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Wise Habits Reminders

Connecting to What Matters with Mark Nepo

April 7, 2020 1 Comment

connecting to what matters

Mark Nepo is a poet, philosopher and cancer survivor who has taught in the fields of poetry, health, and spirituality for 40 years. Mark is a New York Times #1 selling author who has published numerous books and audio projects. In this episode, Eric and Mark discuss his book, The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters. This episode is a tonic to the suffering that we are facing right now in the midst of a pandemic. This conversation offers some of the most liberating wisdom that, when connected to, releases us from the grip of fear so that we are living from a place of presence, peace, and connecting to what matters. 

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In This Interview, Mark Nepo and I discuss Connecting to What Matters and…

  • His new book, The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters
  • The value in cooperating, listening and working with things (rather than trying to bend them to our will)
  • That “sin”, as literally translated, is the same as “opaque” or, “not seeing”
  • That when we lose sight of the vastness to which we belong, succumbing to our narrow condition, we paint everything with the color of our trouble
  • How the surface of the ocean is what’s choppy and as we go down below the surface, we connect with the depth that is less tumultuous
  • “Rightsizing” our perspective on troubles by putting them in a larger perspective of vastness and wholeness
  • How to move at the pace of what is real: synchronizing the moving pace of mind, heart, and body 
  • That the power of reading out loud is like the difference between reading sheet music and hearing it in our heads vs. actually playing the music
  • That we meditate not to be great meditators, but to be clear vessels
  • How we’ve become “addicted to the noise of things falling apart”
  • That things are always simultaneously falling apart and coming together
  • We are challenged to honor what we’re going through while at the same time remembering that what we’re going through doesn’t define us
  • Asking “What is actually happening?” so we might identify right action
  • Waiting for the cloud of fear to pass so that you can decipher what is actually dangerous 
  • How in the modern world we have catastrophized our relationship to the unknown
  • That the unknown can produce love and beauty just as it can produce difficulty and hardships
  • The truth that there is no “there”, there’s only “here”
  • That often, when you can’t leave a difficult situation, you realize that everything you need is right here
  • The menacing assumption that life is somewhere other than where we are
  • That out of fear, we make a god of survival. But without thriving, what’s the point?

Mark Nepo Links:

marknepo.com

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If you enjoyed this conversation with Mark Nepo on Connecting to What Matters, you might also enjoy these other episodes:

Mark Nepo (2016 Interview)

Lama Surya Das

Sharon Salzberg

Filed Under: Featured, Podcast Episode

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. susie says

    April 9, 2020 at 10:05 pm

    Superb & helpful!

    Reply

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