Speaker 1: The terrible knowledge is that we can be erased in
Speaker 1: a second. And I don't say that to scare anyone.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time, great thinkers
Speaker 1: have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have, quotes
Speaker 1: like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you
Speaker 1: think ring true. And yet for many of us, our
Speaker 1: thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf m
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is
Speaker 1: Mark Nepo, a poet, philosopher, and cancer survivor who has
Speaker 1: taught in the fields of poetry, health, and spirituality for
Speaker 1: forty years. A New York Times Number one best selling author,
Speaker 1: he has published numerous books and audio projects. Mark has
Speaker 1: appeared with Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday program
Speaker 1: on Own TV, and has also been interviewed by Robin
Speaker 1: Roberts on Good Morning America. And here's the interview with
Speaker 1: Mark Nepo. Hi, Mark, welcome to the show. Thank you.
Speaker 1: It's great to be with you. It's a real pleasure
Speaker 1: to have you on. I have seen your books on
Speaker 1: shelves for years. The Book of Awakening I read years
Speaker 1: ago and I really liked and I really enjoyed your
Speaker 1: latest book, Inside the Miracle. So I'm looking forward to
Speaker 1: getting into that book in more detail. But we'll start
Speaker 1: we normally do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's
Speaker 1: talking with his grandson. He says, in life, there are
Speaker 1: two wolves inside of us that are always at battle.
Speaker 1: One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness
Speaker 1: and bravery and love, and the other is a bad wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And
Speaker 1: the grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second,
Speaker 1: and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,
Speaker 1: which one wins? And the grandfather says, the one you feed.
Speaker 1: So I'd like to start off by asking you what
Speaker 1: that parable means to you in your life, and in
Speaker 1: the work that you do, as well as anyways that
Speaker 1: you like to feed the good wolf in your own life.
Speaker 1: Sure well, thank you all. I love I love that parable,
Speaker 1: I know it. I know it well, and as i'd
Speaker 1: like to reflect on it. Um, I'd like to move
Speaker 1: away from good and bad. You know, I find in
Speaker 1: my not not to a place of relativism where we
Speaker 1: say there is no good or bad, but but in
Speaker 1: terms of how we move through life. I'd like to
Speaker 1: reflect on this, uh, in terms of things that are
Speaker 1: life affirming and things that are life draining. Because often
Speaker 1: I find when we're told we're good or we're bad,
Speaker 1: or we're up or we're down, or we're true or
Speaker 1: we're false, or you know, all of these directional judgments,
Speaker 1: they're just not specific enough to be helpful. You know,
Speaker 1: if you tell me I'm bad, I feel bad, but
Speaker 1: I don't really understand what that means in a way
Speaker 1: that's going to help me change. And likewise, if you
Speaker 1: tell me I'm good, well, I feel relieved for a minute,
Speaker 1: but I also don't really know what that means in
Speaker 1: terms of what to what to reinforce. So for me,
Speaker 1: I feel like we are made up just like X
Speaker 1: and Y chromosomes. We begin with I think, everything we
Speaker 1: need inside us, and as we engage in the life
Speaker 1: of experience, we move constantly between life affirming energies and
Speaker 1: life draining energies. And the life draining energies make us
Speaker 1: look for only things that will confirm what we already know,
Speaker 1: look for things that will only give us the illusion
Speaker 1: that we're in control, you know, and they will feed
Speaker 1: fear and violence and hate and sameness. But when we
Speaker 1: pursue our aliveness, which I think is what the soul
Speaker 1: wants us to do, When we pursue our aliveness, which
Speaker 1: changes for every individual throughout their life, then we come
Speaker 1: alive and we inhabit our gifts, and so we're all
Speaker 1: which one do we feed? Do we do we feed
Speaker 1: what's life affirming? Or do we feed what's life draining?
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. One of the things
Speaker 1: in your book that you talk about a little bit
Speaker 1: you were just talking about can troll, And in the
Speaker 1: latest book you say that our personal suffering is often
Speaker 1: intensified by our want to control life and failing to
Speaker 1: be in control. While believing in control makes us feel
Speaker 1: accountable for all that breaks along the way, and so
Speaker 1: there is guilt, but where guilt is secreted by a
Speaker 1: controlling mind, compassion emanates from an accepting heart. Yeah, you know,
Speaker 1: and I think, you know, we're just all comparing notes.
Speaker 1: Nobody really has a clue about this great history of
Speaker 1: life and and that's the wonderful things. And we can
Speaker 1: admit we don't know anything, then we can really begin
Speaker 1: a true journey or inquiry together. So you know, let
Speaker 1: me first say I don't have any answers, um, But
Speaker 1: all I can do is speak from my own experience.
Speaker 1: And you know, all of these things, even what we
Speaker 1: talked about in terms of life draining and life affirming energies,
Speaker 1: I have, you know, pursued both. I have fallen trying
Speaker 1: to control things, and um, it's part of being human.
