The One You Feed - Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength with Mark Nepo

Episode Date: December 5, 2023

Mark Nepo is a highly acclaimed author, poet, and spiritual guide who has gained significant recognition for his profound insights on faith in life and resilience. With a wealth of experience, Mark has dedicated his life to exploring the complexities of the human condition and offering guidance on navigating life’s challenges. His teachings on choice points and the power of conscious decision-making have resonated with countless individuals seeking a deeper understanding of themselves and the world around them. Through his books and teachings, Mark has established himself as a trusted authority in the realm of personal growth and transformation. In this conversation, you’ll discover how to cultivate resilience and unwavering faith in the face of life’s obstacles. In this episode, you will be able to: Uncover the path to embracing fear and discovering your authentic self Learn how to counteract life’s fast pace and embrace the power of reflection Discover the significance of choice points in navigating life’s challenges with strength and resilience Cultivate unwavering faith in life and enhance your resilience in the face of adversities Explore the art of maintaining porous boundaries in relationships for a healthier and more balanced life To learn more, click here!See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I would say that the functional definition of faith, not faith in a system or religion or a saint or a sage, but faith in life itself is that, yeah, while I'm going through it, I'm going, no, this is terrible, anything to stop, but faith is that I will be grateful for what will be revealed later. Welcome to The One You Feed. Throughout time, great thinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have. Quotes like, garbage in, garbage out, or you are what you think, ring true. And yet, for many of us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity, self-pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't have instead of what we do. We think things that hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not just about thinking. Our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent, and creative effort to make a life

worth living. This podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together, our mission on the Really No Really podcast is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why the bathroom door doesn't go all the way to the floor, what's in the museum of failure, and does your dog truly love you?

We have the answer. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. The Really No Really podcast. Follow us on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Mark Nepo, a poet and spiritual teacher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 50 years. With over a million copies sold, Mark has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his

number one New York Times bestseller, The Book of Awakening. In 2015, Mark was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by Age Nation. In 2016, he was named by Watkins MindBodySpirit as one of the 100 most spiritually influential living people. He was also chosen as one of OWN's SuperSoul100, a group of inspired leaders using their gifts and voices to elevate humanity. Today, Mark and Eric discuss his new book, Falling Down and Getting Up, Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength. Hi, Mark.

Welcome to the show. Oh, it's great to be back with you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, it's always such a pleasure to have you. Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength. But before we get into that, let's start like we always do with the parable. In the parable, there's a grandparent who's talking with their grandchild and they say, in life, there are two wolves inside of us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf, which represents things like kindness and bravery and love. And the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like greed and hatred and fear. And the grandchild stops. They think about it for a second and they look up at their grandparent and they say, well, which one wins? And the grandparent says, the one you feed. So I'd like to start off by asking you what that parable means to you in your life and in the work that you do. Yeah, I love that parable. And I think it speaks so much to the constant choice that is available to each of us and to each generation. I think it speaks in a lot of ways to where we are right now. Let's talk for a second in societally and then bring it

down to the person. But in our age, it's such a strident time. We have so many difficult polarizations. And I think that every generation is really given the chance to answer that question and to face these perennial choices between love and fear, between pushing each other away or welcoming each other. And when fear governs us, we're feeding the dark wolf. And we can see that today. And when love governs us, and great love and great suffering are the teachers that break us open to say, oh my God, yes, it's more than just me. Help me. Help me. Thank God you're not me. And so, you know, like I actually was thinking about this the other day

and your invitation here framed some of these reflections. So, you know, William Blake, the wonderful mystic poet, in one of his famous, you know, poems, he says, some are born to sweet delight, some are born to endless night. You know, he says in another place, some are born to endless yes, and some are born to endless no. And once here, we always have this choice, and we have these particular challenges. But, you know, choice. And we have these particular challenges. But in my parents' generation, it was World War II. Every age has its challenges that present us with it's our turn. And so let me just finish this by referring to something. Just the other night, Rachel Maddow had this wonderful juxtaposition which really speaks to this. She was saying that comparing two former

presidents and what they've done with their lives since leaving office. And she, of course, in the dark wolf was referring to Trump, that all alone says everything. But she juxtaposed it with feeding the other wolf in our terms. She didn't use that, but it fits here by referring to Jimmy Carter, who just turned 99. And when he was 90, he was asked, do you have anything left on your to-do list? And he said, well, one thing, he's been very involved with the CDC with third world worm-based diseases. And he said, well, I hope in my lifetime we can eradicate worm guinea disease. And when he was 90, nine years ago, there was the World Health Organization tracked three and a half million people who suffer from this disease.

