Good Life Project - Mark Nepo: Being Faithful to the Truth of the Journey

Episode Date: December 5, 2016

This week's guest, Mark Nepo, is a renowned poet, philosopher, author, master storyteller and spiritual teacher.He has appeared numerous times on Oprah, his Book of Awakening was a #1 New York Times bestseller.Mark originally appeared on the show about a year ago, where we explored his bigger life story, how cancer forever changed him, physically, psychologically and spiritually and his relationship with faith and spirituality.In this episode, we invite Mark Nepo back to explore a different topic; living in a rapidly changing world, poetry as truth and life, not just words and how we're called to live and lead. This year is also a special year as Mark has released two books, The One Life We're Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your Heart and the three-part collection of 20 years of his original poems and essays, The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

poetry and any art form i believe is meant to marry what is with what can be so that we do not ignore the truth of what is as the buddhists talk about you know about that seeing things as they are which is a hard simple and difficult practice. I'm pretty excited to share this episode with you. It's a conversation with poet, spiritual teacher, multi-time New York Times bestselling author, Mark Nepo. He was on the show last year, I think it was, and we went deep into his journey, his incredible path, his earlier in life cancer, and how that profoundly changed him. His work as a poet and as a teacher and a writer and a world traveler and a questioner of pretty much everything and an eternal student. Such profound learnings and incredible, beautiful, vulnerable, open journey. And Mark is back with me

today. He's actually written two books that are released this year. One is called The One Life We're Given, and this incredible collection of poems that span three decades of his life, along with a whole bunch of really powerful new ones, and that's called The Way Under the Way. And this is a really deep, wide-ranging conversation. We get into poetry, poetry as life, what it means. Poetry as the utterance of the soul, poetry as conversation. We get into poetry. Poetry is life, what it means. Poetry is the utterance of the soul. Poetry is truth. We get into writing. We get into a lot of what's going on in the world today. And we kind of get into what it means to lead and to be in the world today and to breathe and to find space as we navigate shifting landscape. you're going to get what I call the full New York City experience with this particular conversation. The conversation is immensely powerful and deep and honest. And at

the same time, our normal studio was going through some shifts. So we ended up in a room that we were told beforehand was extraordinarily quiet. And we found out once we arrived that in fact, there was construction going on right outside the door. And it happened to be right at the nexus of where, let's say, a lot of sirens ended up going by. So rather than shutting down this conversation, because Mark was in town for a limited time, and I know how beautiful his soul is and how powerful these conversations are with him, we decided to go ahead with it. So I just wanted to give you a little bit of context. As we're talking, you will be joining us in the full New York City experience with the soundscapes that come along with it that you sometimes hear peeking through in the

podcast tiny bit when we're in our actual studio, but you will hear much more present in this conversation. So enjoy that. It'll be like you're just sitting in the room there with us. With that, excited to share with you this conversation with Mark Nepo. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone Xs are later required. Charge time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised.

The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot.

Flight Risk. It's good to be with you again. It's great to be with you too. I appreciate it. Maybe a year ago, was it? Yeah, I think it was a year ago. Something like that. It was when your last book came out, right?

Yeah, it was when, this is quite a time, you know, so many of my work on things for years, like you put seeds in a garden, and many are harvesting in these years. So last year, Inside the Miracle, we spoke around that. But during this last year, very unusual, I've had two books come out. One, The One Life We're Given, Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your Heart, which came out in July. And just this week, so touched, 20-year volume of my poetry has come out, The Way Under the Way. What does that feel like? I mean, to look at this and say,

here's a book and just, okay, this is 20 years of my work. Oh, it's just, you know, first to back up, as you know, from our last conversation, given my experience as a cancer survivor, you know, I never take for granted that I'm even here at all, let alone, you know, so many people and deep voices throughout history. I could give you examples of, you know, Wordsworth and Coleridge, Emerson and Thoreau, you know, Tufu and Li Po. Li Po was famous from the time he burped and Tufu was unknown his whole life. And same thing with Thoreau and Coleridge while Emerson and Wordsworth were just everywhere. So just the fact that I've been devoted to a call my whole life,

that I have become experienced and good at it, that in itself is like, that's the real gratifying thing. The fact that it can be published and published while I'm alive is just humbling and remarkable. And I'm so, you know, grateful. Yeah. Yeah. And it really, this one really, it tracks through sort of the later windows of your life also. Yeah.