Speaker 1: But where we go with it, what we do with it?
Speaker 1: And when we fall down do we get up? And
Speaker 1: so you know, I think that I learned through my
Speaker 1: my journey and my cancer journey many years ago, we
Speaker 1: really have very little control over life. We which doesn't
Speaker 1: mean oh therefore there's nothing to do. I should acquiesce
Speaker 1: and just live like a rock. You know, there's a
Speaker 1: difference between participating and engaging in life and trying to
Speaker 1: control events and people and the thoughts and feelings of
Speaker 1: those around us. And when we do try to control things,
Speaker 1: which is impossible, we we wind up becoming more and
Speaker 1: more anxious and irritated, and we wind up resenting the
Speaker 1: life around us that won't stay controlled. So you know,
Speaker 1: there's a uh, it's not in this book, but I
Speaker 1: have a small, little, very very short story in my
Speaker 1: book of stories as far as the heart can see.
Speaker 1: It's called Cane and Able. I can't recite it, but
Speaker 1: I can tell you exactly the essence of it. And
Speaker 1: the essence is that, you know, two brothers. They find
Speaker 1: themselves with one small berry in their weaker hand, and
Speaker 1: the one the one brother looks at it and he
Speaker 1: and it's so small compared to everything he's worked for
Speaker 1: and wanted and dreamed of that it makes him bitter.
Speaker 1: But the other brother looks at the small berry and
Speaker 1: he says, oh my god, I think I think all
Speaker 1: my work has led me to this small berry. I
Speaker 1: think the whole world is inside that one little berry.
Speaker 1: And so he and you can also this is another
Speaker 1: version of of which one will you feed? Now we
Speaker 1: both we all have these voices in us. We have
Speaker 1: the voice that looks at at whatever we're given and goes,
Speaker 1: is that it? After all I've done, after all I've worked?
Speaker 1: Is that all I get? And that that makes us it?
Speaker 1: Or that makes us want to, you know, file a
Speaker 1: grievance with God somewhere. But but the other is we
Speaker 1: wake up like I did after my cancer journey, and
Speaker 1: I go, oh my god, it was all here right
Speaker 1: all along. It's in this little berry. Let me eat
Speaker 1: this berry that has everything. Oh my god, how amazing
Speaker 1: is that? And I think everybody has this ongoing conversation
Speaker 1: between these two voices. And one other thing I have
Speaker 1: learned along the way is that as soon as we
Speaker 1: we stop and we all do two compare or account
Speaker 1: our experience compared to our dream of what we're working toward,
Speaker 1: or compared to others, or compared to those in history.
Speaker 1: As soon as we compare or count, we lose our
Speaker 1: access to everything that matters because you can't be present
Speaker 1: and compare or count. Yeah, that's something we talked about
Speaker 1: on the show A lot. Is this idea of you know,
Speaker 1: how how painful comparison can be. I think it was
Speaker 1: maybe Teddy Roosevelt who said that, um, you know, comparison
Speaker 1: is the thief of joy. Oh that's beautiful. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: a wonderful expression. What I've noticed about is when you're
Speaker 1: what's're in the comparing mind, you can always look and
Speaker 1: be like, well, I've got more than that person, but
Speaker 1: I've got less. You know, wherever you are in the scale,
Speaker 1: you can always look up or down. And my experience
Speaker 1: of that is always that it neither of those points.
