Quote

Wakefulness is not a destination but a song the human heart keeps singing, the way birds keep singing at the first sign of light.

Mark Nepo

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Mark Nepo
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 23
Poet
Brooklyn
New York
Firsts
Birds
Human
Sign
Humans
Keeps
First
Bird
Heart
Singing
Way
Song
Keep
Wakefulness
Light
Destination

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Rather than finding heaven on earth, we are asked to release heaven by living on earth.
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Try as we do to resist what we're given, this is the only doorway to truth. We waste too much time and energy denying or fighting where we find ourselves.
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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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We tend to make the thing in the way the way.
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Listening reminds me how precious it is to be here at all. And so, listening is the first step to peace, both inner peace and the compassion that connects people.
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I would want to affirm how rare and magnificent and messy it is to be alive, how there is really nothing between us and life, though so many things get in the way, and how our heart is the strongest muscle and resource we have.
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Joy in what we do is not an added feature it is a sign of deep health.
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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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Walk long enough and we all trade places.
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Birds learn how to fly, never knowing where flight will take them.
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Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.
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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.
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To listen also means to stay in relationship, the central challenge of our time, and this requires us to constantly minimize whatever stands between us and life.
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Accepting what we're given is a practice in being present to everything beyond us that lets us become intimate with the nature of life.
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The fully engaged heart is the antibody for the infection of violence.
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The paradox is that we have this amazing capacity in our minds and hearts to learn and gain insights and then to build a kind of personal storehouse of knowledge. The underside is that those insights harden and fill the spaces in our hearts and minds. They become assumptions, conclusions and judgments.
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When the sweet ache of being alive, lodged between who you are and who you will be, is awakened, befriend this moment. It will guide you. Its sweetness is what holds you. Its ache is what moves you on.
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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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We are all continually asked to learn how to ask for what we need, only to practice accepting what we're given.
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Whatever opens us is not as important as what it opens.
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