Which is interesting. What I did, you know, it's interesting because, and Whitman's a great example, this, you know, Whitman, what I was going to say is that this book has three volumes of poetry in it. There were two earlier books 10, 15 years ago that people kindly always want and they're out of print. And so what I did was I, we have those in there, but it's hard to leave them alone. So I expanded each of those by about 30 new poems. And then there's a third entire new book of about 80 so poems that is in the last, you know, five,

seven years of my journey. So all of that in there and, and, you know, Whitman, he just published Leaves of Grass and all he did his whole life was kept expanding it. So there were seven or eight editions, but the first one was very small. And he didn't publish a new book of poems. He just kept enfolding his inquiries into this one edition. When you go back to curate your work for something like this, and you're looking at things that you've written over a period of decades, do you ever have the compulsion to rework something before republishing it? Well, this is a very interesting challenge that I'm very aware of, and there's also historical examples of this as well.

So the real aim in my mind is I want to be more than anything faithful to the truth of the journey. And some people will want to try Hilda Doolittle, who HD, as she was known in the early 1920s, 30s, 40s. When it came to the 40s and 50s and her collected poems was going to be published she said wait wait wait i i want to revise them all i don't want anything out there that doesn't look right or yeah and she wound up going over and over and over she wouldn't relinquish it and she basically evaporated her life's work in the effort to perfect it. And interestingly, she passed and her editors thankfully saw this and didn't honor all of those obsessive revisions. So I think the real challenge is the poetry is the unfolding of life.

It's not the words on the page. Poetry is the unexpected utterance of the soul that comes along when we least expect it, unexpected, to restore us. And so everyone has a poet in their heart. You know, for some of us like me, I just write it down and that's how I learn. And the trail of that are the words. So the real goal in revising things that are older is to stay truthful to who I was and what I knew and what I didn't know at the time but bring my skill not to change that voice but to make that as much as it was then so that the evolution of a soul is present and that I don't try to pretend that, oh, I always knew what I know now, I always wrote. And that's the, you know, the thing I will see in some earlier poems that,

you know, I only knew 45 degrees, I could only see that much. And now maybe I see 90 degrees. Well, no, I can't change that poem. You know, there's a great, One of my great teachers in this is a poem by William Carlos Williams called The Last Words of My English Grandmother. And I remember reading this when I was in my 20s, and it was a great example of brave honesty because it's a poem that talks about his grandmother who's losing her sight, starting to lose her mind, and she's needing to be moved to a hospital. And so the poem, which isn't that long page and a half is they're coming to take her he's there and she it's in her voice

saying i don't want to leave here yeah you do what you want you make me you know you make me go to the hospital you don't care you just want to get on with your life. And then she goes and she's taken and the trees are blurry in the ambulance as they take her. But what's so profound about that is that he didn't make it so that he looked good in that poem. He honored how she was seeing him. And he had the courage not to be the movie director and make sure he was massage that he was came out as the hero or the good grandson or and that's the kind of truth that you know we're responsible for not just in poetry but honoring all views not just saying well yeah these other people thought this but really really, really, I was okay.

And also, when you know that you're writing something that you hope will stand the test of time, I think there's this strong inner voice. There's a compulsion to want to look good over the course of time. You know, there's the ego that comes out and wants to be seen as someone of value, someone who's thoughtful, as somebody who can see 90 degrees now instead of 45 degrees. And, you know, there's the idea of writing because it's your truth in the moment in time. I think that very often wars with how you want to be perceived by others in the world. Well, and this goes beyond writing, but this is part of the courage of the journey of individuation is, and perhaps almost dying from cancer helped me along in this,

that it doesn't matter what other people think. I care more what other people feel than what other people think. And when I write, the truth is, I write, I care very much about readers, but not when I'm writing. When I'm writing, and I offer this for anyone whether you write or not, because it's the space where we have our conversation with the universe that never ends. So when I'm in that space, some people meditate to get there. So when I write, that's the place where like Adam or Eve, every one of us is Adam or Eve, I have my direct experience of life with no filters, no influences, no inheritances. And I get to tell the truth as only I see it,

even when I'm wrong. Even when I'm wrong. Now, so I can have no influence or no one over my shoulder. Then, once it's written, now when I want to share it, well, now I have an obligation. I want to make sure it's as understandable and accessible as possible. Now I care about positioning it to a reader. So, you know, one of the things that I love, and this is where my teaching and my writing overlap, is I love the model of Native American elder councils. They have, and they still do, meet in circle. And it's not just for equity. It's not because there's no head to the circle.

It's because they know that they want every person to have a direct view of the center. And the assumption under that is that we need everybody's view to apprehend the center. And the assumption under that is that we need everybody's view to apprehend the center. No one view is enough. Even though we look at it and say, oh I see the center, and oh you see it, but we don't see it the same way. So this says that we gather meaning, we don't choose it. We need everybody's view. And so part of the job of writing and poet with a big p regardless of what genre you write poetry has that unexpected utterance of the soul is to offer and gather as many views as possible and respect the reader to put that together themselves one of the

interesting things i've learned too over time which which is humbling, is that most of us, the things that don't work in writing are assumptions and conclusions. Really what only matters is the evidence, the entering of our questions and the evidence of our journey. So when we try to wrap things up, things usually fall apart. Yeah, I've noticed that, especially lately. There's such a, I want to put a bow on it. I really do. Yeah. And I can't.

