Quotes from 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.

The courage to hear and embody opens us to a startling secret, that the best chance to be whole is to love whatever gets in the way, until it ceases to be an obstacle.

Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. —HOWARD THURMAN

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.

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.

As Martin Luther King Jr. prophesied, "I believe what the self-centered have torn down, the other-centered will build up.

The truth is that life will break us and burn us at some point on the journey. This is not pessimistic or cynical but descriptive of the geography of being alive. It is part of how we are transformed by the journey. Yet when we're broken or burned by events, we feel betrayed by God. When we're broken or burned by people, we feel betrayed by other souls.

Let Go of the Rice In a world that lives like a fist mercy is no more than waking with your hands open. So much more can happen with our hands open. In fact, closing and stubbornly maintaining our grip is often what keeps us stuck, though we want to blame everything and everyone else, especially what we're holding on to.

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

Kindness is the antidote to everything. Just as water soothes fire, kindness calms how we burn each other from time to time. And under all the ways we burn and hurt, there's the soft and lasting presence we were born with, waiting to blossom in the midst of any trouble.

We are so unused to emotion that we mistake any depth of feeling for sadness, any sense of the unknown for fear, and any sense of peace for boredom.

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

Breathe like a fallen leaf and think of nothing. Just breathe and let your heart and mind be carried, however briefly, by the spirit you can't quite see.

Live Humble as a Dog Live humble as a dog and the world will come alive in your mouth.

But today you are precious and rare and awake. It ushers us into grateful living. It makes hesitation useless. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.

Help me resist the urge to dispute whether things are true or false which is like arguing whether it is day or night. It is always one or the other somewhere in the world. Together, we can penetrate a higher truth which like the sun is always being conveyed.

There is no tomorrow, only a string of todays. Still

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

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

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes. —MARCEL PROUST

being articulate is not a facility of language but a fidelity to vision. And so we are all articulate when finding the courage to say what we see.

The inner life of any great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own.

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.

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.