The One You Feed - Mark Nepo

Episode Date: February 23, 2016

This week we talk to Mark Nepo about the mysteries of lifeMark Nepo is a poet, philosopher and cancer survivor who has taught in the fields of poetry, health, and spirituality for forty years. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he has published numerous books and audio projects. Mark has appeared with Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV, and has also been interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America.His book The Book of Awakening is considered a modern spiritual classic. His latest book is called Inside the Miracle: Enduring Suffering, Approaching WholenessOur Sponsor this Week is Spirituality and Health Magazine. Click here for your free trial issue and special offer. In This Interview Mark Nepo and I Discuss...The One You Feed parableThinking of things as life affirming or life draining versus good and badHow none of us really understands the mystery of lifeHow controlling and counting cuts off our access to the present momentResisting inflating or deflating ourselvesThe real meaning of humilityHow only the heart can synthesize our experienceThe role and definition of paradoxSubstituting what is familiar for what is trueThe critical role of dialog and relation in a spiritual practiceFor more show notes visit our websiteSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The terrible knowledge is that we can be erased in a second, and I don't say that to scare anyone. 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 Know 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, philosopher, and cancer survivor who has taught in the fields of poetry, health, and spirituality for 40 years.

A New York Times number one bestselling author, he has published numerous books and audio projects. Mark has appeared with Oprah Winfrey on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV and has also been interviewed by Robin Roberts on Good Morning America. And here's the interview with Mark Nepo. Hi, Mark. Welcome to the show. Thank you. It's great to be with you. It's a real pleasure to have you on. I have seen your books on shelves for years. The Book of Awakening I read years ago and I really liked and I really enjoyed your latest book, Inside the Miracle. So I'm looking forward to getting into that book in more detail. But we'll start like we normally do with the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson. He says, 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 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 grandson stops and he thinks about it for a second. And he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins? And the grandfather 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, as well as any ways that you like to feed the good wolf in your own life. Sure. Well, thank you. I love that parable. I know it well. And as I'd like to reflect on it, I'd like to move away from good and bad.

bad. You know, I find in my, not to a place of relativism where we say there is no good or bad, but in terms of how we move through life, I'd like to reflect on this in terms of things that are life affirming and things that are life draining. Because often I find when we're told we're good or we're bad or we're up or we're down or we're true or we're false or, you know, all of these directional judgments, they're just not specific enough to be helpful. You know, if you tell me I'm bad, I feel bad, but I don't really understand what that means in a way that's going to help me change. And likewise, if you tell me I'm good, well, I feel relieved for a minute. But I also don't really know what that means in terms of what to reinforce. So for me, I feel like we are made up just like X and Y chromosomes. We begin with, I think, everything we need inside us.

And as we engage in the life of experience, we move constantly between life-affirming energies and life-draining energies. And the life-draining energies make us look for only things that will confirm what we already know, look for things that will only give us the illusion that we're in control. And they will feed fear and violence and hate and sameness. I think is what the soul wants us to do. When we pursue our aliveness, which changes for every individual throughout their life, then we come alive and we inhabit our gifts. And so we're all, which one do we feed? Do we feed what's life affirming? Or do we feed what's life draining? Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. One of the things in your book that you talk about a little bit, you were just talking about control. And in the latest book, you say that our personal suffering is often intensified by our want

to control life and failing to be in control while believing in control makes us feel accountable for all that breaks along the way. believing in control makes us feel accountable for all that breaks along the way. And so there is guilt, but where guilt is secreted by a controlling mind, compassion emanates from an accepting heart. Yeah, you know, and I think, you know, we're just all comparing notes. Nobody really has a clue about this great mystery of life. And that's the wonderful thing is when we can admit we don't know anything, then we can really begin a true journey or inquiry together. So, you know, let me first say I don't have any answers. But all I can do is speak from my own experience.

And, you know, all of these things, even what we talked about in terms of life draining and life affirming energies, I have, you know, pursued both. I have fallen trying to control things. And it's part of being human. Right. But it's where we go with it and what we do with it. And when we fall down, do we get up? And so, you know, I think that I learned through my journey and my cancer journey many years ago, we really have very little control over life. Which doesn't mean, oh, therefore, there's nothing to do.

