Mark Nepo quotes

The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are. (Mark Nepo)
The key to knowing joy is being easily pleased. View quote
Mark Nepo
Like roots finding water, we always wind up moving towards what sustains us. View quote
Mark Nepo
...there are no wrong turns, only unexpected paths. View quote
Mark Nepo
When we keep choosing between right and wrong. We spend our energy sorting life rather than living it. View quote
Mark Nepo
Anything or anyone that asks you to be other than yourself is not holy, but is trying only to fill its own need. View quote
Mark Nepo
To walk quietly until the miracle in everything speaks is poetry, whether we write it down or not. View quote
Mark Nepo
Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond. View quote
Mark Nepo
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. View quote
Mark Nepo
Those who truly love us will never knowingly ask us to be other than we are. View quote
Mark Nepo
...I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” (p.275) (Mark Nepo)
Whatever opens us is not as important as what it opens. View quote
Mark Nepo
The flower doesn't dream of the bee. It blossoms and the bee comes. View quote
Mark Nepo
To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. View quote
Mark Nepo
Water reflects everything it encounters. This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when in fact it has no color.... But the water, the glorious water everywhere, has taught me that we are more than what we reflect or love. This is the work of compassion: to embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are. View quote
Mark Nepo
To listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear. View quote
Mark Nepo
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. View quote
Mark Nepo
I've learned that loving your self requires a courage unlike any other. It requires us to believe in and stay loyal to something no one else can see that keeps us in the world - our own self worth. View quote
Mark Nepo
Sometimes the simplest and best use of our will is to drop it all and just walk out from under everything that is covering us, even if only for an hour or so-just walk out from under the webs we've spun, the tasks we've assumed, the problems we have to solve. They'll be there when we get back, and maybe some of them will fall apart without our worry to hold them up. View quote
Mark Nepo
We think that accomplishing things will complete us, when it is experiencing life that will. View quote
Mark Nepo
Rather than finding heaven on earth, we are asked to release heaven by living on earth. (Mark Nepo)
We work so hard to get somewhere, to realize a dream, to arrive at some destination, that we often forget that though some satisfaction may be waiting at the end of our endurance and effort, there is great and irreplaceable aliveness in the steps along the way. View quote
Mark Nepo
We are born with only one obligation - to be completely who we are. View quote
Mark Nepo
But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us. View quote
Mark Nepo
Just opening quietly for moments everyday can create a path by which life can reach us, the way rain carves a little stream in the earth by which the smallest flowers are watered. View quote
Mark Nepo