Speaker 1: Am I Connecting? This leads Eric to another kind of
Speaker 1: ongoing challenge that's part of the human journey, and that
Speaker 1: is that everyone alive goes through repeated challenges about inflating
Speaker 1: ourselves or deflating ourselves. And the practice I think, or
Speaker 1: at least what I aspire to is whenever I'm going
Speaker 1: one way or the other, is to really try to
Speaker 1: just assume my full stature. Not not larger than I
Speaker 1: am and not small older than I am, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I was, I'm sixty four. But and in
Speaker 1: each decade I have a different form of exercise. But
Speaker 1: when I was in my fort I jogged, and uh,
Speaker 1: I was jogging one day in the summer. I was
Speaker 1: living in Albany, New York at the time. And I was,
Speaker 1: you know, tired, about three miles in and it had
Speaker 1: was sweating, and I had panting, and my hands were
Speaker 1: on my knees, and it had rained the night before,
Speaker 1: and I was looking in a puddle, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, I saw this full grown man in the
Speaker 1: puddle and it was me. And and I realized, you know,
Speaker 1: I had been a little boy running around in a
Speaker 1: big man's body for years, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: I saw myself, just briefly, accurately, and it it was
Speaker 1: one of those moments that changed changed me, that changed
Speaker 1: me to assume my accurate, full stature, not to be
Speaker 1: anybody else, and not to be inflated or deflated. There's
Speaker 1: that spiritual idea of humility, which is often I think
Speaker 1: interpreted as being you know, oh I'm nothing, I'm nothing,
Speaker 1: whereas you know, the way I the best way I've
Speaker 1: always heard humility defined is an accurate reading of of
Speaker 1: really who we are, what we're good at, what we're
Speaker 1: not good at. I mean, just a very accurate picture
Speaker 1: of who we are. Is is humility versus a um
Speaker 1: sort of a a false sort of condescension towards ourselves. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and when we when we can be accurate about ourselves,
Speaker 1: where we're open to life around us, we're more open
Speaker 1: to life around us. Because when we're bigger than we are,
Speaker 1: then we're like the Wizard of Oz, we're really trying
Speaker 1: to keep puffing it up. And when we're smaller than
Speaker 1: we are, then we're doing that comparing thing, and we're
Speaker 1: always trying to knock everything else down because we feel
Speaker 1: so small, and neither neither allows us to truly relate
Speaker 1: to life and to those around us. Yeah. One of
Speaker 1: my favorite lines of yours is you say, if peace
Speaker 1: comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a
Speaker 1: loss of perspective. Yeah. Yeah, you know I think this,
Speaker 1: Uh that also really came to me through my own suffering,
Speaker 1: because I think that I learned while I was going
Speaker 1: through my cancer journey that to be broken is no
Speaker 1: reason to see all things is broken and that and again,
Speaker 1: it's like we're talking here, it's not about it's not
Speaker 1: about you know, when when we're in pain and when
Speaker 1: we're in fear, it's natural and human to want well, Okay,
Speaker 1: the whole world is painful. I'm broken, Therefore everything everything
Speaker 1: is terrible. Um. The world's chaotic and broken and um.
Speaker 1: And when I'm in pain, then everything is painful or
Speaker 1: I'm afraid therefore the whole world. It's understandable to do that.
Speaker 1: But that is both things are true. And you know
Speaker 1: when I when I was you know, broken and sick
Speaker 1: and and you know, close to dying and afraid, I
Speaker 1: had you know, I had a moment where that was
Speaker 1: all true, and that was overwhelming, and the light outside
Speaker 1: of my home that day was still beautiful, and somewhere,
Speaker 1: not very far away, though I don't know where, somebody
Speaker 1: was making love, and somewhere else, not very far away,
Speaker 1: a child was being born, and somewhere else someone was
Speaker 1: helping somebody. And and so you know, both things are true.
Speaker 1: And while when we're suffering, we need the company of
Speaker 1: those who know what it's like to suffer. When I'm suffering,
Speaker 1: I need I need everything that's not suffering to heal.
Speaker 1: When I'm broken, I need everything that's solid to heal.
Speaker 1: And so being in the moment, which we talk a
Speaker 1: lot about in our age, and I think rightfully so,
Speaker 1: but we tend sometimes to make a cartoon out of it.
Speaker 1: Being in the moment isn't just oh well, I can
Speaker 1: forget about responsibility or the past, or the future or
Speaker 1: others and just live with abandon and enjoy it. Now,
Speaker 1: being in the moment means being in my moment to
Speaker 1: the depth of my experience where it starts to touch
Speaker 1: on all experience, and being in the moment of life
Speaker 1: that is happening everywhere at the same time, beyond my
Speaker 1: individual journey, and allowing those things to merge. You know,
Speaker 1: it's interesting that we're taught as we grow up. We're
Speaker 1: all taught to discern things, to sort, to prioritize, and
Speaker 1: then choose. And this is a very great skill, uh,
Speaker 1: that the mind has that helps us navigate the surface world.
Speaker 1: It helps me put gas in the car and choose
Speaker 1: cottage cheese over milk, and you know, choose a cough
Speaker 1: syrup and not the poison, the end poison it's next
Speaker 1: to it um. And that's all necessary. But but I think, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, that kind of mental acuity is not a
Speaker 1: code to live by. It's a skill to help us live.
Speaker 1: And what experience has taught me is that the longer
Speaker 1: I go and the deeper I feel, things both wonderful
Speaker 1: and difficult the more I feel like like experience asks
Speaker 1: us to let everything in, to absorb it and let
Speaker 1: it integrate, to let it synthesize. And the mind can't
Speaker 1: do that. Only the heart, I believe, can do that.
Speaker 1: And that when we can hold the truth of all things,
Speaker 1: then and it releases a logic of the heart. And
Speaker 1: this is where we get into the realm of paradox. Yes,
Speaker 1: one of the guardians of truth. Paradox has been a
Speaker 1: great teacher for me. And and one of the ways
Speaker 1: that I understand paradox is that, you know, we can
Speaker 1: describe paradox as any moment where more than one thing
Speaker 1: is true at the same time. And so if we
Speaker 1: can withstand that seeming tension of opposites, we we start
Speaker 1: to to be instructed in a deeper way, a deeper
Speaker 1: way of things being like the fact that I could be,
Speaker 1: you know, struggling and sick with cancer, and a mile away,
Speaker 1: you know, somebody is being born, you know, and one
Speaker 1: is you know, not more valuable than the other or
Speaker 1: or competing with the There they inform each other. Breast
Speaker 1: of the interview with Mark Nepo in the latest book,
Speaker 1: you have a line that speaks very much to what
Speaker 1: we were just talking about that I had pulled out,
Speaker 1: And it says, the sighted finn only implies the wonder
Speaker 1: of the great fish pumping below, and the sighted star
Speaker 1: only implies the oceans of light flooding the universe beyond
Speaker 1: the range of our eyes. In just this way, everything
Speaker 1: worth knowing is cloaked in paradox, because everything substantial defies
Speaker 1: being revealed in its totality. Thank you, Thank you, And
Speaker 1: I think that you know. So in that way, we're
Speaker 1: always I think the physical world, the tangible world, is
Speaker 1: like the tip of the iceberg. It's a manifestation of
Speaker 1: the invisible energies of life, whatever you want to call them.
Speaker 1: And you know, the mystical call it, you know, the
Speaker 1: glow and shimmer of spirit, and you know, physicists call
Speaker 1: it the wave theory that's in between particles. But whatever
Speaker 1: whatever we call it, there's more than just the surface world.
Speaker 1: It points to the invisible. And so one of the
Speaker 1: things I think that we're asked to do in being
Speaker 1: human and incoming alive, is to maintain our relationship with
Speaker 1: with all that is unseen and unknown, to stay in
Speaker 1: conversation with what we don't know. It's a huge uh
Speaker 1: point of contention in in our modern global world because
Speaker 1: we live in an age where there is fundamentalism worldwide.
Speaker 1: Nobody has a uh kind of a monopoly on fundamentalism.
Speaker 1: Not right. You know, we have domestic fundamentalism and and
Speaker 1: every culture has its orthodoxy and fundamentalism. But I also believe,
Speaker 1: and I write about this in The Endless Practice, but um,
Speaker 1: we we've developed a personal fundamentalism where you know, we
Speaker 1: become so accustomed to what's familiar that we we think
Speaker 1: of that as truth, and actually that insight is not mine.
Speaker 1: That's Robert Keegan's from Who's the psychologist from Harvard Developmental Psychologist,
Speaker 1: which I love is he talks about egocentrism as when
Speaker 1: we we substitute what is familiar as true because it's familiar,
Speaker 1: we believe it's true. And now only things that are
Speaker 1: familiar to us will we allow in. And then we
Speaker 1: the fear that anything that's not familiar is dangerous, and
Speaker 1: therefore we start having racism and prejudice and violence. And
Speaker 1: as opposed to you know, Plato said that we're all
Speaker 1: born whole w h o eli, but we need each
Speaker 1: other to be complete and and in the Jewish tradition
Speaker 1: that wholeness that we're born with is spoken about as
Speaker 1: as the indwelling presence of God that's only manifest when
Speaker 1: we are in relationship with each other, or with life,
Speaker 1: or in conversation with our soul. So there's a huge
Speaker 1: emphasis in the Jewish tradition on relationship and dialogue and
Speaker 1: conversation because that's how you know, which assumes that we're not.
Speaker 1: I don't talk to you to confirm my our sameness.
Speaker 1: I talk to you so that I can learn from
Speaker 1: you what I don't know, and you for me what
Speaker 1: you don't know, and together were we are made more whole.
Speaker 1: So those have always been fundamental, you know, different kind
Speaker 1: of starting points in the in the human journey. At
Speaker 1: any point in history you can find you can find
Speaker 1: there really are two lineages. Yeah, and I think that
Speaker 1: modern culture has a definite sense of to not have
Speaker 1: the answer is something that we're very afraid of. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and actually, you know, I think that we've been
Speaker 1: miseducated that that we should even look for answers. I
Speaker 1: view a question now at this point in my life
Speaker 1: as a doorway that I would like to open and
Speaker 1: go through with someone not for an answer so that
Speaker 1: we can live something together. Yeah, there's that great old
Speaker 1: quote from Rocca about learning to love the questions and
Speaker 1: then some day you might be able to live your
Speaker 1: way into the answers. Yeah, that's a beautiful, beautiful statement.
Speaker 1: So your latest book is called Inside the Miracle, Enduring Offering,
Speaker 1: Approaching Wholeness, and it's a series of writings from a
Speaker 1: lot of different times in your life, but the the
Speaker 1: original some of the original parts of the book were
Speaker 1: from when you had cancer, I believe, back in the
Speaker 1: late eighties. So a lot of the book is focused
Speaker 1: on if I had to if I had to summarize,
Speaker 1: A big part of it is that it's precisely these
Speaker 1: challenging experiences, these difficult experiences that we go through that
Speaker 1: turn us into who we are, that that's the path
Speaker 1: to wisdom. Very often, what I've done with this book,
Speaker 1: which I'm very grateful uh to my publisher, sounds true
Speaker 1: for the chance to do this is I've taken work
Speaker 1: over thirty years, starting with my cancer journey and and
Speaker 1: moving through you know, all the different ways that my
Speaker 1: perceiving has changed and other struggles and losses to try
Speaker 1: to glean the lessons and the the inquiry, and so
Speaker 1: to put that together after all this time was a
Speaker 1: real gift to be able to explore that. And I'm
Speaker 1: not like deifying suffering, you know, um uh, it's it's
Speaker 1: not about that. It's more about it's like you wouldn't
Speaker 1: dispute gravity, you know, like it just is. And you know,
Speaker 1: suffering and difficulty and obstacles, as well as surprise and
Speaker 1: wonder and the overwhelming impetus of love. All of these
Speaker 1: things they're equivalent to what friction and erosion are in nature.
Speaker 1: So in the natural world, things are eroded to their beauty.
Speaker 1: You know, we save up money and we go on
Speaker 1: vacation to look at the Grand Canyon, or to go
Speaker 1: to the edge of uh one of the continents and
Speaker 1: look at cliffs that have been pounded for thousands of
Speaker 1: years by the sea. And so the human equivalent to
Speaker 1: that is great love and great suffering, great surprise, and
Speaker 1: great obstacle. And it seems like the order of the universe.
Speaker 1: However you want to deem that, whether you talk believe
Speaker 1: in God or Ackman or dharma or quantum physics or
Speaker 1: everything or nothing, whatever it is, it seems like the
Speaker 1: universe has been designed to be just the human journey,
Speaker 1: the life journey, not just human is difficult enough that
Speaker 1: we need each other to hold each other up to
Speaker 1: that erosion and wearing down. And I think that ensures
Speaker 1: the journey of love. And you know, in the same
Speaker 1: way that a piece of coal can be pressurized into
Speaker 1: a diamond, so to we And so this is just
Speaker 1: kind of a spiritual physics that I don't know that
Speaker 1: I would have seen had I not been pressurized myself
Speaker 1: and eroded and broken open. And so I think that, um,
Speaker 1: I'm more My work is focused on has always been
Speaker 1: focused on, and I think all the traditions are focused on.
Speaker 1: So what do we do once once we're opened? You know,
Speaker 1: and that becomes part of that becomes a big part
Speaker 1: of the spiritual journey. We will be opened, there's no
Speaker 1: question about it. Just the same way that there's gravity,
Speaker 1: or that rain will fall to the ground, or that
Speaker 1: you know, erosion will wear mountains away, we will be
Speaker 1: broken open. And how we hold each other up and
Speaker 1: support each other. And what we do with what's opened
Speaker 1: is when the soul starts to show itself in the world.
Speaker 1: And you know, this is the thing that Tibetan tradition,
Speaker 1: a spiritual warrior not a military warrior. A spiritual warrior
Speaker 1: is one who is committed to a life of transformation,
Speaker 1: not knowing what that is will look like. But a
Speaker 1: spiritual warrior always has a crack in their heart, because
Speaker 1: that's how the mysteries get in. And so you know,
Speaker 1: we are cracked open. And and when that happens, what
Speaker 1: the The The light that is in us comes out, and
Speaker 1: the light of the world comes in. And now now
Speaker 1: for the first time, we can't distinguish what's the world
Speaker 1: and what's me. And now we are more one, and
Speaker 1: our compassion begins to be released. There's a beautiful line
Speaker 1: in the new book where this gets back to what
Speaker 1: you're talking about. A minute or so ago, was about this,
Speaker 1: the need for others and how how we come together.
Speaker 1: And there's a line in the book where you're describing
Speaker 1: the great care that your friend and your wife gave
Speaker 1: to you during the particular difficult time during your cancer,
Speaker 1: and you say that we made it through, and I'll
Speaker 1: never forget what they have taught that reaching in and
Speaker 1: touching the spot that hurts, if done with selfless love,
Speaker 1: can release the pain. The way a dark branch can
Speaker 1: be gently shook to free it of all those steely crows. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you know. I mean I think we underestimate the power
Speaker 1: of of love and of presence, you know. For all
Speaker 1: the things that we can do. You know, I can
Speaker 1: if you, if I if we were together and you
Speaker 1: were to fall over or trip, and I can help
Speaker 1: you up, and I can get you a band aid,
Speaker 1: and I can get you a glass of water. But
Speaker 1: for the things that can't be seen, the things that
Speaker 1: we have to deal with inside our presence, are bearing witness,
Speaker 1: are holding, are listening. Has always been great, great medicine,
Speaker 1: great medicine, and we often underestimate that or forget it,
Speaker 1: forget that that it even matters. In the book, you
Speaker 1: talk about something that you received is the word all
Speaker 1: use from having cancer, And you talk about something called
Speaker 1: the terrible knowledge. Well, and the terrible knowledge, And I
Speaker 1: know that there's an essay that I wrote about that.