I should acquiesce and just live like a rock. You know, there's a difference between participating and engaging in life and trying to control events and people and the thoughts and feelings of those around us. And when we do try to control things, which is impossible, we wind up becoming more and more anxious and irritated. And we wind up resenting the life around us that won't stay controlled. Right. So, you know, there's a, uh, it's not in this book, but I have a small little, very, very short story in my book of stories. As far as the heart can see, it's called Cain and Abel. I can't recite it, but I can tell you exactly the essence of it. And the essence is that, you know, two brothers, they find themselves with one small berry in their weaker hand. And the one, the one brother looks at it and he,

and it's so small compared to everything he's worked for and wanted and dreamed of that it makes him bitter. But the other brother looks at the small berry and he says, Oh my God, I think, I think all my work has led me to this small berry. I think the whole world is inside that one little berry. And so he and you can also this is another version of of which one will you feed? Now, we both we all have these voices in us. We have the voice that looks at whatever we're given and goes, is that it? After all I've done, after all I've worked,

is that all I get? And that makes us bitter. That makes us want to, you know, file a grievance with God somewhere. But the other is we wake up like I did after my cancer journey and I go, oh my God, it was all here right all along. It's in this little berry. Let me eat this berry that has everything. Oh, my God. How amazing is that? And I think everybody has this ongoing conversation between these two voices. And one other thing I've learned along the way is that as soon as we we stop and we all, to compare or count our experience compared to our dream of what we're working toward or compared to others or compared to those in history. As soon as we compare or count, we lose our access to everything that matters because you can't be present and compare or count. Right. Yeah. That's something we talk about on the show a lot is this idea of, you know,

how, how painful comparison can be. I think it was maybe Teddy Roosevelt who said that, you know, comparison is the thief of joy. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah. That's a wonderful expression. What I've noticed about it is when you're, once you're in the comparing mind, you can always look and be like, well, I've got more than that person, but I've got less, you know, wherever you are on the scale, you can always look up or down. And my experience of that is always that it, neither of those points am I connecting. This leads Eric to another kind of ongoing challenge that's part of the human journey. And that is that everyone alive goes through repeated challenges about inflating ourselves or deflating ourselves. And the practice,

I think, or at least what I aspire to, is whenever I'm going one way or the other, Whenever I'm going one way or the other, it's to really try to just assume my full stature, not larger than I am and not smaller than I am. I'm 64, and each decade I have a different form of exercise. But when I was in my 40s, I jogged. I was jogging one day in the summer. I was living in Albany, New York at the time. And I was, you know, tired about three miles in and I was sweating and I had panting and my hands were on my knees and it had rained the night before. And I was looking in a puddle and all of a sudden I saw this full grown man in the puddle and it was me.

And and I realized, you know, I I'd been a little boy running around in a big man's body for years. And all of a sudden I saw myself just briefly, accurately. And it was one of those moments that changed me, that changed me to assume my accurate, full stature, not to be anybody else and not to be inflated or deflated. Right. There's that spiritual idea of humility, which is often, I think, interpreted as being, you know, oh, I'm nothing, I'm nothing. Whereas, you know, the way I, the best way I've always heard humility defined is an accurate reading of really who we are, what we're good at, what we're not good at. I mean, just a very accurate picture of who we are is humility versus a sort of a false sort of condescension towards ourselves. Yeah. And when we can be accurate about ourselves,

we're open to life around us. We're more open to life around us. Cause when we're bigger than we are, then we're like the wizard of Oz. We're really trying to keep puffing it up. And when we're smaller than we are, then we're doing that comparing thing. And we're always trying to knock everything else down because we feel so small. And neither, neither allows us to truly relate to life and to those around us. Yeah, one of my favorite lines of yours is you say, if peace comes from seeing the whole, then misery stems from a loss of perspective. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think this, that also really came to me through my own suffering, because I think that I learned while I was going through my cancer journey, that to be broken is no reason to see all things as broken. And that, and again, it's like we're