And when he turned 99 last Sunday, there were six cases left. Which wolf do we feed? Just an amazing contemporary example. I love that. And you reference this idea of choice points and you talk about them sort of throughout the new book, these ideas of choice points. You say that, you know, we're always faced with these choices. You frame this up from a big perspective, like a person in their life's work. There's a choice there, right? But we're all faced with countless choice points nearly every single day. How do you think about choice points? And perhaps more on the nose, how do you think about remembering that we are at choice points? Because a lot of us are not making a bad

choice because we compare two options and we go, oh yes, well, I'm going to be selfish and unkind, right? We don't realize that we are necessarily facing a choice. We are potentially so self-immersed or just immersed in the day-to-day business of life that we miss these choice points. And yet life is almost nothing except an accumulation of choices, one direction or the other. Yeah. Let's talk about this in a way that gets down to how we face every day. But let me back up for a second and frame it with, it would be nice if there were ABC and how to do, but there aren't. And being a human being, being a spirit and a body in time on earth, every choice point is a practice.

is a practice. And so each of us is faced with these, how to practice, how to return to what I call the corridor of aliveness, when the bumps and obstacles of life throw us left or right. So when I was a boy, my father, who was a master woodworker and he loved the sea, and there was a boat he built, sailboat that I spent a lot of my youth on. When I was eight or nine, and this is one of these latent lessons years later, but when we'd be in a fog or something, he'd put me on the steering wheel, the tiller. And he'd say, okay, I want you to follow this thing on the compass, this direction. And I remember being a little boy and even when you're on course, that needle on the compass never stands still. And years later, decades later, this is a powerful metaphor for the practice of being authentically alive and facing these choice points because even when you're, quote, on course, the work isn't over,

because it's always a little to the left, a little to the right. Oh, today I closed myself off too much. Oh, today I gave myself away. And how do we steer back to that corridor of aliveness? So all of these choice points, and there are many more than what I share. These are just what I've been able to identify. Each invites a practice. And you're right, we don't sit down and go, yes, today I'm going to be selfish. But we face these points. And every day, this is why it's so important, I feel, to follow our heart and to be honest about our experience. Because following our heart leads us to be present, and that helps us see things as they are, and then we make better choices. So let me offer, and then we'll get back down to what this looks like every day there's a great parable about two monks who they're told if they study long and hard they'll be able to have an appointment

one day with buddha at the top of a mountain so you know they want that so they're studying they work very hard and they say to each other one day, I think we're ready. So they begin the climb up the mountain, and halfway up the mountain, one of them breaks his leg. So they spend the night, and the one who's okay, he helps him, and he's totally intending in the morning to make him comfortable, but keep his appointment with Buddha at the top of the mountain. Well, in the morning, the one who broke his leg isn't doing so well. He's got a fever. It's not so easy. It's not just as simple as leaving him.

And the parable stops there and offers the question, which is comparable to which one will you feed, which wolf will you feed, is what would you do? And we all face this choice every day. So when we have more people who would leave their broken other to keep their appointment at the top of the mountain, we have an age that will engender cruelty. When we have more people who will discover that tending their broken other is the summit, we have an age that will engender compassion. And so every one of us faces this choice every single day. And what will we choose? And it doesn't matter what you put on top of the mountain. You could put wealth, security,

safety, family, whatever you want, enlightenment. When we insist on that above the gifts and challenges that life gives us, we're capable of cruelty, which raises a deeper, one of the choice points that I've come to understand is, do we work for what we want or do we work with what we're given? And I have found in my life, at least, there's nothing wrong with working for what you want. However, we tend to deify that and make it some kind of sacred thing when it's just what I saw and thought would be good to work toward. And often, I've discovered that working for what I want becomes an apprenticeship for working with what I've been given. It's almost kind of both. And I'll talk about that in a little while. Throughout the book, there's this idea of a balance point or paradoxes, right? And I think what you're describing there is that it's probably

reality is it's always a little bit of both, right? You can't work for what you want without dealing with the circumstances that you've been given. And often it's difficult to deal with the circumstances you've been given if you don't know what you want, and maybe we'll take the word one out, but what you value, what's important. And so those things seem to be very, very correlated. And I love that parable. It's a really interesting idea because my guess is if somebody were to have played it out, and the guy left his other and climbed up to the top of the mountain, the Buddha would have said, sorry, you had studied hard and you had an appointment with me, but you have just lost it because you missed the point of everything you just studied. You like completely skipped it.

Exactly. Exactly. That does open up beautifully as to what we value. And so working for what we want can really be seen as what are we aiming for, realizing that what we aim for is just kindling for what will come into view when we're true, when we follow what is true. So this is a historical story that exemplifies this so powerfully. There was a monk by the name of Tetsugen in Japan in the 1700s. Up till that time, the talks of Buddha had not yet been translated into Japanese. And he thought as a young man, man, I think this is what I was supposed to do. And he had a friend who was an artist who did woodblocks. And he said, look, I'm going to translate the Dharma talks into Japanese and

you can illustrate them with your beautiful woodblock prints. And along the way, we'll beg alms in order to have enough money to publish the holy text. So they started working, took years. And after eight or nine years, there was a flood in Northwest Japan where Tetsugin had grown up, like Katrina or something. So he gave all the money away. And they went back, they kept translating and working on the wood blocks, and they saved money for another 8, 9, 10 years. And then there was a famine in another part of Japan, and his heart had been broken open.

So he said, well, I didn't grow up there, but what's the difference? Gave all the money away. And after 25 years, they finally did it. They published the Dharma Talks in Japanese. And today in Kyoto, there is one of those original texts is under glass and the plaque reads, in his lifetime, Tetsugan published three versions of the holy text. Only one is visible. Oh, yeah.

