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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.

Mark Nepo

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Mark Nepo
Age: 73
Born: 1951
Born: February 23
Poet
Brooklyn
New York
Compassion
Listening
Steps
Peace
Connects
Firsts
Reminds
First
Precious
People
Inner
Step

More quotes by Mark Nepo

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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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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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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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Even when clouds grow thick, the sun still pours its light earthward.
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If we devote ourselves to the life at hand, the rest will follow. For life, it seems, reveals itself through those willing to live. Anything else, no matter how beautiful, is just advertising.
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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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Live loud enough in your heart and there is no need to speak.
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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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If I dare to hear you I will feel you like the sun And grow in your direction.
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Mysteriously, as elusive as it is, this moment--where the eye is what it sees, where the heart is what it feels--this moment shows us that what is real is sacred
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No amount of thinking can stop thinking.
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Whatever opens us is not as important as what it opens.
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We need to meet, embrace and work with what we're given. For what we want and what we're given often serve two different gods. And how we respond to their meeting determines our path.
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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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Intuitive listening requires us to still our minds until the beauty of things older than our minds can find us.
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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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Every human has an unfathomable gift that only meeting life head on will reveal.
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The extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary.
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Whether you find it through mediation or sighing over tea or just turning all your devices off for five minutes, listening is an ancient lifeline by which we are awakened time and again. Once reawakened, we more easily find our way to each other, and so help each other live.
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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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