talking here, it's not about, it's not about, you know, when we're in pain and when we're in fear, it's natural and human to want, well, okay, the whole world is painful. I'm broken. Therefore, everything's terrible. The world's chaotic and broken. And when I'm in pain, then everything is painful. Or I'm afraid therefore the whole world is it's understandable to do that but the truth

is both things are true at what you know when I when I was you know broken and sick and and you know close to dying and afraid I you know, I had a moment where that was all true. And that was overwhelming. And the light outside of my home that day was still beautiful. And somewhere, not very far away, though I don't know where, somebody was making love. And somewhere else, not very far away, a child was being born. And somewhere else, someone was helping away, a child was being born. And somewhere else, someone was helping somebody. And so, you know, both things are true. And while when we're suffering, we need the company of those who know what it's like to suffer.

When I'm suffering, I need everything that's not suffering to heal. When I'm broken, I need everything that's not suffering to heal. When I'm broken, I need everything that's solid to heal. And so being in the moment, which we talk a lot about in our age, and I think rightfully so, but we tend sometimes to make a cartoon out of it. Being in the moment isn't just, oh, well, I can forget about responsibility or the past or the future or others and just live with abandon and enjoy it. Now, being in the moment means being in my moment to the depth of my experience, where it starts to touch on all experience and being in the moment of life that is happening everywhere at the same time beyond my individual journey and allowing those things to merge. You know, it's interesting that we're taught as we grow up, we're all taught to discern things, to sort, to prioritize, and then choose.

And this is a very great skill that the mind has that helps us navigate the surface world. It helps me put gas in the car and choose cottage cheese over milk and, you know, choose cough syrup and not the poison, the ant poison that's next to it. And that's all necessary. But I think, you know, that kind of mental acuity is not a code to live by. It's a skill to help us live. And what experience has taught me is that the longer I go and the deeper I feel things, both wonderful and difficult, the more I feel like experience asks us to let everything in, to absorb it and let it integrate, to let it synthesize. And the mind can't do that. Only the heart, I believe, can do that. And the mind can't do that. Only the heart, I believe, can do that. And that, when we can hold the truth of all things, then it releases a logic of the heart. And this is where we get into the realm of paradox.

Yes. One of the guardians of truth. Yes. Paradox has been a great teacher for me. And being like the fact that I could be, you know, struggling and sick with cancer, and a mile away, you know, somebody is being born, you know, and one is, you know, not more valuable than the other or competing with the other. They inform each other. rest of the interview with mark nepo in the latest book you have a line that speaks very much to what we were just talking about that i had pulled out and it says, the sighted fin only implies the wonder of the great fish pumping below. And the sighted star only implies the oceans of light flooding the universe beyond the range of our eyes. In just this way, everything worth knowing is cloaked in paradox, because everything subsides. 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 woolly mammoth.

Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer. And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Bryan Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir.

Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging. Really? That's the opening? Really? No, really. Yeah, really. No, really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason Bobblehead. It's called Really? No, Really? And you can find it on the iHeartRadio app on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. global business story that matters. You'll hear from Bloomberg journalists like Matt Levine. A lot of this meme stock stuff is, I think, embarrassing to the SEC. Amanda Mull, who writes our Business Week Buying Power column.

Very few companies who go viral are like totally prepared for what that means. And Zoe Tillman, senior legal reporter. Courts are not supposed to decide elections. 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. Substantial defies being revealed in its totality. Thank you. Thank you. And I think that, you know, so in that way, we're always, I think, the physical world, the tangible world, is like the tip of the iceberg. It's a manifestation of the invisible energies of life, whatever you want to call them. And, you know, the mystical

call it, you know, the glow and shimmer of spirit. And, you know, the mystical call it, you know, the glow and shimmer of spirit. And, you know, physicists call it the wave theory that's in between particles. But whatever we call it, there's more than just the surface world. It points to the invisible. that we're asked to do in being human and in coming alive is to maintain our relationship with all that is unseen and unknown, to stay in conversation with what we don't know. It's a huge point of contention in our modern global world because we live in an age where there is fundamentalism worldwide nobody has a uh kind of a monopoly on fundamentalism not uh right you know we have domestic fundamentalism

