The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

by Mark Nepo

to become the wound or to heal.

her hiddenness, Abutsu-Ni has given us a way. For isn't it her firefly

relaxing our fear and meeting the deep,

there is no real way

to prepare for letting go other than t...

immersed, once below the surface, it is not by chance that things slow down, go clear,

weightless. Perhaps faith is nothing more than taking the risk to rest below the surface.

That we can't stay there only affirms that we must choose the deep again and again in order

to live

That we must move through the sense of sinking befor...

Revealing Who We Are

No bird can fly without opening its wings, and no one can love without exposing their heart.

as inescapable as gravity.

There is no chance of lifting into any space larger than yourself without revealing the parts you hold closest to your

c...

Any time you hesitate revealing who you are, picture yourself as a bird perched on a roof,

wings tucked at your sides.

The paradox, of course,

that we must trust that the power to lift and land, for us, is in

revealing what we hide. Once revealed, these tender thing...

Sit quietly outside, if possible, and watch the birds ope...

Breathe freely, and as the birds take flight, practice opening an...

clumsy love we experience.

We are each a mountain for the other to climb, and often our path to love is interrupted by a mishap or a problem or something unexpected that needs attending. We tend to call these unexpected things in life “obstacles.”

Often the thing in the way comes from another person: a

stubbornness falls like a tree blocking where we want to go, or a sadness comes like a flash flood to muddy the road between us,

Thus, in daily ways, we have this constant choice: to see each other as the stubborn, muddy, biting thing that blocks our way, or to back up and take in the whole person as we would a mountain in its

entirety, dizzy when looking up into its majesty.

When we are blocked in our closeness with another, we have this constant opportunity: to raise our eyes and behold each other completely, then to kneel and lift the fallen tree, or cross

Without denying this difficulty, inhale and widen your heart's view. Back up, if you can, and see the whole person, stubbornness and all. Breathe deeply and feel both the difficulty that is theirs, as well as the entirety of their spirit which causes you to love them.

Jesus implies that the eye that is clear lets light in. Considering the eye as something that lets light in and not just something that observes light outside itself opens the heart of the matter. To make it through the days, we must consider our heart as something that lets the reality of others in, and not just something that maps its way through the desires and fears of others. To let others in as well as to let ourselves out seems essential to

Risk opens safety. It doesn't shut it down.

Only through the risk to open can we inhabit and receive the strength and fullness of what is whole.

This raises the very profound question of how to define self-protection. Is it hiding who you are or is it being who you are? Is

guarding yourself with all that you see or is it clearing yourself to let light in? Is it preparing yourself against all that can hurt you or is it opening yourself to all that can heal you?

To see takes time.

It made me smile, for I have spent many years resisting being pruned and shaped. I loved how the wild blue just hung there above the hedge.

but that he needed something to care for. I realized this is how I've lived since surviving cancer.

Sit quietly, and call to the part in you that resists being pruned. Affirm it. Breathe deeply, and call to the part in you that needs to care. Embrace it. Breathe freely, and call to the part in you that after reaching falls back on itself. Bless it.

voicing ourselves.

Whatever comes out becomes a lifeline, a vein of expression

by which we ...

again, that we are vital, a quickening part of all the majesty ...

a sense of love we

think is not within us—too soon, we start believing that we cry and sound in order to be heard. And everything changes.

Then we become anxious to be received, to be accepted, and approved. But imagine if birds

only sang when heard.

But I have come to realize that sounding my way

into the world, to express who I am, must always come first.

Since wanting to be thought well of never goes away, I always have to keep the reactions of others at bay long enough for...