And every time I do, somebody wants to put a different bow than I put on it. Well, and I think this is the thing, and I've learned this, you know, there was a period of time where I was really looking into, with some other folks, a lot of folk tales from different cultures around generosity. And the interesting thing that, you know, I learned and we learned was that in the Western tradition, you know, Christian Judaic tradition, even Greek a little bit, you know, from the Greek, you know, forward, everybody wants to do that. Every little story has a moral, and it is wrapped up with a bow. But in almost every other culture throughout history, they don't wrap it up with a bow. It's more like, well, this is as far as we got with it. Here, you tell the story and

see what you can add to it. See what you can do with it. What is it about us that makes us, I mean, why would we be the only ones who are sort of wired to want that completion? Well, I'm not sure. I think some of my thoughts about it are, it's that we, it's our willfulness. It's our willfulness. It's our want for control. It's our, you know, we live, we know this. There's a lot of things about our culture. Every culture has its own gift. And I believe we need all of them to balance and integrate the best of, as Lincoln said, our better angels. And every culture has its shadow.

And often our gifts are also our liabilities. So in American culture, and I first ran into this one in the late 90s, I went to South Africa. And I saw such a difference because in America, we are centered on the individual, self-growth, self-actualization. You know, America was founded on self-reliance, independence. Well, the truth is we're interdependent. We're inter-reliant. So the individual, so then when I visited South Africa, and I met some amazing people, some gentle, wonderful people, and in the African cultures, the different tribes and different nations,

the community ethic is what's prominent. And so I found, you know, for instance, in all the different languages in Africa, there's no word for orphan. Because the tribal family is so strong that if a parent dies, that child is assumed by the tribe. There's no such thing as an orphan. Isn't that amazing? So their sense of community, not self, is the cornerstone.

So not surprisingly, as I got to know some of these South africans these beautiful people they had no sense of self and we have a difficulty having a sense of community we need each other we need the best of each other so i think it's you know and interestingly this is one of the paradoxes when carl jung first came to america in the 20s he wrote back he wrote some letters to Freud, and he had this curious observation about seeing American culture. He said, it's very strange. He said, America is based on the individual, and yet its society is a creature that eats the individual.

And remains to this day. If not, I think it's probably more so than ever. Wow. And the reason that poetry, again, not as form on a page, but poetry as the unexpected utterance of the soul, is so necessary and has always been necessary. And so I widen that again. It doesn't matter whether you

write it down or not. These conversations are poetry. You know, any conversation of truth is poetry. And why they're necessary is because they help ground us and return us to, they help make life real. They help remove whatever's in the way and they help us live. So we need, you know, William Cross Williams said in one of his poems, he said, everybody is, you know, craving the news when what they really need is poetry. It's interesting that the word grace keeps popping up in my life over the last couple of years as an aspiration. I don't know if you can pull it down, but it's just, it keeps touching down. What I'm thinking about as we're talking here is the interrelationship between grace and poetry. My initial reaction was, well, they're the same thing, but in fact, I don't think they are.

To me, poetry may not be grace because your truth in the moment may be anything but. Well, I think- But maybe that is grace. Well, so let's talk, it's interesting you raised grace because the book that the moment may be anything but. But maybe that is grace. Well, so let's talk. It's interesting you raise grace because the book that came out in July, which is kind of spiritual nonfiction, The One Life We're Given, my whole inquiry there was the relationship between effort and grace. So let's talk for a moment about effort, grace, and poetry. So I think that effort readies us for grace. You know, that I believe in effort and grace.

So just in terms of writing, I push the pen until it pulls me, and I never know when that's going to happen. So, you know, I spend a lot of time pushing. Not pushing in terms of will, but staying engaged. Staying engaged, leaning in. So I think, let me offer a metaphor about effort and and grace and then we'll bring in poetry or art and this is this is a metaphor about a surfer i haven't surfed i've watched a lot of surfers i've seen surfing so you know a surfer puts in great effort to paddle out through the breakers effort into waiting and catching wave, and then it catches a wave. And however long or short that wave is, that moment or that long moment,

the surfer is the wave. That's grace. And no wave lasts forever, even a great one, even a long one. It goes down, we're back in effort, and either we have the effort to bring that grace back to land, to shore, or we effort to swim back out and catch the next wave of grace so grace is when a fish catches the current and now we don't know whether it's moving of its own effort or the effort of the current it's an obsolete question and that is actually an image the way daoists speak about the dao the current? It's an obsolete question. And that is actually an image, the