Speaker 1: Um and the terrible knowledge is this paradox of the
Speaker 1: fragility of life, of how miraculous and amazing and precious
Speaker 1: and unrepeatable every moment is that all of eternity is
Speaker 1: in every moment, in this moment, between us right now,
Speaker 1: and the terrible knowledge is that we can be erased
Speaker 1: in a second. And I don't say that to scare anyone.
Speaker 1: It's always been this flickering, this shimmering paradox that life
Speaker 1: is precious, and life by itself is indestructible, but those
Speaker 1: of us, all the forms blessed to carry life, are
Speaker 1: not indestructible, and so it makes life all the more precious.
Speaker 1: And depending on what side of that terrible knowledge we
Speaker 1: land is whether we are in h the most graceful
Speaker 1: state or or the most fearful state. And so there's
Speaker 1: no solving the terrible knowledge. There is only our journey,
Speaker 1: just just the way a dolphin will will break surface
Speaker 1: and go under and break surface and go under like
Speaker 1: a whale, you know, and we will as well. However,
Speaker 1: I tend to think that when we break surfaces, when
Speaker 1: we're prey to the fear and the delicacies of things
Speaker 1: and the fragility of things, and when we're we're when
Speaker 1: we're in the depth, is when we're carried by the
Speaker 1: indestructible nature of life. And I think that you know
Speaker 1: we have there are throughout history. You know this, This
Speaker 1: is an ongoing unstoppable cycle, I believe. So it's not
Speaker 1: about staying in any one place. It's about how do
Speaker 1: we live and hold and be a part of this
Speaker 1: ongoing miracle and indestructible and slash for fragility of life.
Speaker 1: And so those who get caught or stuck if we
Speaker 1: you know, in the destructive side, the the fragile, impermanent,
Speaker 1: fearful side, well you know, then those are the people
Speaker 1: who are pessimistic and neolistic. And life is full of
Speaker 1: chaos and random and and all there is is fear.
Speaker 1: And those who are who try to be stuck on
Speaker 1: on the other side to transcend all of that, you know,
Speaker 1: life is a panacea. It's beautiful. If they could just
Speaker 1: get out of this icky stuff on the ground, well,
Speaker 1: it's it's I think it's always both and and you know,
Speaker 1: the the impermanence of life grounds us from from running
Speaker 1: away from everything that's here, and the miraculous light of
Speaker 1: the indestructible nature of life lifts us from the impermanence.
Speaker 1: And we and have so are I think, you know,
Speaker 1: I think part of our spiritual practice, whatever that looks
Speaker 1: like for anybody individually, I think it has some form
Speaker 1: of how how do we allow both in? How do
Speaker 1: we allow both? And how do we how do we
Speaker 1: live with both? And it is a terrible knowledge in
Speaker 1: that you know, when we fall down, it can be
Speaker 1: terrifying and terrible, but when we're standing strong, it's full
Speaker 1: of awe. It's full of awe. And I think the
Speaker 1: the the value of impermanence within one you know, we
Speaker 1: we we tend from the Buddhist perspective of the impermanence.
Speaker 1: We always immediately think, oh, that means we're gonna die,
Speaker 1: and we all will. But but impermanence within a life
Speaker 1: means that whatever we're going through, including all the difficulties,
Speaker 1: that's not permanent. Either it won't last. It doesn't make
Speaker 1: it easier, but it won't last. Depending on the state
Speaker 1: you're in, impermanence is either good or bad news, but
Speaker 1: it's always true, that's right. One of the things on
Speaker 1: the show that um I talked about a lot is
Speaker 1: how do you balance ambition and striving with being right
Speaker 1: where you are in life? So you're somebody who has
Speaker 1: you know, you have written an enormous number of books,
Speaker 1: books of poetry, books of nonfiction, so you're clearly um
Speaker 1: you know you have some degree of ambition is probably
Speaker 1: not the right word, but creative drive call it what
Speaker 1: you will. And yet you've also said things and this
Speaker 1: conversation confirms a lot of it, like that we think
Speaker 1: that accomplishing things will complete us, when it's this experiencing
Speaker 1: life that will. So how do those things balance out
Speaker 1: in yourself? Yeah? Well they they thank you. It's a
Speaker 1: wonderful question. And you know they don't balance out, they
Speaker 1: because I don't. I don't have any ambition. And I'll
Speaker 1: tell you how this all. I was very driven before
Speaker 1: my cancer journey in my thirties. I was a driven artist.