and and every culture has its orthodoxy and fundamentalism but i also believe and i write about this in the endless practice but um but we've developed a personal fundamentalism where, you know, we become so accustomed to what's familiar that we think of that as truth. And actually, that insight is not mine. actually that insight is not mine that's robert keegan's from uh who's the psychologist from harvard developmental psychologist which i love is he talks about egocentrism as when we we substitute what is familiar as true because it's familiar we believe it's true and now only things that are familiar to us will we allow in. And then we start to fear that anything that's not familiar is dangerous, and therefore we start having racism and prejudice and violence. And as opposed to, you know, Plato said that we're all born whole, W-H-O-L-E, but we need each other to be complete. And in the Jewish tradition, that wholeness that

we're born with is spoken about as the indwelling presence of God that's only manifest when we are in relationship with each other, or with life, or in conversation with our soul so there's a huge uh emphasis in the jewish tradition on relationship and dialogue and conversation because that's how you know which assumes that we're we're not uh i don't talk to you to confirm my our sameness i i talk to you to confirm our sameness. I talk to you so that I can learn from you what I don't know, and you from me what you don't know, and together we are made more whole. So those have always been fundamental, you know, different kind of starting points in the human journey. At any point in history, you can find, you can find, there really are two lineages. Yeah. And I think that modern culture has a definite sense of

the not have the answer is something that we're very afraid of. Yeah. And actually, you know, I think that we've been miseducated that we should even look for answers. I view a question now at this point in my life as a doorway that I would like to open and go through with someone, not for an answer so that we can live something together. Yeah, there's that great old quote from Rilke about learning to love the questions, and then someday you might be able to live your way into the answers. Yeah, that's a beautiful, beautiful statement. So your latest book is called Inside the Miracle, Enduring Suffering, Approaching Wholeness.

And it's a series of writings from a lot of different times in your life. But the original, some of the original parts of the book were from when you had cancer, I believe, back in the late 80s. So a lot of the book is focused on, if I had to summarize a big part of it, is that it's precisely these challenging experiences, these difficult experiences that we go through that turn us into who we are. That's the path to wisdom very often. What I've done with this book, which I'm very grateful to my publisher, Sounds True, for the chance to do this, is I've taken work over 30 years, starting with my cancer journey and moving through, you know, all the different ways that my perceiving has changed and other struggles and losses to try to glean the lessons and the inquiry. And so to put that

together after all this time was a real gift to be able to explore that. And I'm not like deifying suffering. You know, it's not about that. It's more about, it's like you wouldn't dispute gravity, you know, like it just is. And, you know, suffering and difficulty and obstacles, as well as surprise and wonder, and the overwhelming impetus of love, all of these things, they're equivalent to what friction and erosion are in nature. So in the natural world, things are eroded to their beauty. You know, we save up money and we go on vacation to look at the Grand Canyon or to go to the edge of one of the continents and look at cliffs that have been pounded for thousands of years by the sea. And so the human equivalent to that is great love and great suffering, great surprise and great obstacle. And it seems like the order of the universe,

however you want to deem that, whether you believe in God or Atman or Dharma or quantum physics or everything or nothing, whatever it it is it seems like the universe has been designed to be just the human journey the life journey not just human is difficult enough that we need each other to hold each other up to that erosion and wearing down and i think that ensures the journey of love. And, you know, in the same way that a piece of coal can be pressurized into a diamond, so too we. And so this is just kind of a spiritual physics that I don't know that I would have seen had I not been pressurized myself, and eroded and broken open. And i think that um i'm more my work is focused on

has always been focused on and i think all the traditions are focused on so what do we do once once we're opened you know and that becomes part of that becomes a big part of the spiritual journey we will be opened there's no question about it, just the same way that there's gravity or that rain will fall to the ground or that, you know, erosion will wear mountains away. We will be broken open. And how we hold each other up and support each other and what we do with what's opened is when the soul starts to show itself in the world. And, you know, this is the thing in the Tibetan tradition, a spiritual warrior, not a military warrior.

