourselves to life, naked, mouths open; our small hearts always spinning in the center waiting for the light. The old oak will never be the same. We're intimate now. The sun has gone on to warm the rest of the world and the tree has settled back into its weathered form. The early light has come and gone off my face, and I have settled back into ordinary perception. But we have been lighted. Just now, a fox trots slowly across our yard. He stops and looks up at me, then disappears.

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: The Work of Reverence, a weekend-long retreat with Mark Nepo

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen weekend-long retreat

Omega Institute

Call toll free 877.944.2002 (US) or 845.266.4444 (International)

We could say that our friendship with everything larger than us opens us to the wisdom of Source. This is the work of being. We could say that our friendship with experience opens us to the wisdom of life on earth. This is the work of being human. And we could say that our friendship with each other opens us to the wisdom of care. This is the work of love. These three friendships—the work of being, the work of being human, and the work of love—frame the journey of this retreat based on Mark's new book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: The Work of Reverence. In our time together, we invite you into the work of reverence; into the work of staying freshly connected by entering your friendship with this mystery we call life. We invite you to listen in every way you can, for listening in all things is the first step toward friendship.

Making Sense of Our Experience, Weekend Retreat, with Mark Nepo

Making Sense of Our Experience, Weekend Retreat, Transformations Center, Kalamazoo, MI

Transformation Center

Contact 269.381.6290 ext. 249

Christine Parks

Reading and signing at Bolen Books

Mark will be reading and signing books at Bolen Books on Monday Sept 24, 2012 at 7pm.

Location:

111-1644 Hillside Ave.

Victoria, B.C.

V8T 2C5

Phone: (250) 595-4232

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: The Work of Reverence, a weekend-long retreat with Mark Nepo

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: The Work of Reverence, a weekend-long retreat

Date: Fri, Sat & Sun, Sept 21,22, & 23, 2012

Length: 1 eve, 1 day, 1 half day

Times: Fri 7pm – 9:30pm, Sat 9am – 5pm, Sun 9am – 3pm

Royal Roads University, Victoria, British Columbia

contact 866-890-0220

Hilary Leighton

We could say that our friendship with everything larger than us opens us to the wisdom of Source. This is the work of being. We could say that our friendship with experience opens us to the wisdom of life on earth. This is the work of being human. And we could say that our friendship with each other opens us to the wisdom of care. This is the work of love. These three friendships—the work of being, the work of being human, and the work of love—frame the journey of this retreat based on Mark's new book, Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: The Work of Reverence. In our time together, we invite you into the work of reverence; into the work of staying freshly connected by entering your friendship with this mystery we call life. We invite you to listen in every way you can, for listening in all things is the first step toward friendship.

As Far As the Heart Can See: Staying Close to What is Sacred, Day-long Workshop with Mark Nepo

As Far As the Heart Can See: Staying Close to What is Sacred, Day-long Workshop, Insight Events, Washington, DC.

Insight Events USA

Contact (210)316-1818

kim@insighteventsusa.com

New Jersey Medical School, Humanism Day, Keynote, by Mark Nepo

New Jersey Medical School, Humanism Day, Keynote, Healthcare Foundation Center for Humanism and Medicine, Newark, New Jersey

Healthcare Foundation for Humanism and Medicine

Contact 973-972-5041

normentm@umdnj.edu

In Love with the World

There is no end to love. We may tear ourselves away or fall off the cliff we thought sacred or even burn the home we dreamt of. But when the rain comes slow at a slant and the pavement turns cold, that place where I keep you and you and all of you—that place opens like a wet fist that can no longer stay closed. And the ache returns. Thank God. The sweet and sudden ache that lets me know I am here. The rain keeps misting my face. I am alive. What majesty of cells assembles around this luminous presence that moves around as me? How is it I am still here? Each thing touched, each breath, each glint of light, each pain in my gut is cause for praise. I pray to keep falling in love with everyone I meet, with every child's eye, with every fallen being getting up. Like the worm cut in two, the heart only grows another heart. When the slash in my open hand heals, I try again. Birds migrate and caribou circle the cold top of the world. Perhaps we migrate between love and suffering, making our wounded-joyous cries: alone, then together. Oh praise the soul's migration. I fall. I get up. I run from you. I look for you. I am in love with the world.