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The Volume of Awakening: Having the Life You Want past Being Present to the Life You Have by Mark Nepo
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The Book of Awakening Quotes Showing 121-150 of 167

"In a Burst of Oneness When wax and wick piece of work best, light and heat are all that'south left. Like a candle, our wick of spirit is encased in our humanity, and when our spirit is touched, nosotros calorie-free up until all we know melts and changes shape for the burn down of our experience. Repeatedly, our sweat and struggle burns our sense of self and world away, so that our Divine spark can be released, over again and again. These moments of Spirit-Lighting-Upwardly not just rearrange our lives, only they light and warm those who stay almost. In such moments, we become one with what we see, and this sudden Oneness is what the true-blue of all paths have called Beloved. And in the illumination of Oneness called Love, all that's left is a willingness toward nascence, an urge to be touched by something timeless and fresh. All that's left is the want of deep parts in strangers. To relish the waking over being awake, the called-for over existence burned, the loving over being loved. When we can be—no matter how briefly—at one with what we have in mutual with all life, we are rewarded beyond zipper and ownership. This is the difference between condign a singer and condign the song. This is the best of appetite: that the dancer melts into the dance, and the lover melts into the human activity of love, and the builder melts into the affair being built, until in a outburst of Oneness, dancer and lover and builder are one. Perhaps momentarily, when swimming with the stream, we are the stream; when moving with the music, we are the music; when rocking the wounded, we are the suffering. Maybe momentarily, when thinking without masks, nosotros are pure idea; when believing without doubt, we are God. Mayhap love is an instrument we play for all we're worth in an orchestra even so to be convened. Perhaps this is why, in the fullest moments of loving or knowing or beingness, we get nameless and timeless and breathless—everything about u.s.a. used up, like a candle, burned over and over, just to low-cal unabridged rooms with our flicker."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Desire by Beingness Present to the Life Yous Take

"Just as a life is made of days, so are days made of moments. A life well lived is firmly planted in the sweet soil of moments. Mark Nepo is a gardener in this soil; he plants seeds of grace that grow but in the soil of loving attention and mindful time. We receive the deepest blessings of life when we autumn in love with such moments—and Marking shows us how to autumn in beloved deeply and with abandon."
― Mark Nepo, The Volume of Awakening: Having the Life Y'all Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

"February 17 Endgame Now in that location'south nothing left but to continue dancing. I don't know if it is human nature or the way of life on Globe, but nosotros seldom go all of who nosotros are until forced to it. Some say that something in u.s. rises to the occasion, that there is, as Hemingway called it, "a grace nether pressure" that comes forth in virtually of united states when challenged. Others say this talk of grace is but a mode to rationalize hard times and painful experience, a way to put a good face on tragedy. Even so beneath all the talk of tragedy and grace, I take come to believe that we are destined to be opened by the living of our days, and whether we similar information technology or not, whether we cull to participate or not, nosotros will, in time, every one of us, wear the deeper part of who we are as a new pare. Either by erosion from without or by shedding from within—and ofttimes past both—nosotros are forced to live more authentically. And in one case the crunch that opened us passes, the real pick so becomes: Will nosotros proceed such authentic living? It is no secret that cancer in its acuteness pierced me into open up living, and I've been working ever since to sanctify that open living without crisis as its trigger. But can this be done without crisis pushing us off the ledge? That's the question now, years from the leap—how to go along leaping from a desire to exist real, so every bit not to be shoved by an always-lurking crisis. Perhaps the greatest moment of shedding and breaking for me came as I was being wheeled to rib surgery. I institute myself numbly afraid, spinning from the Demerol shot, watching the hospital ceiling curlicue on by, and I found myself repeating over and over the post-obit words every bit I waited on my stretcher: "Death pushed me to the edge. Nowhere to back off. And to the shame of my fears, I danced with carelessness in his face. I never danced as gratis. And Decease backed off, the manner nighttime backs off a sudden burst of flame. Now there's aught left, but to keep dancing. It is the way I would have chosen had I been built-in three times as brave." Nosotros are often called further into experience than we'd like to go, simply it is this extra jump that lands us in the vibrant heart of what it means to be alive."
― Marker Nepo, The Volume of Awakening: Having the Life Y'all Desire Past Being Present in the Life You Have

"The Beauty of It If all I have is At present, where will I await for Joy? Without hope for the future, without hope that things volition alter, with no hope of finding what's been lost, and no promise of restoring the by, with only the gamble to crack open all that has hardened about me, what will I do with what I have? At first, this might seem scary or sad, merely as a tired swimmer comes ashore surprised to find pearls washing through his legs, I lift my tired head once more and over again to find all I demand is correct where I am. Simply existence human, I stray and dream of lives other than my own, and soon I am busy wanting something else, somewhere else, someone else; busy imagining something but out of attain to strive for. It leads me to say if you are unhappy or in pain, nothing will remove these surfaces. Simply credence and a strong heart will fissure them like a shell, exposing a softness that has e'er been, exposing a soft thing waiting to have class. It glows. I think information technology is the i spirit we all share."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life Y'all Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

"Reflex or Response I did not survive to be untouched. The emotional patterns of our lives are very potent. They often come into being because we've needed them to survive. But sooner or later, we all arrive at moments where the very thing that has saved u.s.a. is killing united states of america, keeping us from truly living. Being invisible once kept united states from beingness hurt, simply at present nosotros are vanishing. Or listening once kept us in relation, but now we are drowning in our unheard cries. Or avoiding conflict once kept us out of the line of fire, simply now we are thirsting for contact that is real. Early in my life, I learned to protect myself, and this meant that I became very good at catching things. In fact, I never went anywhere without my catcher's mitt. No matter what came at me, nothing could surprise me. And while this saved me from the unpredictable assaults of my family, and even helped me in my odyssey through cancer, it eventually had a life of its own. Everything—birds, women, friends, truth—was intercepted past the quick reflex of my mitt. Eventually, nothing got through, and the very matter that helped me survive was at present keeping me from being touched. The softness and wonder of the earth was vanishing from my life. Merely I did non survive to alive at a distance from things, and then I began the long and painful process of putting my mitt downwardly, of regaining option well-nigh when and how to protect myself. I began to realize that letting life in was a deeper fashion to survive."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Desire past Being Present to the Life Yous Have

"Inside Gravity Inside gravity, the same things happen, simply slower. When a plate breaks, nosotros telephone call it an blow. When a heart breaks, we telephone call it sad. If it is ours, nosotros say tragic. When a dream breaks, we sometimes telephone call information technology unfair. Even so ants drop dirt and manage more and birds driblet food and peck over again. But equally humans, when we drib what we demand, philosophies and complaints grow. Information technology's not that we moan, simply that we cease living to hear ourselves moan. Still, stars collide and histories begin. In our world, something is always letting become and something is always hitting the Earth. Often that which lets get survives by releasing, by not property on until what needs to go is ripped from it. Ofttimes that which is hit survives by staying soft, past allowing what hits it to temporarily shape it the style stones shape mud. As humans, nosotros accept turns letting go and existence hit. Love softens this process, and peace slows it down, until in moments that are blessed, we seem to play catch with what nosotros need."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want past Being Nowadays to the Life You Take

"January 24 Phenomenon Thinking There are 2 ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a phenomenon. The other is as though everything is a miracle. —ALBERT EINSTEIN At that place is no end to worry, considering there is no end to what exists out of view, beyond our very minor optics. And so worry is a fashion to gamble with what might or might not happen. It reminds me of a friend who had a flat tire on a country road. After finding he had no jack, he began walking, hoping to detect a nearby farmer who would help him. Information technology was getting dark and the crickets were getting louder. As he walked the overgrown road, he began to throw the dice of worry in his mind: What if the farmer's not home? What if he is and won't let me use his jack? What if he won't let me employ his phone? What if he's frightened of me? I never did anything to him! Why won't he only allow me use his phone?! By the time he knocked on the farmer's door, my friend was and then preoccupied with what could get wrong that when the friendly old human being answered, my friend bellowed, "Well, you can keep your Goddam jack!" Existence human, we struggle constantly to stay with the phenomenon of what is and non to autumn constantly into the black hole of what is not. This is an aboriginal challenge. As the Sufi poet Ghalib said centuries agone, "Every particle of creation sings its own song of what is and what is not. Hearing what is can make you lot wise; hearing what is non can drive you mad."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life Yous Want by Being Present to the Life You lot Have

"If you lot place ii living heart cells from dissimilar people in a Petrie dish, they will in time observe and maintain a third and common crush. —MOLLY VASS This biological fact holds the undercover of all relationship. It is cellular proof that beneath any resistance we might pose and across all our attempts that fall curt, there is in the very nature of life itself some essential joining strength. This inborn ability to detect and enliven a mutual beat is the phenomenon of love. This force is what makes pity possible, fifty-fifty likely. For if 2 cells can observe the common pulse beneath everything, how much more than can full hearts feel when all excuses fall away? This drive toward a common beat is the force beneath curiosity and passion. It is what makes strangers talk to strangers, despite the discomfort. Information technology is how we risk new knowledge. For beingness still plenty, long enough, next to annihilation living, we detect a way to sing the i voiceless song. Yet we often tire ourselves by fighting how our hearts want to join, seldom realizing that both force and peace come up from our hearts beating in unison with all that is live. Information technology feels incredibly uplifting that without even knowing each other, at that place exists a common beat between all hearts, just waiting to exist felt. Information technology brings to mind the time that the great poet Pablo Neruda, near the end of his life, stopped while traveling at the Lota coal mine in rural Republic of chile. He stood there stunned, equally a miner, rough and blackened by his work inside the earth, strode straight for Neruda, embraced him, and said, "I take known you a long time, my brother." Perhaps this is the secret—that every time we dare to phonation what beats inside, we invite some other cell of heart to find what lives between united states of america and sing."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Enkindling: Having the Life Yous Want by Existence Present to the Life You Have

"Nosotros are all made upwardly of yearning and calorie-free, searching for a fashion out, afraid we will be close in or cut off or repelled back into the ground from which nosotros are reaching. This is enough to begin: To know, earlier all the names and histories drape who we are, that nosotros want to be held and left alone, again and again; held and left lone until the trip the light fantastic of it is how we survive and grow, like jump into winter into spring again. As"
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life Y'all Want by Being Nowadays to the Life You Have

"JULY 12
Making Waves
I would practise anything for yous. Would yous be yourself?
north the Hans Christian Anderson archetype, The Little Mermaid, Ariel gives upwards her beautiful vocalization in substitution for legs. This is a seemingly innocent legend that captures our deal with the mod devil. For aren't nosotros taught that mobility is freedom, whether it be moving from land to state, or from spousal relationship to marriage, or from adventure to adventure? Aren't we convinced that upwards mobility, moving from job to job, is the definition of success?
Of course, at that place is cipher inherently wrong with change or variety or newness or with improving our status. The catch is when we are asked to surrender our vox in order to move freely, when we are asked to silence what makes us unique in order to be successful. When non making waves means giving up our take chances to dive into the deep, then we are bartering our access to God for a better driveway.
Every bit a story about relationship, the lesson of Ariel is crucial. On the surface, her desire for legs seems touching and sweetly motivated by love and the desire to belong. Yet hither too is another simulated bargain that plagues everyone who always tries information technology. For no matter how badly we want to dear or be loved, we cannot alter our basic nature and survive inside, where it counts.
o Sit quietly and consider your own history of love.
o As yous exhale, consider a time when you gave up some attribute of yourself in order to be loved.
o Equally you inhale, allow yourself to reconnect with this silenced part of your nature.
JULY"
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want past Being Present to the Life You Accept

"I have found that hesitation, more than than anything, has been the invisible hitch that has kept me from joy. I've plant that the moment with all its pregnant
often moves on past the time I've reconsidered whether or not to enter it. I am not proverb we should always be impulsive. More to the point, I have discovered, over again and again, that I
commonly know what I need to do only just deny it, and it is this minor hesitation, this small resistance to enter what is existent, that makes life experience neutral or out of reach."
― Marking Nepo, The Book of Enkindling: Having the Life Yous Desire by Being Present to the Life You lot Have