And so just like you were saying about that parable, he got to do both. He did eventually do what he, quote, aimed for or wanted. But along the way, just like you imagined, if Buddha had seen this guy at the top of the mountain. No, to translate Buddha's talks, he was supposed to live with them, which he did by giving the money away twice. That's a really beautiful story. I'd like to transition now into more specifically the title of your book and the main idea, which is falling down and getting up. You know, I have had over the last several months, probably more emotional challenge and difficulty than I've had in easily a decade, if not 20 years, maybe. And it's so interesting because I've recorded 500 of these interviews and we talk about this idea of pain is a great teacher and suffering is the path, right? And yet when you are deep in it, wow, is it really something

else? All these ideas about pain being a good teacher, sometimes in my mind got swept away by anything to make it stop, right? Which luckily my skills for dealing with it are way different than I used to be. Cause I mean, I used to be a heroin addict, right? Which is a pretty unskillful way to deal with pain. But I just wanted to raise that to sort of start with this idea. And as listeners hear this and we go through it, and I think you would be the first to say this, this is not a prescriptive book. No. Oh, well, okay, here's your four steps and you won't feel pain. It really is about that part

of the process is having to go through the pain and that that by its very nature is deeply, deeply unpleasant. Yeah. So this opens up a whole amazing and very important terrain, so thank you. Before I get to the title, let me speak to what you so beautifully opened. And yes, none of my books and none of my teaching are not prescriptive in any way. I like to say that what I share

are examples, not instructions. I'm just trying to figure it out like everybody else. And wisdom is a support, not a shortcut. We can have this wonderful conversation. We'll get off. I will go to take the garbage out, trip at the curb, forget everything we've talked about and have to relearn it all again. And what else would we do? So let's talk about, you know, yes, while we're in it, it's very difficult to be grateful for the teaching of pain while you're in it. And that reality, we have to feel the reality of what we go through. of what we go through. And I would say that the functional definition of faith, not faith in a system or religion or a saint or a sage, but faith in life itself is that, yeah,

while I'm going through it, I'm going, no, this is terrible, anything to stop. But faith is that I will be grateful for what will be revealed later. And, you know, so a couple of things to support that truth, that very deep and harsh truth. And, you know, one is, and that'll leave me later, I'll read a poem about that. But, you know, one is that Baklav Havel, he was the first president of the Czech Republic when communism fell, and he was a poet and a playwright. So he was actually a poet president, a rare thing.

And he had this wonderful definition of hope. He said, hope is not the optimism that things will turn out well, but the belief that no matter what happens, there will be meaning. no matter what happens, there will be meaning. That's very helpful. That's very helpful. And so, yes, pain and fear, these things have to be moved through but not obeyed. So, one more thing to support this is the great poet Rilke. He said, let everything happen, beauty and terror. No one feeling is final. Keep going. And it's very human. Our struggle, it's very understandable that we can get stuck in pain, grief, sadness,

confusion, but no one feeling is final. Keep going. Keep going. Yeah. Keep going. As you were saying that I had a little bit of a thought, which is that it is that ability to see that there's a different future that could arrive. That is part of what we're talking about here. And my experience of pain is that it shuts down consciousness and it shrinks consciousness, meaning that I notice almost always with pain, and I've noticed this about my depression, it tells me this is the way things are, this is the way things are going to be.

But there's this shrinking down and it's that ability to expand back out a little bit to see like no feeling is final. So this begs a story that an ancient Hindu story that that's the whole wisdom in it is the insight you've just offered us. So let me tell that and we will, we were away to the title falling down and getting up. So this is an old Hindu teaching story, anonymous teaching story, just about that very thing about contraction and expansion. And this is a story about how we can meet fear and pain. So there's a master and an apprentice always. And the truth is that the master finds this

particular apprentice very annoying because all he does is complain about life, complain, complain, complain. So he says to the apprentice, get a handful of salt, put it in a glass of water and bring it to me quietly. So he does. He says to the apprentice, well, drink. He drinks from the glass where he spits it out. The master says, what's the matter? He says, it's bitter. He says, bring me the same exact amount of salt and follow me quietly. So the apprentice cups a handful of salt. He follows him quietly to a lake. The master says, put it in the lake. He does. He says, drink. He kneels down. He scoops the water, dribbles down his chin, and he says, well, and the preface says, it's fresh. And the master looks at him, he says, stop being a glass, become a lake.

And so that story tells us just that constriction you were talking about, that pain and fear, this is how they say hello. They make us tighten, they make us shrink. But just as we've talked about from the very beginning about which wolf do you feed, we don't have to stay there. And so what's the difference between being a glass and being a lake? Well, when we are faced with pain and fear, the practice question is, what practices, experiences, and relationships help you enlarge your sense of things when pain and fear make you small. And so we will always be initially small because that's how pain and fear say hello,

but it's our job. And that's why conversations like we're having and efforts to create our own personal practice so that the next time we're not surprised by pain and fear, we can say, okay, what's in my toolbox? Do I call you up because you're my friend? Do I listen to that one piece of music that relaxes my heart? Do I just put my hands in the earth and garden? Do I dance? What do I do that helps? Do I read that one poem or passage that always returns me to a deeper center? What are the things we can turn to that enlarge our sense of things? So let me share one other thing about this paradox of pain and then to the title. And that is, you probably know about Leonard Cohen's wonderful song, Hallelujah. And he talks in there about the broken Hallelujah.

And I think this is profound, and he's speaking to what we're exploring here. And the way that I would understand this is to offer this image. If you're on a raft at sea, and a big wave comes and smashes your raft, and you're hanging on to the remnants in the water, that's real, that's difficult, that's even possibly tragic for you in that moment. And it doesn't diminish the majesty of the sea. And the broken hallelujah is,

how do we accept and work through the truth of our situation without diminishing the miraculous resources of the mystery of life, which is what's going to help us get through that moment. And this actually speaks all the way back. This is what the story of Job in the Old Testament is about. A lot of modern religious traditions kind of co-opt his hallelujah and say, oh, praise God, everything's cool. No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying, yeah, it does hurt, and life is still magnificent and is going to throw you a rope to get out of this. Both are true. Both are true. Both are true.

And that's at the heart of the falling down and getting up. So we're finally back to the title. But yeah, well, the title actually comes from medieval monks when asked how they practiced their faith said by falling down and getting up. I understand that. I relate to that because, you know, I don't believe in an arrived state of enlightenment. I'm not saying that's not possible. Maybe Buddha or the Dalai Lama or somebody was capable of that, but that's not been my experience on earth. And that's why we need this practice of return.

When we fall down, we get up. And when I learned about this, so there are other traditions speak about this. In Japanese, there's a proverb that says, fall down seven, get up eight. And then it made me think of my cancer journey, you know, and what a part of my cancer journey. I had a rib removed from my back and I woke up feeling like I was thrown out of a plane. And this kind but gruff nurse was like hovering over me, like honestly, like within minutes when I woke up and she said, we're going to walk, get up. And I was like, we're going to walk? Like the bathroom might as well have been China. But then she tenderly said to me, two steps forward, one step back, two steps forward, which is that same

falling down and getting up. And then I discovered when I was working on this book, in the Hindu Upanishads, which are the anonymous holy texts in Hindu literature and worldview, there's this wonderful image they use of a caterpillar. And how a caterpillar moves, it stretches out, and then it goes back a little bit, bunches up, and then it inches forward. And then it bunches up back, and then it inches forward. And they say, this is what spiritual growth is like. Two steps forward, one step back, falling down and getting up. And so no one signs up for falling down just like no one signs up for suffering. But if we back up enough, it's like gravity. You can't escape gravity. You have to live with it,

live through it. And so when we back up enough, falling down and getting up is a dance And we back up enough, falling down and getting up is a dance across our lifetime. And we have to learn what that dance is for each of us. I'm Jason Alexander. And I'm Peter Tilden. And together on the Really No Really podcast, our mission is to get the true answers to life's baffling questions like why they refuse to make the bathroom door go all the way to the floor we got the answer will space junk block your cell signal the astronaut who almost drowned during a spacewalk gives us the answer we talk with the scientist who figured out if your dog truly loves you and the one bringing back the

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Courts are not really supposed to play a big role in choosing our elected leaders. It's for the voters to decide. Follow the Big Take podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. I wanted to talk about an idea that weaves its way through a lot of what you just said. And it's this idea of, I don't know if I'll call it balance or both and thinking or paradoxes. They're all similar ways of talking about the same thing. But throughout the book, you are contrasting that our job is to not do either or. I'm just going to read like four or five that I came across as I was going, right? We want to be grounded, but not buried, lifted, but not removed. We don't want to resist

or collude with our pain. We don't want to drown in our grief, but we also don't want to resist or collude with our pain. We don't want to drown in our grief, but we also don't want to run from it. You know, we want to see what's possible while accepting what is right. There's all of this sort of doing both. And as I was saying earlier about like when you're in pain, you know, there's a big part of you that just says, make it go away. But my experience has been that there's also, and it may only be a teensy little bit of me and other moments, it's a bigger part of me that can look to the future, that can understand that all the most difficult times in my life have led to greater wisdom and a more open heart. And that doing that, you know, finding that balance. And

my experience is when I'm in a lot of pain, that my balance is not to drown in the pain. It's not to lose sight of the fact that better things can come. But I think this is always our challenge, is trying to sort of thread that needle between those two different things. And I just, as I was reading your book, I just kept seeing it kind of again and again and again. What surfaces, if I'm true, becomes my teacher that I keep learning with. And this is definitely one of the central lessons here, which invites practice, all the time practice. And it's not the sense of, oh, avoid the extremes to stay in the middle. No, no, we're human. We will bounce.

We will become a glass. And then we have to become a lake. We will fall too far to one side. That's the course correction of the compass. And the practice is living and the work of self-awareness is recognizing when we're a little too far this way and a little too far that way without judgment, but with discernment so we can get back in that corridor of aliveness. This, I think, is the ongoing practice of being awake and alive with an open heart. There's probably more choice points than what I've discovered. One relational one that's always there, we all work hard to open our heart so that we can be in authentic relationship with life and each other. And then when we get there, nobody knows how to do this.

This is the art of being sensitive. And all we can do with all of these choice points is compare notes, compare notes. And so one of the perennial kind of choice points is, so you and I are friends and you're going through a hard time and I'm there for you. And because my heart's open, I can easily become your pain. And then I go, that's the one extreme and I lose myself in your pain. Okay. And then I go, whoa, I one extreme, and I lose myself in your pain, okay? And then I go, whoa, I didn't know it was going to be like that. Well, I don't want to sign up for this, and now we go the other extreme, and now we build a wall, and we say, no, I'm not going there.

And neither extreme, these are just like working for what we want as an apprenticeship for what we're given, falling into either extreme is an apprenticeship for what I would say is mature compassion. How do I learn? And I'm learning this. I don't know how to do it. How do I learn to have porous boundaries, to be who I am and to stay in it with you without losing who I am and without creating a wall, without cutting it off. And this is the work and the art of being sensitive. This is what we sorely need in our time. I love that phrase, porous boundaries, because it does speak to, yeah, the boundaries do need to be set, but it can't become a wall. And as you were talking, I was also thinking about the fluid nature of boundaries, as we've sort of talked about the fact that we're going to move from here to there, right? If they get fixed in place, then we're unable to

make that shift from being grounded, but not buried or pick any of those examples I gave, right? There's flexibility that we always need. And I often think when we talk about boundaries in the psychological world, we often don't talk about that fact that a boundary needs to be probably reconsidered semi-frequently to see, does it still serve me? And so there's a couple of things about that that's so true and so important, which is, again, it shows us that while we'd like to arrive at something that can be instructive, that we can turn and say, okay, it's this.

No, it needs to be reassessed and re-inhabited every day, every day. And this speaks to the real work of intimacy. My wife, Susan, she's a potter. We've been together 29 years. And I know her so well that I could finish her sentences. I don't, that I could finish your sentences. You know, I don't, not for the obvious reasons, but because after all this time, we both need to stay in waking up every day and going, who are you today? You're a constantly evolving being.

And while I know you so well, do you still believe in what you believe in? Has it changed? What matters to you now? And that's the question or the invitation that allows the boundaries to be remade every day. And in nature, there's a great example of this, and this is birds.

We all know that birds sing at the first sign of light. Well, that's individually, and that's a great metaphor for, in order to be who you are in the world, you have to sing at your first contact with light every day. But what I learned later, which is so powerful, what we're talking about is the birds as a community, they remap their territories every day based on hearing each other sing at the first sight of light. So if you don't voice your individuality, your soul, if you don't show up every day, well, then it's like you're not there.

And the rest of the birds go, oh, I guess that space is up for grabs. and the rest of the birds go, oh, I guess that space is up for grabs. So based on hearing you be you and you hearing me be me, then the birds remap their territories and their community every single day. The map stays current. That's a great metaphor for what we're talking about and how voicing the truth of our experience allows each of us to show up. And now every day we go, oh, this is the terrain of our relationship. Yeah. That makes me think of something. I'm working on a project to reinterpret the Tao

Te Ching and create a bunch of tutorials and questions, sort of a guided journey through it. Oh, it's wonderful. I have an enormous number of translations of the Tao Te Ching in the other room. I joke that I may be like the fifth largest collection of Tao Te Ching translations in the US at this point. But one of them I'm reading, and it's called A Philosophical Interpretation. And they talk about something that I really love. And they talk about how every moment is a combination of the possibility for novelty with a significant continuation of what came before, right? You sometimes hear people be like, every moment is brand new. And I'm like, well, not exactly. I mean, it's not exactly brand new because a lot of what came

before carries into the moment. But on the other hand, to say that like this moment is only a feature of what came before it is reductive. And I love the way they thought of that, how it's really that every moment has both those things in it. And I think that speaks to what you're talking about with your wife. There is a significant portion of you and her relationship that tells you, you know what she thinks, you know what she believes. There's support and intimacy in that. And there's an opportunity for freshness and, it's our turn to encounter it. I don't resonate so much when, oh, this is a new consciousness. This is a new, no, you know, we tend to have this myth that because we're modern, we're at the top of the mountain.

And I kind of think history is horizontal. We're all the same six inches from heaven in the gutter, you know? We just have more tools and toys. But the prehistoric people were just as deep and just as troubled and in wonder as we are. So I've come to believe more in incarnation rather than progress. Yeah. an incarnation rather than progress. Yeah. So focus on one of those choice points you lifted up about being grounded, but not ground down. And so the wheel of life that never stops. And throughout history, we have whole philosophies that freeze the wheel in a certain place. If you freeze it on the top,

we have idealism and everything's wonderful and let's transcend out of here and don't worry about the rest of it. And if you freeze it on the bottom, now you've got nihilism. It all sucks. What are you talking about? It's terrible. And one of the teachers in the last 10, 15 years of my life has been the paradox that all things are true. All things are not fair or just, but all things are true. And the heart is asked to stay open enough to absorb that paradox until it becomes our teacher. And so this has led me to this notion that every life has the lift of the miracle of life, and every life has the gravity and possibility of tragedy in any given moment. And all of that is true.

And we are challenged, if all we do is stay with being grounded, we will be ground down. Yeah. But if all we do is turn away from the difficulty and the pain, then we're going to float. We will barely be tethered to life. And the challenge for each of us is how to let those two things walk in our heart so that we're grounded but not ground down and that we're lifted but that we don't float away. And so this raises what I would say which helped me understand that the real purpose of art in any art form is to marry what is with what can be. And then again, if all you do is see what is, then you're going to be lost. Any one of us will be lost in the endless pain of being here. But if all you do is say with what can be, you're slowed away in endless possibility that's not really relevant. And so, you know, like the power of metaphor, the power of writing is twofold.

One is just what we're saying to show what is possible and to bring what's invisible into view. And the other is to bear witness to what is. invisible into view and the other is to bear witness to what is you know Pablo Neruda the great Chilean poet in the 1930s he was in Spain during the Civil War there he saw a lot of horrible things and he has a line in a poem of his he was one of the great makers of metaphor his line one of his poems there where he says the blood of children on the sidewalk is like the blood of children on a sidewalk. And with those two lines, he's saying,

yeah, use metaphor to show things that can't be seen. But when you see what is, say what is. If you use metaphor there, you're distancing. No, the blood of children on a sidewalk is like just what it is, man. The blood of children on a sidewalk. Don't look away. Don't look away. So there again, we're this mix of how do we not turn from life and not run from life. Yeah, that line, what is with what can be is a way of saying what I was pointing to in that philosophical interpretation of the Tao, right? There is what is, and there is the possibility of something different. And those things coexist within each moment. And Neruda's story there is heartbreaking. And because you're right, any metaphor there would be a deluding of, a carrying you away from.

When I was a young man and I was going to New York City and doing open mic readings where all young poets, they'll take five minutes or whatever. And I was in that village at the bar cafe where it was going to take place and poets were winding up. at the bar cafe where it was going to take place and poets were winding up in it. And a guy came in, running in saying, oh my God, I just saw a mugging and I stopped and wrote a poem about it. And someone across the bar yelled out, yeah, sure beats stopping the mugging. And even then, what is the proper role of art is to help us be here now, as Ram Dass said, be here now, not to distance us from life, but to bring us closer to life. There's a wonderful story that's very powerful about Nietzsche, the philosopher Nietzsche about this. powerful about Nietzsche, the philosopher Nietzsche about this. So Nietzsche, as you know, I mean, like all of us in college, I read a lot of Nietzsche, and I didn't resonate a lot with a lot of it, with all of his Superman and bending of the will and all this stuff. Well, later on in

life, I ran across a quote of his that was totally different from all of that. And it was this quote, which I think is an anthem of our day today, actually. He said, I want to see what is necessary as beautiful so I can be one of those who makes things beautiful. I was very moved by that. But then I thought like, man, that's different for him. And then I realized, you know what? I don't really know anything about his life. And there's always a story behind the story. So I started looking. And sure enough, it turned out that Nietzsche lived to be 55. And around the age of 44, he had this transformative experience. And everything he wrote afterwards was different.

And this saying that I just quoted came from after this. So this is the incident that happened. He was in an apartment off a piazza in Turin, Italy on the second floor. And one morning he heard somebody whipping a horse out in the piazza. So he leaned his head out the window and he said, hey, stop whipping that horse. What's the matter with you? Then, of course window and he said, hey, stop whipping that horse. What's the matter with you? Then of course the guy said, hey, it's my horse. Who are you? I'll do what I want. And it cracked Nietzsche. And he ran down into the piazza arguing with this guy who kept

whipping the horse. And finally Nietzsche stepped between the whip and the whipped, and he threw his arms around the neck of the horse. And he was never the same. Now in the world of philosophy, all those people who invested in his early work, they literally write and say, forget it. The guy had a breakdown. Forget about it.

Disregard everything that came after. But the mystic Mayababa, who was a contemporary Hindu mystic, he wrote, no, no, no, no, no. Forget everything that came before. That was his moment of transformation into a deeper understanding of the unity of life and that we are here in it. I feel like for all his brilliance of mind, which was not a wrong turn, but an apprenticeship for that moment when he drew his arms around the horse. That was the poem of his life. Wow. Wow. Yeah, that's a really powerful story. That is a really powerful story. And

it speaks to that we can be broken open by compassion. Absolutely. And that while we have to face everything we go through, we are more than what is done to us. Does meditating feel like a chore, another to-do list item to check off, or perhaps it's even fallen off the list entirely? If you sense that meditating regularly would benefit you, but you struggle to find a sustainable place for it in your schedule, I can help. There are reasons people struggle with creating and maintaining a meditation practice, and it isn't because meditation isn't right for them. In my free guide, The Top 5 Reasons You Can't Seem to Stick with a Meditation Practice

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen. Let's change a slightly different direction here. So we've talked about this idea of striking the balance or holding both extremes or paradoxes that we just talked about, grounded but not buried. Another is this idea of waiting. It shows up again and again in the book also. You say our challenge is to wait with courage until the aspects of life beyond our understanding come into view. The answer to perceive chaos is not to impose some form of order, but to wait long enough for the inherent order to show itself one more time. I could pull up a few more, but in this falling down and getting back up, it appears that waiting and patience is a pretty key element.

