Quote

My own time on earth has led me to believe in two powerful instruments that turn experience into love: holding and listening. For every time I have held or been held, every time I have listened or been listened to, experience burns like wood in that eternal fire, and I find myself in the presence of love. This has always been so.

Mark Nepo

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Mark Nepo
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 23
Poet
Brooklyn
New York
Believe
Fire
Holding
Always
Powerful
Woods
Time
Turns
Held
Love
Experience
Presence
Like
Two
Instruments
Earth
Eternal
Burns
Find
Listening
Listened
Every
Turn
Wood

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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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Living is the original art. As a young man I wanted to be a poet and I learned along the way that I already was a poet.
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No amount of thinking can stop thinking.
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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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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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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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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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I looked a hundred times and all I saw was dust. The sun broke through and flecks of gold filled the air.
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We are love. But in an everyday setting we have to make choices. We have limits. We can love everyone and we can't love everyone.
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Each of us is born with an incorruptible spot of grace.
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Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.
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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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What will you do today, knowing that you are one of the rarest forms of life to ever walk the Earth? How will you carry yourself? What will you do with your hands? Tomorrow you could die, but today you are precious and rare and awake. Grateful and awake, ask what you need to know now. Say what you feel now. Love what you love now.
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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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When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it.
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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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The extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary.
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Even when clouds grow thick, the sun still pours its light earthward.
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The journey is made easier when we can accept that the process of living is designed for what matters to come through us tenderly.
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