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:
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susie says
Superb & helpful!