Speaker 1: And um, through no wisdom on my part. It wasn't
Speaker 1: like I almost died and said, oh well I'm going
Speaker 1: to give that up. Um, you know, I just woke
Speaker 1: up on the other side and I was living from
Speaker 1: my heart and not my head. And I also had
Speaker 1: lost my drive. And this was very disorienting at the time.
Speaker 1: I mean, it really was troubling. And you know, it
Speaker 1: was enough that I almost died and I was still
Speaker 1: here and now I was I was here and I
Speaker 1: felt like I had lost my gift, I had lost
Speaker 1: my creativity and I was very wandering for almost, you know,
Speaker 1: eight months or so or nine months, when I slowly
Speaker 1: came to understand that I was now freed of the
Speaker 1: drive and I was drawn to things. And the image
Speaker 1: that helps helps me understand that was it was like
Speaker 1: a river. You know. A strong river makes a lot
Speaker 1: of noise because the banks are holding it, and so
Speaker 1: it roars down through the kind of the gully of
Speaker 1: the banks and the river bed. But when that river
Speaker 1: reaches the sea, and all rivers reached the sea, that
Speaker 1: current doesn't disappear. It goes deeper and continues to run strong.
Speaker 1: But because it's deeper, it doesn't make any noise, and
Speaker 1: it joins with all the other water. And that's what
Speaker 1: going through cancer and almost dying and still being here
Speaker 1: did to me, against my will, without my knowledge, you know.
Speaker 1: And and so then when I started to understand I
Speaker 1: was drawn to things, I was actually freer, and there
Speaker 1: was so much more joy in creating. And so things
Speaker 1: started to shift because I wasn't I was no longer
Speaker 1: creating to produce something. I was creating to stay in
Speaker 1: conversation with life, and the trail of that conversation started
Speaker 1: to become my teacher. So while of course these writings
Speaker 1: have have parts of me, They have a lot of me.
Speaker 1: But I wouldn't say that I create them out of nothing.
Speaker 1: I would say that I retrieved them, and I give
Speaker 1: of myself, and myself is in the mix, just like
Speaker 1: silt on the bottom of a river gets taken along
Speaker 1: by the river. But then what what comes becomes my teacher.
Speaker 1: So you know, if I the key to my being
Speaker 1: prolific has not been ambition. It's been that I've learned
Speaker 1: how to get out of the way and that I've
Speaker 1: learned how to uh to write about what I need
Speaker 1: to learn. I don't write about what I know. And
Speaker 1: the truth is, I don't know if many authors will
Speaker 1: admit that. I think that's true for everybody. I write
Speaker 1: about what I need to learn, and then I become
Speaker 1: it becomes my teacher. If I only wrote about what
Speaker 1: I understood, I would have written very little. So you know,
Speaker 1: I wrote a book about awakening, the Book of Awakening,
Speaker 1: because I needed to be more awake. And I wrote
Speaker 1: a book called The Exquisite Risk because I needed to
Speaker 1: be able to learn how to take more risks. I
Speaker 1: wrote a book about courage because whether people you know
Speaker 1: thought I was courageous in in facing what I had
Speaker 1: to deal with. That doesn't matter. I had reached the
Speaker 1: end of what what was courage for me, And in
Speaker 1: order to continue to grow, I needed to learn more
Speaker 1: about how do I be more courageous? So are and
Speaker 1: listening the book on listening. So, you know, I think
Speaker 1: that one of the inescapable gifts, hard gifts of almost
Speaker 1: dying what has been that. You know, I look forward
Speaker 1: to things. I planned things, you know, I look forward
Speaker 1: to our call, but my dreaming is always returned to
Speaker 1: now it's always my work as always Now there's nowhere
Speaker 1: to go, there is no ambition. I'm not going anywhere.
Speaker 1: There's nothing uh to achieve, you know. And so in
Speaker 1: this way, you know, we've been taught eternity as you
Speaker 1: stack up years forever like on some imaginary ladder. Actually,
Speaker 1: eternity to me is more like it's it's all of
Speaker 1: life that is released in the center of every moment
Speaker 1: when we can be fully here. So it's more like
Speaker 1: a drop of water that ripples clearly in all directions.
Speaker 1: And you know, I write and express and and and
Speaker 1: blessed to be in teaching circles because that conversation is
Speaker 1: when I feel most alive. So let me say one
Speaker 1: other thing about this, because it's a very important subject.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about ambition and goals and dreams. I
Speaker 1: think that we have to have them, And this is
Speaker 1: where I don't think were we need to choose between
Speaker 1: becoming or being. I think that, you know, we have
Speaker 1: to have them in order to engage ourselves in life.
Speaker 1: But we hold on to our dreams and our goals
Speaker 1: the ambitions too tightly as if that's where we're going.
