Follow Your Own Map - Mark Nepo

Every time we talk to someone, there comes back to us a map
of expectation as to how we should respond...

We share a confusion:
we are often given direction.

We share a pain;
we are often given instruction.

We share a desire;
we are often given a plan.

The power of these unspoken maps should not be
underestimated.  For the endless gravities of expectation
we move in and out of govern most of our thinking and
summons most of our energy in denying them or complying
with them.  In actuality, underneath all the plans, pressures,
and expectations, underneath all the subtle guidance and nudging,
the next step is truly unknown...

Thus, our spiritual charge is to maintain the wonder of the
singular explorer that each of us is...

The freshest step has always come when we are brave 
enough to land at the end of what little we know,
breathing in new air, in reaction to no one...

Mark Nepo
From: The Book of Awakening

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
(Scrapbooking paper) 

 

The Troll in the Mind - Mark Nepo

We spend so much time
anticipating what will happen next that we miss
the whisper of Heaven that unfolds wherever we are.

Though I have known and survived
many forms of pain
fear is the troll in the mind
that anticipates more.

And just as a loud noise prevents us
from finding the peace in the center of silence,
fear prevents us from finding
the inch of Heaven [Silence] in the center
of whatever moment we are in.

Yet, no matter how much I've been through
and how much I've learned,
I can't stop the wave of anticipation.
No one can.

It is part of being human.

Mark Nepo
(a cancer survivor)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
A dried rose petal with one
eye at the top of a big schnoz.
Looks like a troll to me :)

 

I'm Baaack :) & Mark Nepo

"The Pause" has ended for now...  I am re-entering blog land. :)
It was an intense "Pause" and life continues to be intense in
many ways, but I wanted to start sharing some of the insights,
poetry that came, and other people's writings that spoke to me
during the pause...
 In a kind of mysterious synchronicity I was
given what I needed to hear or see...

This does not mean that my life circumstances have changed.
  As always, life is an ever-unfolding experience - but I am trying
 to learn to *meet* life differently - trying to be open
 and listen more to where life wants me to go,
 with less resistance - and open more
 to Light - hopefully.

~*~

On Being "Lost" - Mark Nepo

From Day One of "The Pause"

When we lose our "self-created" map,
our real knowledge of the path begins...

...the journey truly begins when we lose possession of what
we *thought* were answers, and are left to accept that we are
not in control.  ...beyond every answer is a larger quest-ion.

Being lost on the inner plane can be understood as a
disorientation that is necessary as we are thrust from what we
*think* we know, into the vibrant field of all we do not know.

Being lost can be a prelude to a deeper way, because once we
admit that we're not sure where life is taking us, then we are
ripe for transformation.  Then we are shapeable.  When losing
our way, we frequently retreat and withhold or take what we
think is a safer path.  This often complicates our confusion.

The reason most people get/feel lost is because they don't go
far enough.  They doubt where they are and change direction
too soon.  Somehow we are called to lean forward [to lean
into life more] with what little light we are given.

There are sudden moments - lightening flashes - by which
we can navigate for a while, sometimes years. And the moods
of confusion in between - those very dark nights - are where
we need to practice patience [waiting].  Too often, when
drifting through a difficult passage of uncertainty, we punish
ourselves for not knowing more, or not being more decisive
[or more "spiritual"].

But the lightening flash to dark night and back again is part of
the journey, despite how hard we work.  When the lightening
flashes - in our mind or in our heart - we glimpse the hidden
order and our changing place in it.

If we can see our way *through* the uncertainty of feeling "lost",
unexpected callings often present themselves.

Mark Nepo
excerpts from Seven Thousand Ways to Listen:
Staying Close to the Sacred

~

Photo from the Internet

 

The Work of Love - Mark Nepo

It is not the work of love to change people,
or force their growth in our direction.
The work of love depends on giving others
a sense of safety in the world, nurturing their
confidence to lean into life and the unknown...

But how do we listen and be with those who
have fallen through the ice?
Stay close and keep them warm, resisting the
urge to prematurely solve the situation.  If
nothing can be done, sit with them and
withstand the urge to abandon those who
seem stuck.  Offer your tent and stay till
the way out presents itself, not forcing a rescue.

Mark Nepo
Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

 

Experience is a River - Mark Nepo

 Experience is a river that never stops coming.
Often we need to empty ourselves of conclusions, judgments
and preconceptions in order to meet whatever comes our way...

[We] must carry less - must put down the wounds that clog
and weigh the heart.  We must risk being touched [by life].

...letting go is not just about putting things down.
On a deeper plane, letting go is about letting your heart crumble,
about letting yourself be rearranged by the journey of being alive.

 It simply allows us to change.
It is a call to enter the unknown.

When we can admit who we are, and give voice to what lives
inside of us, [all that we feel and experience], that very act
opens us like an inlet and lets the depths of being rush in.
For in admitting who we are lets the mysteries of life enter us.
We are talking about the authenticity of being...

Mark Nepo
excerpts from - The Exquisite Risk: Daring to Live
an Authentic Life

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering

Loss after Loss - Mark Nepo

...Somehow we go on
loss after loss, like seeds
drowning in their possibilities
under all that snow.

From a distance, stars
are pins of light
pushing back the dark. 

But inside, each
is a world of light.

And the Spirit we carry -
that carries us - flares like a
star, everywhere we go pushing
back the pain and loss.

Still, a star can't be seen
without its covering of night,
nor a soul without its
human skin.

I don't know why -
It has nothing to do with
optimism or pessimism
or with triumph and defeat.

More, the impressible reach
of a beam of light entering the
darkest place it can find,
because that is how it
fulfills itself.

Mark Nepo
Excerpt from "Still"
From: Inside the Miracle

~

...[when the heart] is ripped apart
nothing makes sense while
in this re-arranging pain.
Nothing.
No matter what others say,
nothing is of comfort while
the heart is reforged in
the furnace no one asks for.

...Against our will, our heart
is remade by the angel of grief
who grips the center of our life,
shaking everything dead within us
from our branches, until
the heart condenses into a diamond.

Hard as this is to endure,
this too is a miracle.

Mark Nepo

Excerpts from: "After Mira"

From: Inside the Miracle.

~

Photo: Mystic Meandering

The Troll in the Mind - Mark Nepo

We spend so much time
anticipating what will happen next that we miss
the whisper of Heaven that unfolds wherever we are.

Though I have known and survived
many forms of pain,
fear is the troll in the mind
that anticipates more.

And just as a loud noise prevents us
from finding the peace in the center of silence,
fear prevents us from finding
the inch of Heaven in the center
of whatever moment we are in.

Yet, no matter how much I've been through
and how much I've learned,
I can't stop the wave of anticipation.
No one can.

It is part of being human.

Mark Nepo
(a cancer survivor)

~

Photo - Mystic Meandering
 A dried rose petal with one eye
at the top and a big schnozz.
Looks like a troll to me :)

Churning - Mark Nepo

Art by Peter Koster

Having loved and lost enough,
I'm no longer searching
just opening,

no longer trying to make sense of pain
but trying to be a soft and sturdy home
in which real things can land.

These are the irritations
that rub into a pearl.

So we can talk for a while
but then we must listen,
the way rocks listen to the sea.

And we can churn at all that goes wrong
but then we must lay all distractions
down and water every living seed.

And yes, on nights like tonight
I too feel alone.  But seldom do I
face it squarely enough
to see that it's a door
into the endless breath
that has no breather,
into the surf that human
shells call "God."

Mark Nepo

via - Being Silently Drawn

Personal note:  I've been "churning" a lot lately over the externals of life and living (like the churning waves of the sea), distracted, unable to settle into the "Listening."  The poem reminded me to step back from the things that make me "churn" inside, that keep me from hearing the quiet lapping of Grace upon the shore of my heart and just listen to its Rhythm...

~

Art - Peter Koster
Autumn Surf

Breathe in Life - Jeff Foster & Mark Nepo

from tinybuddha.com

...in truth, nothing is lacking where you are,
nothing is missing from the present scene
of the movie of your life,
and you are forever full, and complete...

The day is just waiting to be lived.
So breathe in life, friend,
breathe in life...

Jeff Foster

~

We waste so much energy trying to cover up who we are
when beneath every attitude is the want to be loved,
and beneath every anger is a wound to be healed
and beneath every sadness is the fear that there
will not be enough time...

When we hesitate in being direct (authentic), we unknowingly
slip something on, some added layer of protection
that keeps us from feeling the world/life...

Our challenge every day is not to get dressed to
face the world, but to unglove ourselves so that
the doorknob feels cold, and the car handle
feels wet, and the kiss goodbye feels
the lips of another being...

Mark Nepo

From: The Book of Awakening

Honoring The Mystery - Mark Nepo

Somehow we have been dropped into the Mystery,
below our roles, and identities, fallen through our maps into
one stream of love.  Some moment or circumstance becomes
an unexpected doorway into the Mystery.  We never know how
it will appear, or how we will be drawn to it...

Honoring the Mystery is what opens us to the powers of wholeness -
this unknowable totality that we live in.  To honor the Mystery is
not just to glimpse the whole, or even acknowledge the whole, but
to live our days with [as] that wholeness...  Commit to leaning into
life until it drops you beneath your surface maps of reality...

Though we pray to the many faces of God, each is a changing
wave in the sea of Divine Being...  Any circumstance that
awakens us to that divine sea is a holy gift...

If courageous enough we might just slow down to the pace
of creation, where the pulse by which the mind thinks touches
the pulse by which the heart feels, and together they equal the
rhythm where Being plays in exact motion with all beings...

Nothing matters but emptying...

until the softness we call Spirit bubbles through the tongue
and words fail in utter adoration.
Nothing now but the need to be...

Mark Nepo
From: The Exquisite Risk

~

Photo - Water on Windshield through a car wash :)

Follow Your Own Footsteps - Mark Nepo

Every time we talk to someone, there comes back to us a map
 of expectation as to how we should respond...

We share a confusion:
we are often given direction.

We share a pain;
we are often given instruction.

We share a desire;
we are often given a plan.

The power of these unspoken maps should not be underestimated.
For the endless gravities of expectation we move in and out of
govern most of our thinking and summons most of our energy
in denying them or complying with them.

In actuality, underneath all the plans, pressures, and expectations,
underneath all the subtle guidance and nudging, the next step
is truly unknown...

Thus, our spiritual charge is to maintain the wonder of the
singular explorer that each of us is...

The freshest step has always come when we are brave
enough to land at the end of what little we know,
breathing in new air, in reaction to no one, in wonder at
what is...

Mark Nepo

From: The Book of Awakening

(Mark's words, my format)

Losing the Maps - Mark Nepo & Kastrup

Just when we're softened by the years,.
when we have enough experience to see
for ourselves, our maps are torn from us.
This can be frightening, but there's divine
timing in the dissolution of a stubborn mind,
the way an inlet waits on the last rock to crumble
so it can find its destiny to the sea.  Losing the
way set out by others is necessary so we can discover
for ourselves what it means to be alive.  Now we can
burn the clothes others have laid out for us, [other's
maps of reality, other's agendas], not in anger, but
to light our way.  Now we can let the soul spill its
honey on the unleavened life we've been carrying.
Now we can rise.

Mark Nepo

Poem from: Inside the Miracle

[brackets mine]

~

All explanations are myths whose truth-value we
assign subjectively.  They are true only in so far
as we say they are true.  They are stories we
conjure up and tell ourselves in order to make sense
of the disconnected, context-free phantasmagoria of
present perception.  It makes no sense to proclaim
any explanation for the present to be objectively true...

Bernard Kastrup
More Than Allegory
via - Markings

Uncover the Original Center - Mark Nepo

Each person is born with an unencumbered spot -
an umbilical spot of Grace where we were each first
touched by God.  Psychologists call this spot
Psyche, Theologians call it the Soul, Jung calls it the
Seat of the Unconscious, Hindu Masters call it Atman,
Buddhists call it Dharma, Rilke calls it Inwardness,
Sufis call it Qalb, and Jesus calls it the center of Love.

To know this spot of Inwardness is to know who we are,
not by surface markers of identity.....but by feeling our
place in relation to the Infinite, and by inhabiting it.  This
is a life-long task, for the nature of becoming is a constant
"filming over" [covering over] of where we begin [began],
while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is
not essential; to be worn back to that incorruptible spot
of Grace at our core.

When the film [covering] is worn through, we have
moments of enlightenment, moments of wholeness,
moments of Satori, as the Zen Sages term it, moments
of clear living, moments of full integrity of being,
moments of complete Oneness.

And whether the film is a veil of culture, or religious
training, the removal of that film and the restoration
of that timeless spot is the goal.  This is the only thing
worth teaching:  how to uncover that original center and
how to live there once it is restored.  The process of
return, whether brought about by suffering or love, is
how we unlearn our way back go God [to the core of Grace].

Mark Nepo
Excerpt from: The Book of Awakening

~

Photo of Tomato

I sliced a tomato a few weeks back and
found the white Christian cross in the center, and
in the middle of that cross, a little red heart.

Can you see it?!

Although I am no longer a Christian, or any other
religion for that matter, I still seek the Truth of
Existence and direct experience of "The Divine",
however one defines that for themselves.
I couldn't help but see the message in the tomato;
not a "Christian" message, but a universal message,
that no matter what one's religious identification,
regardless of "tradition",
The Heart, Love, is really the "original center" of
everything!

Namaste!

_/\_

Humble Lovers of The Mystery - Nepo, Rumi, Bhagavad Gita

I don't know why I was born
with this belief in [awareness of] something
deeper and larger than we can see.
But it's always called.  Even as a boy [child],
I knew that trees and light and sky all point
to something timeless...

I have spent my life listening to that
and filtering it through my heart.
This listening and filtering is the music
of my soul, of all souls.
After sixty years, I've run out of ways
to name this...
Even now my heart won't stand still...

Mark Nepo
(Jewish)

Also see "Honoring The Mystery"

~

Both light and shadow
are the dance of love.
Love has no cause;
it is the astrolabe of God's secrets...
Lover and loving are inseparable
and timeless...

Although I may try to describe Love,
when I experience it, I am speechless.
Although I may try to write about Love,
I am rendered helpless;
my pen breaks, and the paper slips away
at the ineffable place
where Lover, Loving and Loved are one.

Every moment is made glorious
by the light of Love.

Rumi
(Sufi Muslim)

~

Still your mind in me, still yourself in me,
and without a doubt you shall be united with me,
Lord of Love, dwelling in the heart...

Bhagavad Gita
Chapter 12 excerpt
(Hindu Scripture)

~

Photo - Buddha Heart

Resilience - Nepo and Tesla

Some days I wake with a cloud around my heart,
and it dulls everything except the weight I carry deep inside.
Yet, just because I can't make it to the light today doesn't mean
that the light has vanished...

Mark Nepo

In the first hours post dawn,
at the edge of a dark night,
I awake,..

breathing labored,
fever peaked,
sweat running down my spine...

Inexplicable dread overtakes me...

But somehow the Light finds me
and I rise again to a new day,
facing the merry-go-round of life,
as we all do...
Needing a dose of inspiration,
and a bit of wisdom...

Here is my inspiration for the day.
Once again recognizing the larger context
in which we exist...

If you want to find the secrets of the universe,
think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

Nikola Tesla

Transcription of Narrative:

Like a wave in the physical world, in the Infinite Ocean of the medium which pervades all,so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, maybe, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present.

A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes of Nature.

In no way can we get such an overwhelming idea of the grandeur of Nature than when we consider that in accordance with the law of conservation of energy, throughout the Infinite, the forces are in perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.

Nikola Tesla
The Electrical Review, 1893

via: Love is a Place
Thank you Alixe!

Honoring The Mystery - Mark Nepo

Somehow we have been dropped into the Mystery, below role,
fallen through our maps into one stream of love.
Some moment or circumstance becomes and unexpected doorway
into the Mystery,  We never know how it will appear, or how we will
be drawn into it...

Honoring the Mystery is what opens us to the powers of wholeness -
this unknowable totality that we live in.  To honor the Mystery is
not just to glimpse the whole, or even acknowledge the whole, but
to live our days with [as] that wholeness...  Commit to leaning into
life until it drops us beneath our surface maps of reality...

Though we pray to the many faces of God, each is a changing
wave in a sea of Divine Being...  Any circumstance that
awakens us to that divine sea is a holy gift...

If courageous enough we might just slow down to the pace of
creation, where the pulse by which the mind thinks touches the
pulse by which the heart feels, and together they equal the rhythm
where Being plays in exact motion with all beings...

Nothing matters but emptying...
until the softness we call Spirit bubbles through the tongue and
words fail in utter adoration.
Nothing now but the need to be...

Mark Nepo
Quotes from: The Exquisite Risk

~

Photo - Windshield going through car wash :)

An Unfinished Song - Mark Nepo

The more we surrender the more we are touched by
the life around us...

In our journey, when.....driven by experience
we spiral through a stripping of our will,
reduced to an unfinished song.....into
a place of increasing surrender
that always brings us closer
to the essence of
life.

It is often when in need -
when too sad to keep the mask in place,
too tired to keep the wall propped up,
too wounded to lift the sword -
often it is then that we glimpse
each other as we really are,
stripped of all things we think
we need to protect ourselves.

