Quotes from Mark Nepo

Grief can be a slow ache that never seems to stop rising, yet as we grieve, those we love mysteriously become more and more a part of who we are.

To love by admitting our connection to everything is how we stay well.

Doing small things with love is the atom of bravery.

Have the # life you want by being fully present to the life you have.

Each of us carries some wisdom waiting to be discovered at the center of our experience. Everything we meet, if faced and held, reveals a part of that wisdom.

To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not.

I didn't know the language of my own wisdom. I wanted to be loved and after all the various relationships I went through, I finally realized I am love. I carry love.

In daily terms, the work of listening is to be constantly worn free of our preconceptions and preferences so that nothing stands in the way of our direct experience of life.

The practice of listening is one of the most mysterious, luminous, and challenging art forms on Earth.

The reward for being sensitive is that we're held by the Universe, the way the ocean in its buoyancy holds up a raft.

Intuitive listening requires us to still our minds until the beauty of things older than our minds can find us.

I've learned that loving your self requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world - our own self worth.

To distance ourselves from our experience makes our feelings a liability, while staying in conversation with our experience makes our feelings a resource.

We need experience to release what matters.

Repetition is not failure. Ask the waves, ask the leaves, ask the wind.

there are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths.

The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.

The flower doesn't dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes.

I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky." (p.275)

Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are

The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased.

Whatever truth we feel compelled to withhold, no matter how unthinkable it is to imagine ourselves telling it, not to is a way of spiritually holding our breath. You can only do it for so long.

If I dare to hear you I will feel you like the sun And grow in your direction.

Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond.