Quote

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.

Mark Nepo

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Mark Nepo
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 23
Poet
Brooklyn
New York
Matter
Compelled
Feel
Holding
Feels
Breath
Long
Breaths
Way
Telling
Imagine
Withhold
Whatever
Unthinkable
Truth
Spiritually

More quotes by Mark Nepo

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The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.
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Let's be in awe which doesn't mean anything but the courage to gape like fish at the surface breaking around our mouths as we meet the air.
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…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” (p.275)
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To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
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The sun doesn't stop shining because some people are blind.
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The life of expression is the tuning fork by which we find our way to the sacred.
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Perhaps the hardest thing I've learned, and still struggle with, is that I don't have to be finished in order to be whole.
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The pain of life is pure salt no more, no less. The amount of pain in life remains the same, exactly the same. But the amount of bitterness we taste depends on the container we put the pain in. So when you are in pain, the only thing you can do is to enlarge your sense of thingsstop being a glass. Become a lake.
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In truth, the more we lean into life, the more we authentically interact with the world, the brighter our flame.
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Part of the blessing and challenge of being human is that we must discover our own true nature.
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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 journeying is to be a pilgrim.
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There are many ways that we grow, but there are two major ways: We shed what no longer works, or we're broken open. If we're unwilling to shed, then we will be broken open. Through shedding, we are worn down, just as nature is eroded to its beauty. I think that through suffering, human beings are eroded to our beauty.
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When wiggling through a hole the world looks different than when scrubbed clean by the wiggle and looking back.
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Even when clouds grow thick, the sun still pours its light earthward.
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Like roots finding water, we always wind up moving towards what sustains us.
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Intuitive listening requires us to still our minds until the beauty of things older than our minds can find us.
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Before we can count we are taught to be grateful for what others do. As we are broken open by our experience, we begin to be grateful for what is, and if we live long enough and deep enough and authentically enough, gratitude becomes a way of life.
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The mystery is that whoever shows up when we dare to give has exactly what we need hidden in their trouble.
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Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.
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The fully engaged heart is the antibody for the infection of violence.
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