Absolutely. And I think it's one of the things, you know, there's a paradox here that we're a human being and the human in us is terribly impatient. And the being in us is infinitely patient. And our challenge is to listen more to our being in that regard than our humanness. Because the world is so rapid, and with technology, it's amazingly more rapid, right? And yet things that matter still take time. And so we have to work extra hard to counter the speed of our age, to counter the speed of our age. And so, you know, I mean, I remember before email, there's a journal in London, a Sufi journal that published my work for 30 years. And in the

beginning, of course, you know, I was sending envelopes, mailing it over across the Atlantic. It would take three weeks. Then it would take another few weeks to hear back from the editor. And then email came along. What's this thing, email? And I hit a button. And 20 minutes later, I'm hearing from the editor in London. And now if I text you and you don't answer me in 30 seconds, I'm offended.

And so you counter that with the fact that, okay, with 24-7 news cycle and that we're seeing things instantly, which has its merits, but also it doesn't give us time for reflection before we react. So you counter this with the fact that when Lincoln gave his second inaugural speech, which had the phrase, the better angels of our nature, which has become so prevalent, wonderfully so, he hand wrote that. After he delivered it, it was hand copied by scribes in Washington. And the way it was shared, it was sent out to the rest of the country by Pony Express. It took three weeks after he read that for it to arrive in Sacramento, California. he read that for it to arrive in Sacramento, California. So even if you are upset with it and you didn't agree with it, built in time to reflect before you react. And we don't have that. You know, John Milton wonderfully said in, in, in licit is, you know, those who wait

also serve those who wait also serve. Those who wait also serve. And there is this for us to understand and to absorb and to integrate and to embody takes time. And so a great image or metaphor for this is before we had our cell phones and we could take, you know, 20 pictures in 10 seconds and they'd all come out looking fantastic. Well, you know that early photographers, Ansel Adams, carried 10 by 12 metal plates. Each one was a film. And then he would wait to get whatever, if he could catch it. But then he'd go back down the mountain and he'd put that plate in chemicals in a dark room. And then you had to wait for the image to emerge.

Well, that's a great metaphor for the heart and the mind. And insights from our experience take time to emerge. And because of the speed of our age, we often impatiently, we leave the dark room of our mind and heart, say, well, there's nothing there, I guess. I've got to go. And then just as we close the door, the insight emerges as we've left.

So it does beg us to have the courage to wait for order, for harmony, for things to start to make sense. That sense develops over time. There is revelation, instantaneous, but things often take time to emerge and to make sense. Yeah, and I think you couple our modern, everything speeds up and our ability to wait decreases,

and you couple that with when you're in the midst of difficulty, there's a natural impatience for the pain to cease, or there's a natural impatience because uncertainty can be difficult to live in. So you've got both those things. You've got all these different factors that you are working against. I read one of those lines and I went over it pretty quickly to make the point about waiting. But I wanted to ask you a question that's inherent in one of them. And you said, when afraid, we cast the world as an untenable and fearful place rather than working with our incapacity to meet experience beyond our fear. What does that mean to work with our incapacity to meet experience

beyond fear? Yeah. So let me go all the way back. That's one iteration of something that I came to understand, which went all the way back to a real transformative moment for me during my cancer journey. And that was that a few weeks after having a rib removed in my back, I was in New York City and I had my first chemo treatment, which was horribly botched. And the only medicine I was given to combat nausea afterwards was oral. So I couldn't keep it down. So I was with my former wife and a dear old friend, the three of us were at a holiday inn outside of New York City and I started to get sick every 20 minutes and which was doubly hard because the scar where the rib had just been removed and we kept thinking this can't possibly

end, this can't kill on like this, it has to end and then it would keep happening and of course we were afraid. I was in pain. It was terrible. And didn't know what was going to happen next. And finally, we went to the emergency room. But it wasn't until almost dawn. And there I was on the Florida Holiday Inn, slumped over, afraid, in pain.

And not so any wisdom on my part. in pain, and not so any wisdom on my part, but because I was exhausted beyond any pattern of thinking I had used up to that point, it occurred to me, as the sun was coming up, that while this is true for me, somewhere nearby, a baby's being born. And somewhere nearby, a couple's making love for the first time. And somewhere nearby, an adult parent, an adult child are speaking for the first time after months of conflict. And so I was thrown into this mysterious truth that to be broken is not to see all things as broken.