"FEBRUARY 2 2 Heart Cells Beating If you identify two living heart cells from unlike people in a Petrie dish, they will in time find and maintain a 3rd and common shell. —MOLLY VASS This biological fact holds the cloak-and-dagger of all relationship. It is cellular proof that beneath any resistance we might pose and beyond all our attempts that fall brusque, there is in the very nature of life itself some essential joining force. This inborn ability to discover and enliven a common beat out is the miracle of honey. This strength is what makes compassion possible, even probable. For if ii cells tin can find the common pulse beneath everything, how much more can full hearts experience when all excuses fall away? This drive toward a mutual trounce is the force below curiosity and passion. Information technology is what makes strangers talk to strangers, despite the discomfort. It is how we risk new cognition. For being still enough, long enough, next to anything living, we notice a manner to sing the one voiceless song. Yet we ofttimes tire ourselves by fighting how our hearts want to bring together, seldom realizing that both strength and peace come from our hearts beating in unison with all that is live. Information technology feels incredibly uplifting that without fifty-fifty knowing each other, there exists a common beat betwixt all hearts, just waiting to be felt. Information technology brings to mind the fourth dimension that the smashing poet Pablo Neruda, near the cease of his life, stopped while traveling at the Lota coal mine in rural Republic of chile. He stood there stunned, every bit a miner, rough and blackened by his work inside the earth, strode directly for Neruda, embraced him, and said, "I have known you lot a long time, my brother." Perhaps this is the secret—that every time nosotros cartel to vox what beats within, we invite another jail cell of centre to find what lives between us and sing."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

"Try equally we will, nosotros cannot escape the making of mistakes. But fortunately, the ever humbling wheel of growing strong roots comes from eating what grows from our own shit, from digesting and processing our own humanity. Similar the buffalo, we are nourished past what sprouts from our own cleaved trail. What we bruise and go out behind fertilizes what volition feed us. No one is exempt."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Take

"Beginning Again The glory effectually you is born again each day. —THE MUPPETS' VERSION OF A CHRISTMAS CAROL Creation is ongoing. The world begins anew each day. This is the miracle that makes not a sound, but which changes everything, if we can exist placidity enough to feel information technology happen. When we can participate in this, we begin anew each mean solar day. Consider how the sun washes the Earth with its heat then clouds dissipate, and grasses grow, and stones crumble when no one is looking to reveal a smoother, deeper confront. Information technology is the same with us. In a moment of realness, the clouds in our listen clear and our passion is restored, and our walls crumble when no 1 is looking. It all continues and refreshes, if we permit it. It all renews and then subtly. Nosotros think information technology is night that covers the earth, but everything living is re-created in that mysterious moment of balance that blankets united states all. And each time you glimmer, if y'all pause to allow your centre flutter with nothing only air to flutter about, each time you open your eyes, you tin begin over again. Information technology'southward true. This is the moment of resurrection, the opening of our optics."
― Marking Nepo, The Book of Enkindling: Having the Life You Want by Being Nowadays to the Life You Have

"Regardless of subject matter, this is the only thing worth teaching: how to uncover that original center and how to live there once it is restored. We call the filming over a deadening of heart, and the procedure of render, whether brought most through suffering or dearest, is how we unlearn our way back to God. Close your optics and breathe your way beneath your troubles, the way a diver slips to that depth of stillness that is always waiting beneath the churning of the waves. Now, consider two things you lot dearest doing, such as running, drawing, singing, bird-watching, gardening, or reading. Meditate on what it is in each of these that makes y'all feel live. Hold what they take in common earlier you lot, and breathing slowly, feel the spot of grace these honey things mirror within you."
― Marking Nepo, The Volume of Awakening: Having the Life Y'all Want by Beingness Present to the Life Y'all Have