When we are humbled to surrender
our claims of control and mastery,
we are invited into a space where
we are both completely ourselves
and completely beyond ourselves.

In moments of total surrender
we become the song
that brings us and others alive.

Surrendering control, letting go
and accepting,
opens a small
doorway
back
to life;
to being present
and staying open...
to the mystery of Being,
living in Wholeness...


Mark Nepo
From: The Exquisite Risk:
Daring To Live An Authentic Life

(Mark's words, my compilation)

Photo - Mandala Art digitally altered

Emptying - Mark Nepo

Experience is a river that never stops coming.
Often we need to empty ourselves of conclusions, judgments and
preconceptions in order to meet whatever comes our way...
The early monastic vow of poverty was based on the need to empty,
as a way to involve a deeper form of listening.
In its original intent we find that poverty of mind reflects a quietude
that can restore an inner emptiness.  Poverty in an inner sense means
a divestment of all the distractions that occupy the mind.  It means an
emptying of the interior belongings that keep us from the essential
experience of being that waits beneath all our human noise.

[We] must carry less - must put down the wounds that clog
 and weigh the heart.  We must risk being touched [by life].

[But] letting go is not just about putting things down.
On a deeper plane, letting go is about letting your heart crumble,
 about letting yourself be rearranged by the journey of being alive.
  To soften and crumble is not to die.  It simply allows us to change.
  It is a call to enter the unknown.

When we can admit who we are, and give voice to what lives inside us,
[all that we feel and experience], that very act opens us like an inlet
and lets the depths of being rush in.  For in admitting who we are lets
the mysteries of life enter us.
We are talking about the authenticity of being.

Mark Nepo

From - The Exquisite Risk: Daring To Live An Authentic Life

~

Photo - the bottom of a glass bowl...

Buffers of Perception - Mark Nepo

Through our self-will and self-control,
we have buffered ourselves from the mysterious
dimensions of spirit...

When we assume that we author everything we experience
we snuff the possibility of being touched by the more
numinous dimensions of reality...

Our constant insistence that we are self-creators
of our own destiny,
the builders of our own circumstances,
can create a spiritual cataract that blocks us
from being touched by the mystical light of spirit
that so often surrounds us - from
honoring how the Divine speaks directly
through the things of this world...

Somehow we fear such direct contact with grace...

A continual and deep risk for us,
if we are to feel the presence
and friendship of all that is,
is to humbly lift the veils we drape ourselves in,
the veils that insulate us as the self-creators
of everything we experience.

Whether we accept it or not,
we are asked to let life,
in all its unseeable elements,
touch us -
letting the indwelling spirit
pass through us...

We can become dangerously small
and insular if we limit truth to just
what our small lives have encountered.
Compassion allows us to embrace
the underlying truth that all experiences
thread together to form the
living Universe...

Mark Nepo
From - The Exquisite Risk:
Daring to Live an Authentic Life

(Mark's words, my format)

Authentically You - V. Erickson, Nepo & MM

Often times, a person will think they know you by piecing together
tiny facts and arranging those pieces into  a puzzle that makes sense
to them.  If we don't know ourselves very well, we'll mistakenly believe
them, and drift toward where they tell us to swim,
only to drown in our own confusion.

Here's the truth:  It's important to take the necessary steps to find out
who You are [our True Beingness.] Because you hold endless depths
 below the surface of a few facts and pieces and past decisions.
You aren't only the ripples others can see.
You are made of Oceans...

Victoria Erickson
Author of: Edge of Wonder

~

What it really comes down to is the clearness of heart to stop
defining who you are by those who have hurt you
and to take up the risk to love:
to live at the vibrant edge
of being spirit in the world
exploring the intoxicating quandaries
of being alive,
accepting the grace of our
humanness...

Mark Nepo
The Exquisite Risk:
Daring to Live an Authentic Life

~

It's about being enlivened from within;
being fiercely true to the core of our Being:
Compassion, Love and Pure Aliveness...

Open to *how* That wants to express ItSelf as us -
allowing the Dynamic Mystery that we are
to express ItSelf from deep within...
Not needing to take a stand on anything,
but finely attuned to the Heart of Love -
discovering a deeper Wisdom...

Mystic Meandering
Meditative Writings
Sept, 2016

_/\_

Photo: Craypas oils

done with fingers