And reflecting on that, you know, I spent years reflecting on what opened in that moment. Just as it's natural for our humanness to be impatient, there's another thing that we do as human beings that's natural, that's not always helpful, very seldom is helpful, and that is we extrapolate our experience into a worldview. So if I'm afraid, I make the world a fearful place. If I'm broken, the world's a broken place. If things are confusing, the world's a confusing place. It doesn't make sense. But the healing comes from the diversity of life. And again, this is one of those extremes. So, I tend to make things all about me and paint the world in that color. If I'm in trouble, the world is full of trouble. Man, just a mess there's no way out and then

when I discover that it's more than just me well then we tend to do the other extreme well I guess what I'm going through is insignificant and again no all things are true what I was going through I was still terrified I was still didn't know what was going to happen next. I was still in pain. But thank God a baby was being born and a couple was making love. Because it's more than just me. And it's the resources of the mystery of life. This is part of the broken hallelujah we were talking about earlier. That, yes, I have to experience what I'm going through, and it's not just what I'm going through. So, there's an example here. In the 1600s, there was a samurai warrior named

Masahide. After a long career, he gave up his sword. He put it down and went to apprentice with the master poet Basho. Now, I would have loved to interview that guy. Like, what happened, right? Well, the one haiku that he is famous for goes like this. is for goes like this. My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon more completely. My barn having burned to the ground, I can now see the moon more completely. And I think in those three lines is what we're talking about. It's another way to open up the wisdom, the paradox that there's no escaping the pain we're in. There's no jumping over the loss of the barn burning down. That's real. That's truth.

There's a lesson and a learning and a transformation that comes from that. And now that it's burned down, I had no idea this vastness was here oh my god oh my god both are true so rather than painting the world with all of my fear how do I work with my fear to move into what's beyond it and under it and through it. Not denying it, not jumping over it, not minimizing it, but by feeling it. And this opens up a deeper thing, Eric. I guess what I would call a law of spiritual physics that I think I've been working with my whole life and feeling and understanding.

And that is that it's only through the thoroughness of our authenticity that we become hollow conduits for the entire mystery of life. So by processing my experience, I'm able to understand and receive your experience this is at the heart of all compassion because if i'm not processed and i'm blocked i can't receive you or other life so this becomes it's only by opening ourselves so if i feel the truth of who i am to the bottom of my personality i trip into the well of all person yeah having our gifts of our consciousness we can this goes back to transcending i can conceptualize it that's not it. That's not living it. That's not living it. Then the only way to all of life is through the individual inlet of the truth of our individual life.

And that's another reason to work through our pain. So there's one last line I'd like to talk about before we run out of time. And you say each of us is gifted and desperate. And the great battle is to dive through our desperation into our gift. This is the journey of the native self to pass by the dragon, and most of all, to stop being the dragon. Expand upon any part of that that you like, because the whole thing is tremendous. Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, I think this has to do with the sense that each of us has a gift and each of us has a cloud we have to work through to be who we are everywhere. we have to work through to be who we are everywhere. So, you know, this is another metaphor that helps us see both sides of this. You know, when we're under cloud cover and it's rainy, that experience is real. And sun's still shining. Above the cloud, the sun hasn't gone anywhere.

Both are true. And again, we can be helplessly optimistic and say, oh, well, don't worry about it. The sun's there. The other is true too. We can be trapped in the cloud cover of our desperation, of our lack of worth, of our not knowing where we are or how we relate to everything and finding our place in the world. And that keeps us from our gift. And so we often have to outweigh the cloud cover of our desperation, of our inferiority, of our lack of work, so that we can stand directly in the light by which we will discover our gifts. And then the purpose

of discovering our gifts is to make use of them. So I learned to open my eyes in order to see. I learned to open my heart in order to love. If I don't see once I open my eyes, what's the point? And if I don't love once I open my heart, why? And so often in our desperation, we play the victim. And so there's a dragon, there's a villain. And we think the only way to get out of our desperation is to become the hero. No, the only way to get out of our desperation is to outweigh the cloud cover so we can be neither a hero or a villain so stop looking for dragons and stop being the dragon you know if we don't i mean this is one

of the ways to understand trump as an archetype of kind of the you know the way there was the frankenstein monster trump is like the monster that was created out of narcissism okay and yeah so you know he doesn't know how to feel any sense of worth or sense of being who he truly is so you know he's become a dragon that needs to eat and burn and break everything in its path. Because another kind of stark spiritual truth is that violence is the last desperate attempt to feel. The need to feel doesn't go away. And if we become so encapsulated and in-walled and insulated from life including from our ability to feel and be sensitive then it comes out sideways it comes out as violence it comes you know i mean you see the plethora of violent films well when you look at it and when we get past the violence, what is happening? People are literally opening up other people because they can't open up with their mind and their heart. They're physically obsessed with opening others up, but it's all through violence.

But the need to open hasn't gone anywhere. Well, I think that is a great place for us to wrap up, Mark. It is always such a pleasure. You and I are going to continue in a post-show conversation where you're going to read a couple of poems that amplify and expand upon what we've been talking about here. Listeners may not know that that's another of your big vocations as you are an outstanding poet. And listeners, if you'd like access to that and many other post-show conversations, ad-free episodes, and the pleasure of supporting something that means a lot to you, go to oneufeed.net slash join and become part of our community. Mark, thank you so much. Like I said, always a pleasure.

Oh, thank you, Eric. It's a joy. If what you just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a monthly donation to support the One You Feed podcast. When you join our membership community with this monthly pledge, you get lots of exclusive members-only benefits. It's our way of saying thank you for your support. Now, we are so grateful for the members of our community. We wouldn't be able to do what we do without their support, and we don't take a single dollar for granted. To learn more, make a donation at any level, and become a member of the One You Feed community, go to oneyoufeed.net slash join. The One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely

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