"The Chick Being Born Every scissure is also an opening. When in the midst of bully modify, information technology is helpful to retrieve how a chick is built-in. From the view of the chick, information technology is a terrifying struggle. Confined and curled in a dark vanquish, half-formed, the chick eats all its nutrient and stretches to the contours of its shell. Information technology begins to feel hungry and cramped. Somewhen, the chick begins to starve and feels suffocated by the ever-shrinking space of its world. Finally, its own growth begins to crack the shell, and the world as the chick knows information technology is coming to an terminate. Its sky is falling. As the chick wriggles through the cracks, it begins to eat its beat. In that moment—growing simply frail, starving and cramped, its world breaking—the chick must feel like it is dying. Yet one time everything information technology has relied on falls away, the chick is built-in. It doesn't dice, but falls into the world. The lesson is profound. Transformation e'er involves the falling abroad of things we take relied on, and we are left with a feeling that the world every bit we know information technology is coming to an end, considering it is. Yet the chick offers us the wisdom that the way to be born while withal alive is to eat our own trounce. When faced with great change—in self, in relationship, in our sense of calling—we somehow must have in all that has enclosed u.s., nurtured us, incubated united states of america, so when the new life is upon united states of america, the old is within us. The next take a chance you get, watch something being built-in. If moved past this notion, actively pursue this. Go to a zoo. Or a farm. Or a nursery. Or an aquarium. Or walk the floor of newborns at your local hospital. As yous witness birth of some kind, note what detail touches you lot. Accept it every bit a teacher and see if information technology describes something struggling to be born in y'all."
― Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have

"The Heart's Pleasure We are built-in with this need to cry our naked weep within each other. We are so shy well-nigh our sexuality that we often miss the tranquility teachings that overcome u.s.a. in moments of true intimacy. The deep intensity of sensitivity during orgasm, for case, is a sweet paradox in how we all cherish that moment and want to return there, over and over, and still none of u.s.a. can suffer that ecstasy for very long. This heightened moment reveals a peachy deal to us almost both our very human limitations and our deepest moments of beingness alive. It is not by gamble that nosotros experience compelled to be naked and vulnerable in the presence of some other, that despite all our fears and defensive styles, nosotros want to be held and touched completely just at the moment when we are unbearably sensitive. This is the centre's definition of pleasure, and though we need this moment of exposure and release to feel complete, we also must accept that nosotros cannot bear it for very long. This is why the cries of ecstasy and desperation often sound the same. That we need to experience such complete sensitivity and vulnerability in matrimony with another is proof that no one can alive this life alone. In this way, true intimacy cannot happen without trust. When we let our bodies become this sensitive while holding back the eye, nosotros forego ecstasy and experience its smaller echo, climax. In actuality, this moment of ecstasy, of property cypher back, tin exist experienced not merely during sex, but in the existence and doing and truth telling of all our relationships—in the ecstatic moment when we let ourselves to be completely revealed and held at the aforementioned time. In this daring and fragile moment, the heart rehearses all its gifts: being who we really are, holding nothing back, trusting some other, beingness complete, and witnessing the completeness of another. This is a meditation on intimacy to be shared with a loved ane. Sit facing each other and breathe slowly until you find a natural common rhythm. Maintain heart contact and gently hold each other's face. Trace each other'due south features slowly and lightly with your fingertips, letting the walls between y'all thin."
― Marker Nepo, The Volume of Awakening: Having the Life You Want past Being Present to the Life Y'all Have

"Preparing the Manner So long as y'all haven't experienced this: to die and so to grow, you are only a troubled guest on the dark earth. —GOETHE To die is non a bad thing. Cells dice every mean solar day. Paradoxically, it is how the body lives. Casings shed. Coverings autumn away. New growth appears. It is how we stay vital. Also, means of thinking die like cells, and nosotros suffer greatly when nosotros decline to let what's growing underneath brand its way as the new skin of our lives. It is the stubbornness with which we reject to let what'southward growing underneath come through that pains us. It is the fear that nothing is growing underneath that feeds our despair. It is the moment that we end growing in any management that is truly mortiferous. When resisting this process, we go a troubled invitee, moaning similar a human crow. We double the hurting of living when we try to stop the emergence that all life goes through. Imagine if copse never shed their leaves, or if waves never turned over, or if clouds never dumped their pelting and disappeared. I say this as much to remind myself equally y'all: Piddling deaths prevent large deaths. What matters most is waiting its plough underneath all that is expending itself to prepare the mode. Sit down quietly and consider the many selves y'all have been. As you breathe evenly, consider how the new self has e'er been growing underneath the old. Now shut your optics and meditate on the newness growing within yous right now. As y'all breathe steadily, relax your grip on the habits of your mind that might exist blocking your growth."
― Marking Nepo, The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Nowadays to the Life Yous Have

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