way Taoists speak about the Tao. The Tao is the invisible river. And the job of every individual is like a little fish is to catch the current, be in alignment. So, you know, when a bird flaps its wings and then glides, that's grace. So I think that, you know, our job as, you know, messy, magnificent human beings, our job is to put in the effort and to catch the wave whenever it happens. And what catching the wave means, those are moments of oneness. Those are moments of great suffering, great love. Those are moments of wholeness in our lives. And those are moments of honest conversationess in our lives. And those are moments of honest conversation when we're more together than alone. And so those moments of grace are transforming.

They inform us and form us. And so poetry is the life of expression along that whole continuum. So, you know, in the poem about William Carlos Williams, poetry is the moment of realizing that his grandmother doesn't think he's a good grandson. And there may be truth in some of that. And then the grace is that he was able to be with that enough not to alter the truth of that revelation. And then to come back on shore and have the effort to put it out as it came and not alter it. So I think, you know, this moves us into the life of questions. The life of questions and listening, which is sorely needed in our time.

And because, you know, questions are to be entered and not answered. You know, I mean, we all have to survive and thrive. Well, so let me pause before that, because to go back to the role of art in all of this. Art poetry, and any art form, I believe, is meant to marry what is with what can be, so that we do not ignore the truth of what is, as the Buddhists talk about that, seeing things as they are, which is a hard, simple, and difficult practice.

And then the aspiration for transformation to marry that with what we are, with what we want to be. Let me, I can share a poem as an example. Yeah, that'd be great. Thank you. From the new book. This is called Thinking Like a Butterfly. Monday, I was told I was good. I felt relieved.

Tuesday, I was ignored. I felt invisible. Wednesday, I was told I was good. I felt relieved. Tuesday I was ignored. I felt invisible. Wednesday I was snapped at. I began to doubt myself. On Thursday I was rejected. Now I was afraid. On Saturday I was thanked for being me and my soul relaxed. On Sunday I was left alone till the part of me that can't be influenced grew tired of submitting and resisting Monday I was told that was good by Tuesday I got off the wheel now that kind of encompasses some of the things we've been talking about about what other people think and how we're perceived and and it surfaces now I should say, I retrieve poems more than author them. So I didn't know where that was going.

I just was feeling these things and started to explore the different responses I have to the different ways that people act. And we all do this very common thing. But then I got, which was a surprise, I got to the place where I was left alone and I was tired of submitting and resisting. And that's the place where, you know, who we are, that nobody gave us, nobody taught us what we were born with, the sense of who we are. And that's the lens from which we receive grace and we give grace.

So then, yeah, so, oh, by Tuesday I got off the wheel. Well, did I really get off the wheel? No, of course not. I'm human. But I have to end the poem there because just what I was saying, because I need something to aspire to. Not to say, oh, I figured it out. I can get off the wheel.

Right. Yeah. So it marries what is with what can be. And leaves you with a question. And leaves you with a question. Right. Right. How do you get off the wheel?

Well, that's a personal practice. Yeah. That's a personal practice. And I don't know that we ever do. I think what we do is we move between effort and grace constantly. Sometimes I think that grace is effort in slow motion. The moment you said that, long-form Tai Chi came to mind for me. Oh, that's beautiful.

I have a dear friend who's a Tai Chi teacher. Yeah. Oh, I see that. And to watch that, you know, underneath the hood, especially when you're learning, it's extraordinary effort. And even doing it, there's effort, but there's a sense of just astonishing lightness and flow and grace. When you see somebody who's deepened into this practice for years and years and years, it's just kind of jaw-dropping. And I'm complete neophyte when it comes to this, but I've been told that it's also essentially slow-motion kung fu to a certain extent. And that's sped up. There are strong elements of it that can be quite lethal i could

be butchering that but that's what's been sort of shared with me um but when you see so much power and not speed and but power and just slow gentle flow it's the, like the little hitches kind of slowly just making their way out. This speaks to, you know, inhabiting poetry, life, using effort to inhabit grace. All of it is to move at the pace of what is real. And the assumption under all of that, which is in all the spiritual traditions, is that everything we need is right here. There's nowhere to go. We go many places, we do many things, but it's less to get anywhere as it is to actualize ourselves. That, you know, in the Jewish tradition, God is understood as an indwelling presence that is manifest through relationship. And the

word authentic comes from the Greek and it means the mark of the hands. So our job, by moving at the pace of what is real, our job is to have what's in our hearts enter our hands and in the world. And so this brings, this is a metaphor that was a teacher. I feel like the metaphors that come to me are teachers. I don't always understand them and I have to be with them until I do. But I know, like my heart's a Geiger counter, I know that there's truth there. So I never question them when they come. So a metaphor that was key to this, the one life we're given, speaks to this and it's

the metaphor of a match, a wooden match that we light a stove with or a wood pile or papers, you know, when we're making burning papers or leaves. So we all know that in the tip of that match, that flame is dormant. Its warmth and light is dormant until it strikes against the surface. Well, I would offer that every soul on earth is such a match. And our gifts are like, they're dormant like that tip of that match. And our gifts, their light and their warmth are not revealed until we strike our gifts against the needs of the world. And this is how effort releases grace.

