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
Feels
Breath
Long
Breaths
Way
Telling
Imagine
Withhold
Whatever
Unthinkable
Truth
Spiritually
Matter
Compelled
Feel
Holding

More quotes by Mark Nepo

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I would rather be fooled than not believe.
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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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For listening to the stories of others ... is a kind of water that breaks the fever of our isolation. If we listen closely enough, we are soothed into remembering our common name.
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The real & lasting practice for each of us is to remove what obstructs us so we can be who we are.
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Even when clouds grow thick, the sun still pours its light earthward.
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When we are forced to stop the noise around us and in us, we begin to hear everything that is not us, and this is the beginning of humility and the renewal of our soul's energy as only by listening to all that is larger than us can we discover and feel our place in the Universe.
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The sun doesn't stop shining because some people are blind.
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Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.
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If you truly hold a stone, you can feel the mountain it came from.
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Whatever opens us is not as important as what it opens.
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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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When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it.
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In the way that I experience life, the physical world is really just the tip of the iceberg of reality. Whether it's trees or stones or water or animals or stars, everything has an ineffable interior quality.
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The many ways to listen have been reaching into me for years. To enter deep listening, I've had to learn how to keep emptying and opening, how to keep beginning. I've had to lean into all I don't understand, accepting that I am changed by what I hear.
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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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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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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 resource of life is everywhere, even in the smallest of things and we're never very far from it.
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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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It has always amazed and humbled me to how the risk to bloom can seem so insurmountable beforehand and so inevitably freeing once the threshold of suffering is crossed.
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