Speaker 1: I think they're kindling for the fire of aliveness. Dreams
Speaker 1: and goals and ambitions are what the heart and the
Speaker 1: soul use to bring us alive. And it's the aliveness
Speaker 1: that matters. So you know, we work toward dreams, and
Speaker 1: a lot of times our dreams don't come true. But
Speaker 1: you know, as long as we give our full heart
Speaker 1: and all of our work and effort, which I believe
Speaker 1: in to to whatever we think we're working on, our
Speaker 1: dreams may not come true. But by being so devoted,
Speaker 1: we may come true. That's a beautiful way to phrase that.
Speaker 1: Do you have any regular spiritual practices that you engage
Speaker 1: in that help you to stay more alive? Just to
Speaker 1: stay in tune with these things that we're talking about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know, I mean I've practiced a lot of different things, um,
Speaker 1: you know, from meditation to prayer to you know, all
Speaker 1: kinds of of things and and at this point in
Speaker 1: my life, and they're all wonderful. So it's like whatever
Speaker 1: works for for anybody, Okay. You know, it could be gardening,
Speaker 1: it could be a formal spiritual practice, and it could
Speaker 1: be being an auto mechanic on weekends. You know, it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter what it is. But what I at
Speaker 1: this point in my life, I'm really committed to an
Speaker 1: integrated practice. So I try to have my days. You know,
Speaker 1: I purposely interrupt my days. I begin by working, and
Speaker 1: then I'll take our dog for a walk, and I'll
Speaker 1: work some more, and then I'll purposely go out and
Speaker 1: do errands to to break up the day. And so
Speaker 1: I try to really have things be integrated throughout throughout
Speaker 1: the day. And and and I'll tell you why. And
Speaker 1: it's um And I wrote about this in another book,
Speaker 1: but you know it comes from the why of Beethoven,
Speaker 1: and Beethoven among many things. But Beethoven, one of his
Speaker 1: amazing innovations is he he created it's opus one thirty one.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a concier a string uh concerto for
Speaker 1: a quartet and and at that time quartet concertos string
Speaker 1: corcertos um they only had four movements and he wrote
Speaker 1: this one with seven. And the musicians at the time
Speaker 1: we're all kind of like, you know, they were like,
Speaker 1: what what is he thinking? And they were also like
Speaker 1: challenged to see if they could play it, you know.
Speaker 1: And one of the other things he did in this
Speaker 1: was that, you know, in music, there are rest stops,
Speaker 1: there are pauses where there is no beat, and it
Speaker 1: just you know, that beat is filled with silence, there's arrest. Well,
Speaker 1: not only did he make this with seven movements, but
Speaker 1: he made the entire thing without any rest stops. There
Speaker 1: were no pauses. Now, professional string classical you know, musicians
Speaker 1: who play string instruments, they are gifted enough and practiced
Speaker 1: enough that they use those pauses to retune their instruments,
Speaker 1: because you can't play more than one movement if you're lucky,
Speaker 1: without your strings going out of tune even slightly. So
Speaker 1: Beethoven was saying to the musicians, and it was and
Speaker 1: it was a comment on life, you know, you can practice,
Speaker 1: you can do all of this, but yeah, you're gonna
Speaker 1: have to tune as you go. It's not going to
Speaker 1: be perfect music, and you're not going to be able
Speaker 1: to get a rest stop, and you're gonna have to
Speaker 1: tune as you go. And and certainly we do have
Speaker 1: rest stops and we can pause, but there are times
Speaker 1: in life, you know, we talk here and then we'll
Speaker 1: get off and you'll go into your life tomorrow and
Speaker 1: I'll go into mind. And when life happens, we're gonna
Speaker 1: have to tune as we go. It may sound out
Speaker 1: of tune, and it doesn't matter because we're not here.
Speaker 1: We're not here or to do it perfectly. We're here
Speaker 1: to do it thoroughly. Yeah, I love that story. That's
Speaker 1: a great way to think about engaging in life. Well,
Speaker 1: I think that is a great place to wrap up
Speaker 1: the interview. I have really enjoyed talking with you. I
Speaker 1: really enjoy your writing a lot. You're you're a great writer.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of poetry. Even in the pros it's
Speaker 1: very poetic. And then of course you write a lot
Speaker 1: of poems. So we will have links in the show
Speaker 1: notes to certainly your latest book as well. As many
Speaker 1: of your other works. But again, Mark, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for taking the time. It's been a pleasure to
Speaker 1: talk with you. Thank you Eric. It's great to be
Speaker 1: a part of your good work too. Okay, we'll take
Speaker 1: care all right, Bye bye m You can learn more
Speaker 1: about this podcast and Mark NEPO at one you feed
Speaker 1: dot net slash nepo. That's n e p O. Thanks