Anything that helps us do that is poetry. And it doesn't happen in isolation either because you need the world as the striker. You need the world as the striker. So, you know, we definitely have rhythms of solitude and community, which are necessary. But we live, I mean, I believe, it's my experience on Earth again, you know, my, on that circle, view of center, this is just my view of center, but I believe we ultimately live in the world. And yes, we have to strike against the needs of the world. And, you know, one of the shadows, as we mentioned earlier, every gift is a shadow.

I think this helps to explain the terrible journey of addictions because addiction is when you fall in love with the strike and not the light. And you think, oh, oh, I was most alive. What was it? Oh, I need to strike again. I need this hit again. I need whatever it might be. You know, when the only purpose of that friction of relationship is to release the light, the gift.

How do we see that? How do we see that distinction if we're trapped in it? Because I think we're all addicted on some level, whether it's technology, whether it's traditional addictions. I think that for me, I think this, it comes down to following our heart, following our aliveness. Because, and the courage to do that, it's a quiet courage. To follow our, because our, I believe our career is our soul's awakening. Our occupation is where that happens.

And that can change. But to follow, trust literally means follow your heart. And following our heart leads us to our aliveness, and our aliveness releases the gift. So the friction along the way, you know, is not the thing. And when we, through pain, fear, worry, you know, anxiety, all very human things. When we stumble into those clouds, we become obsessed with them and we settle on the strike and not the light. And we all can do this. But the magic of being human is that we can return.

When we fall asleep, we can wake up. When we fall asleep, we can wake up. When we're numb, we can become sensitive. When we're afraid, we can become safe again and have courage. And poetry, art, truth, meaning, help us in our practice of return. So I think the biggest thing is recognizing and admitting when we've fallen off so that we can course correct. Because unless you can admit the truth of where you are, you can't move. You can't

move. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot if we need them. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here.

It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. You know, I know my dear oldest friend Robert,

who just was here this weekend with me and just is training back now to Albany. But, you know, he's a recovering alcoholic for almost 30 years. And we went through and helped save each other's lives, he with my cancer and I with his alcoholism. And so we're very entwined and, you know, we both have neuropathy. He from very deep alcoholism back then and I from chemo. So, you know, we have a little numbness in our extremities. And I remember about six or seven years out, he was in recovery and I was on the other side of cancer. We were sitting in a park in Albany having sandwiches in the summer with our numb little hands. And out of the quiet,

he looked at me and he said, you know, I'm an alcoholic, but you're a make-a-holic. And I immediately understood what he was saying. Anything can be an addiction. Anything. And it's true, the creative drive can be an addiction. I mean, I'm looking at two books in one year as we're sitting here. I think there's something in all of us where we have that. I also, I wonder about the opposite of that. I wonder about the person who, metaphor that comes to me around this building on yours is that the match is in a small box of matches and walking around at some point, generally earlier in life. It's a rainy day. It falls out of your pocket and gets wet. You don't realize that.

And then you go to strike it later in the day and nothing happens. You go to strike it tomorrow and it's still a bit soggy and nothing happens. And after you try and strike it four or five, six times and nothing happens, you just give up and you never try and strike it again. And I feel like so many of us get caught on that side of it as well, just settling into this state of just assumed helplessness. It is assumed helplessness, but let's have compassion. I know you do, but let's affirm that any one of us can fall there. Yeah.

