When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it. Mark Nepo More Quotes by Mark Nepo More Quotes From 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 rushing ocean heart The sun doesn't stop shining because some people are blind. Mark Nepo shining inspirational people Perhaps the hardest thing I've learned, and still struggle with, is that I don't have to be finished in order to be whole. Mark Nepo ive-learned struggle order …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 sky teacher water In the same way that we have to clean wax from our ears and dirt from our eyes, we're all asked to clean out our conclusions and judgments, which block our heart from meeting the world. Mark Nepo block eye heart The greedy one gathered all the cherries, while the simple one tasted all the cherries in one. Mark Nepo cherries greedy simple Everything in life opens and closes, sheds and renews. We are no different. Listening in its endless forms is the way we stay open, the way we stay in relationship, the way we refresh who we are and what we're doing here. Mark Nepo who-we-are different listening Before we can count we are taught to be grateful for what others do. As we are broken open by our experience, we begin to be grateful for what is, and if we live long enough and deep enough and authentically enough, gratitude becomes a way of life. Mark Nepo gratitude grateful long 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 confused practice believe Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are Mark Nepo suicide motivational inspirational Four hundred year old trees, who draw aliveness from the earth like smoke from the heart of God, we come, not knowing you will hush our little want to be big; we come, not knowing that all the work is so much busyness of mind; all the worry, so much busyness of heart. As the sun warms anything near, being warms everything still and the great still things that outlast us make us crack like leaves of laurel releasing a fragrance that has always been. Mark Nepo knowing heart years 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 threshold risk suffering Walk long enough and we all trade places. Mark Nepo walks enough long Let the miracles, even the ones we don't want or see, unfold. Mark Nepo miracle want Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need. Mark Nepo suicide motivational inspirational 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 journey spiritual grieving I looked a hundred times and all I saw was dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air. Mark Nepo dust gold air When we heal ourselves, we heal the world. Mark Nepo heal-the-world heal world 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 letting-go heart fall To be broken is no reason to see all things as broken. Mark Nepo broken all-things reason