And this is where the courage and the effort to get another box of matches. It's not the only box of matches, you know, in the world. You know, I learned this in the cancer rooms. And I think it was a great lesson to me that the people, when you're desperate, and I've always been an open person, I thought I was open. But you know, there I was. And if I needed help, I needed to talk to the person next to me, even though I didn't know him. I had to say, hey, I'm scared. What are you here for? You know, all the politeness, all the things, you know, so we can do it. So, you know, I often say I have compassion. If you don't have

friends, I have compassion. And I also say, make a friend, talk to someone, move out of your risk and comfort zone and be authentic. Because the largest closeted population today are the closet authentics. You know, Kierkegaard said we're all spies for God. And I think that's what he meant. I think we're all hidden. Or, you know, there's a great story, one of the great stories from the life of Jesus is Nicodemus. Now, Nicodemus was a Pharisee. He was one of the Jewish priests at the time who, you know, didn't want anything to do with Jesus. They were condemning Jesus. He was

a rebel. How dare he? You know, he hadn't done the training. He hadn't become a Pharisee. But Nicodemus was captivated by the grace of Jesus, the light. And so he would seek him out at night to ask him questions. He'd have private conversations with Jesus at night. But during the day, he would deny that he had them. Someone would say, didn't I see you with Jesus last night? That wasn't me. I was in the temple praying. You got the wrong guy. And, you know, while we can learn from other people,

of course, all along, I think stories like that, they represent the light that's within us and the soul that's within us, that grace part that moves at the pace of what is real, with the Tai Chi lesson. And the other part of us that, you know, Nicodemus is the social mediating voice. That's the spy for God that's afraid to reach out, to tell the truth, to say, yeah, I don't know what this guy is up to, but there's something about him. I want to ask him questions. I think he knows something. Admitting that, admitting that in public so that we are asked, you know, one of the challenges to finding our light is the courage to be who we are everywhere. Everywhere. Yeah, that is a huge one for so many people. My mind just is constantly asking why. You know, what is it about the way we're wired? What is it about cultural constructs?

What is it about our aspirations and our fears that leads so many to live under the weight of a facade, under the weight of? Well, I think that let's back it up a little and look at it the way we look at it. You know, like we said, we're here, we're in this place, and there's dirt that accumulates on the building that we can see through the window, and windows get dirty, and then we clean them, and they get dirty again. So I think that the nature of existence, our incarnation, is our goal is not to stay clean or get dirty. Our job here is to uncover, get involved in experience through which we get covered,

and then we uncover everything again. And we help each other do that because we can't do it all by ourselves. Though this is one of the great paradoxes of life. Though no one can do it for you, we can't do it alone. And so I think life has been made just difficult enough that we need each other to ensure the journey of love. And I think that the other humble thing that I'm learning after a lifetime of learning is that wisdom is not there to shortcut the journey. Wisdom is there to support everyone who's ever lived. No one gets out of this journey. Everybody's got to do it.

And how much you know doesn't prevent you from having to do this journey, including having things accumulate on you until they become a facade and then having the courage to pull them off. So this is what happens with ritual and habit. Ritual is sacred. Ritual is the conscious repetition of some act that reminds us of meaningful things that we forget. But that at some curious point, any ritual, sacred as it is, can suddenly become a habit that has no more meaning.

And it's our job to restore our immediate contact with it. And this happens in relationships, the love of our life, friendship, things we work toward. And then they get covered like the film on the window. And then we forget the meaning they have. And it's our job, and this is the role of great love and great suffering. Then all of a sudden one day when we're too exhausted or we're hurt or we're broken open, then we look at that friend, that family member, that partner, and we go, oh my God, it's you. How could I have forgotten? It's you. And that, what I just described, that's a poem. That's a poem. You know, I started off in life as a young man and wanting to be devoted and maybe, maybe, maybe I could write a poem

or two that would be really good, you know. And then cancer came along in my 30s and torn me upside down and inside out. Don't forget writing great poems. I needed to discover true poems that would help me live. And now that I'm in my 60s, I want to be the poem. Yes. that would help me live. And now that I'm in my 60s, I want to be the poem. When you think about poetry in the world today, we live in interesting times. We were talking about this before we started taping. I don't particularly want to go down that road too much, but I am curious what your experience is on the role of poetry, both in written form and in the experience of life in

today's world, which is interesting. Poetry, and again, when I say that, I'm not talking about words on a page and stanzas. I'm talking about the authentic truth-telling of what it is to be alive, through which we manifest that we're more together than alone. And so I think whatever form that takes, whether that's public conversation, private conversation, whether it happens through gardening, or someone who's devoted to, has a passion for being a car mechanic, whatever it might be, whatever it might be, the poetry of authenticity and wholeheartedness, it's part of the immune system of humanity. And so below politics, below who's in power and who's not, below whatever's happening in the world, and we are now in, I think, dangerous times,

we have to, all of us have a commitment to keep that immune system strong, the immune system of humanity. And so the role of poetry is to open a heart space. Through it we realize we are each other and our gifts don't stay hidden. That leads me to a poem that is called

To Be and Belong. To be and belong. Let go your want for greatness and feel the tool that's in your hand. Let go your fear of emptiness and receive the wave still reaching from the beginning. It only wants to enliven you the way water refreshes every hole. So let the web of things entangle you. Only stars are free and they are so lonely. Curse what you will, but give thanks that everything alive wants something from you.

So there is no escaping. Heaven is here on earth, messy, magnificent as it is. And when I was a young man, early on being a romantic poet, I wanted, like so many people, and I would say also like so many monks in different traditions, I wanted to transcend out of here. And then there are other people that are thrown then into reality in such a strong way that then they say there's nothing but this. And then they become pessimists or nihilists or existentialists and say, no, no, this, the grit, the dirt, the unfairness, that's the God.

Well, life, it's like that circle, elder circle around the center. Life keeps unfolding and unfolding and changing, and it's more than any one frozen part of the cycle. And so we're not just stuck here and we can't transcend out of here. We need to transcend into the ground of things, into the ground of things to be here. And I think one of the most difficult things for all of us, understandably, and the role of art and poetry to break that, one of the most difficult things is that when we go through something, whether it's pain, fear, whatever it might be, especially difficult things, we then want to extrapolate and make that into a worldview.

Because I've been betrayed, ah, the world is a place of betrayal. Because I've been hurt, the world is a place of betrayal. Because I've been hurt, the world is a place of brokenness. And the truth is, and I learned this through my cancer's journey, to be broken is no reason to see all things as broken. Not to minimize what I'm going through, but it's not a reason to make it a worldview. In fact, I need to experience whatever I'm going through thoroughly and face it, and I need everything I'm not to heal. I mean, isn't that sort of the ultimate challenge, is to avoid seeing whatever your current experience is as the experience,

as the worldview, and to hold yourself open to the possibility of new experiences, new relationships, and to treat them freshly. Yeah. Tall order. Well, it's the work. Yeah, indeed. It's the work. And you know, all the things we're talking about, the messy, magnificent journey of being

human, you know, if you were an actor, if we were actors and a famous film director described everything we spent this whole, like, our conversation talking about this and then said to you, offered it to you as a part, you would think it was the role of a lifetime. And it is. It is.

When we're in it, it can be graceful, unbearable, everything. But when we step back and look in it, it can be graceful, unbearable, everything. But when we step back and look at it, there's nothing more magnificent. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your

wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, Charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun. On January 24th.

Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot. Flight risk. Here, let me share this one, which is about what we were just talking about, called In the Milky Ocean.

As you pour milk on your cereal, I'm grateful for the sound of milk flowing over dried grain, for the peace that lets us wake and eat together, to stare at each other in silence like small animals. I am aware how safely tumbled through eternity we are. Not to be hunted from birth, or chased into the forest and forced to part, or beaten for a secret some warlord thinks we're hiding. I eat my toast and close my eyes. How is it we're alive in a place that has running water, where milk and eggs are plentiful? Atrocities and wonders flutter through me.

They bleed into each other. I can't stop it. The milk tastes good, as my twin is somewhere on the run. It seems impossible to feel so many fates. Impossible not to. And so part of the grace of poetry is that it enlarges our heartfelt perception because in any one moment it's led me to what I've explored in my other books that all things are true.

Not all things are fair. Not all things are just. But all things contain truth. And therefore when I was slumped on the floor in a holiday inn after a botched chemo treatment well that was true, that was terrifying, I didn't know what would happen and somewhere as the sun was coming up a baby was being born

and somewhere else a couple were making love for the first time. And birds were flying. And it's not, you know, we tend to go, which is understandable. All the things we're talking about are understandable, and I know them because I've violated them so much. So, you know, we tend to say if we let in all of that, then, oh, it minimizes what we're going.

Then what's it matter that I was suffering on that holiday in Florida? Or we go the other way, as we just mentioned, and you know, I'm suffering and therefore that's life. The whole world is suffering. And our challenge and the challenge of grace and what the poetry of embodied perception, whether we write it down or not, gifts us is that all things are true. And we need to, and this is what it means to be in the moment. We have a lot of focus on being in the moment. I think a little bit we make a cartoon of it, but being in the moment allows us to be as fully alive as possible,

and that changes our eyes and our ears. We hear and see differently. We see through the lens of oneness, through that lens of grace, of how everything is connected. And we experience that moment where everything touches everything else. Now we're inhabiting oneness. That's where resilience comes from. So I need to let in the fact that, yeah, I'm hurting. And all of life, the sun is still shining. And it's not a judgment on my hurt.

It's a fact of the oneness. Poetry connects. It's the synapses, the emotional and spiritual synapses that connect all of life. I want to start to come full circle with you a little bit. We could jam for hours. We both have to go our different directions. So two books. The Way Under the Way is your collection over three decades, I guess, right? Yeah, yeah. Poetry, yep.

When you decide to add to, you know, like you take the work that you've already done and you decide to create new work, was there an intention? Was there a theme? Was there, or was this just, this is what's moving through me right now? Yeah, it was just moving. I mean, actually I have, I'm always, you know, I mean, books, I enter like construction sites and try to inhabit but poems the life of the poems are just happening all the time so in a daily way and so then they just kind of appear as individual teachers so i just gather them so i just treated you know this book was like a big nest and it was like what else wants to be in the nest you know and goes with kind of the

extending the themes or the questions or that i explored earlier and what what goes there so then i would just put them all together yes it's a process of more uh i know you said you're constantly making stuff but you're sounds like it's more you're constantly receiving stuff that's it i'm really receiving things and i'm really the way writing has become for me is more like the way someone would make beads and then put them all on a necklace or mosaics make individual tiles and put them together so like i'm always retrieving and fragments images questions there. And then when I go to write, whether it's a poem or a chapter, then I look at these things and I see what are they trying to tell me? Where are they trying to lead me? And then I weave them together. So as we sit here, you're in New York City. Thank you for that. What question is really consuming you these days? Well, I think the question that's consuming me these days is,

well, and I think this goes to just what we were talking about before we went kind of on air, is with the recent election and everything, I think what's consuming me these days is how to be who I am everywhere and participate re-sewing the torn fabric of our community. I don't know what that means. I don't know yet what that means. I just know that where we are is not normal

and therefore it requires me to be open to not just my normal routines. I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means yet. Yeah, I think we're both living similar questions. Yeah. And both in the window of the unknown, as are, I think, so many. What does it mean to just be human?

What does it mean to lead? And what has it meant in the past and and is that now shifting and well see i think i think one of the ageless and let's offer it this way that they're among many but let's just say two tribes that have always been in humanity and we have membership in both and we can move from one to the other and one tribe is the tribe that says, you're different. Go away. You're different. You frighten me. If you don't go away, I'll push you away. And there's another tribe that says, you're different. Oh, tell me what I don't know. Oh, you're different. You have something I don't. What can we make together? And like I said, we can be a member of either tribe in a second, depending on how we negotiate

what we're given in life. And so I think that when we have a period of time, just the way the stock market goes up and down, every generation, every age, every year, when we have more people in the tribe that pushes away, we have an era of cruelty. When we have more people in the tribe that says, oh, what can we discover together? We have an era of compassion. And the reason I asked the question we just talked about is, what can we do to tip the scales to make sure that this time is an era of compassion and not cruelty?

So I'm going to come full circle here. I've asked you this question once before. We'll match it up and see if it stays the same. Just kidding. We're hanging out on a couch in a room in New York City, surrounded by the beauty and the noise and the now fading light in the context of a conversation called Good Life Project. So to live a good life, when I offer that up, what does it mean to you? Well, to live a good life, I would take it under that to say we have to live an authentic life. If we live an authentic life, chances are it will be good. If we try to live a

good life, we're not always sure it'll be authentic. And so I think to live a good life is to work with what we're given and to stay in relationship to everything, to everything. Ourselves, our nature, nature, the mystery, each other, what we don't know. We are living conduits. And so we are most alive when life force, resiliency, the resources of life flow through us. So I think to live a good life is to be, now I believe, is to be embodied and inhabit our questions, our feelings, bravely and kindly in all directions. So, you know, the sun shines and emanates light and warmth in all directions without preference. Our heart is our sun, and our job to live a good life is not to snuff that light. We will, just as there are clouds that block the sun, we have psychic and emotional clouds that surround us that maybe prevent our light from coming. But that's different

from snuffing that inner sun. And while we may have to make choices about who to trust and what to do and where to go and how much to share, that inner sun must, if we're to live a good life like the actual sun, we have to keep emanating love and warmth in all directions without preference. Thank you. You're welcome. Hey, thanks so much for listening. We love sharing real, unscripted conversations and ideas that matter. And if you enjoy that too, and if you enjoy what we're up to, I'd be so grateful if you

would take just a few seconds and rate and review the podcast. It really helps us get the word out. You can actually do that now right from the podcast app on your phone. If you have an iPhone, you just click on the reviews tab and take a few seconds and jam over there. And if you haven't yet subscribed while you're there, then make sure you hit the subscribe button while you're at it. And then you'll be sure to never miss out on any of our incredible guests or conversations

or riffs. And for those of you, our awesome community who are on other platforms, any love that you might be able to offer sharing our message would just be so appreciated. Until next time, this is Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life Project. the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes.

The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Mayday, mayday. We've been compromised. The pilot's a hitman. I knew you were going to be fun.

On January 24th. Tell me how to fly this thing. Mark Wahlberg. You know what the difference between me and you is? You're going to die. Don't shoot him, we need him. Y'all need a pilot? Flight Risk.