A spiritual warrior is one who is committed to a life of transformation. Not knowing what that is, will look like. But a spiritual warrior always has a crack in their heart because that's how the mysteries get in. And so, you know, we are cracked open. And when that happens, what the light that is in us comes out and the light of the world comes in. And now, now for the first time, we can't distinguish what's the world and what's me. And now we are more one and our compassion begins to be released. was about this, the need for others and how, how we come together. And there's a line in the book where you're describing the great care that your friend and your wife gave to you during a particular difficult time during your cancer. And you say that we made it through and I'll never

forget what they have taught that reaching in and touching the spot that hurts, if done with selfless love, can release the pain the way a dark branch can be gently shook to free it of all those steely crows. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I mean, I think we underestimate the power of love and of presence. You know, for all the things that we can do, you know, I can, if you, if we were together and you were to fall over or trip, I can help you up and I can get you a Band-Aid and I can get you a glass of water. But for the things that can't be seen, the things that we have to deal with inside, our presence, our bearing witness bearing witness our holding our listening

is is has always been great great medicine great medicine and we often underestimate that or forget it forget that that it even matters. In the book, you talk about something that you received, is the word I'll use, from having cancer. And you talk about something called the terrible knowledge. Well, on the terrible knowledge, and I know that there's an essay that I wrote about that. And the terrible knowledge is this paradox of the fragility of life, of how miraculous and amazing and precious and unrepeatable every moment is, that all of eternity is in every moment, in this moment between us right now. And the terrible knowledge is that we can be erased in a second. And I don't say that to scare anyone. It's always been this flickering, this shimmering paradox that life is precious and life by itself is indestructible.

But those of us, all the forms blessed to carry life are not indestructible. And so it makes life all the more precious. And depending on what side of that terrible knowledge we land is whether we are in the most graceful state or the most fearful state. And so there's no solving the terrible knowledge. There is only our journey, just the way a dolphin will break surface and go under and break surface and go under like a whale, you know. And we will as well. However, I tend to think that when we break surface is when we're prey to the fear and the delicacies of things and the fragility of things.

And when we're in the depth is when we're carried by the indestructible nature of life. And I think that, you know, we have, throughout history, you know, this is an ongoing, unstoppable cycle, I believe. So it's not about staying in any one place. It's about how do we live and hold and be. 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 woolly mammoth. Plus, does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? His stuntman reveals the answer.

And you never know who's going to drop by. Mr. Brian Cranston is with us today. How are you, too? Hello, my friend. Wayne Knight about Jurassic Park. Wayne Knight, welcome to Really, No Really, sir. Bless you all. Hello, Newman. And you never know when Howie Mandel might just stop by to talk about judging.

Really? That's the opening? Really, No Really. Yeah, Really. No Really. Go to reallynoreally.com and register to win $500, a guest spot on our podcast, or a limited edition signed Jason bobblehead. It's called Really No Really, and you can find it on the iHeartRadio app, on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're part of this ongoing miracle and indestructible and slash fragility of life. And so those who get caught or stuck if we, you know, in the destructive side, the fragile, impermanent, fearful side, well, you know, then

those are the people who are pessimistic and nihilistic and life is full of chaos and random and and all there is is fear and those who are who try to be stuck on on the other side to transcend all of that you know life is a panacea it's beautiful if we could just get out of this icky stuff on the ground well it's it's i think it's always both. And, you know, the impermanence of life grounds us from running away from everything that's here. the miraculous light of the indestructible nature of life lifts us from the impermanence. And so I think, you know, I think part of our spiritual practice, whatever that looks like for anybody individually, I think it has some form of how do we allow both in? How do we allow both and how do we live with both?

And it is a terrible knowledge in that, you know, when we fall down, it can be terrifying and terrible. But when we're standing strong, it's full of awe. It's full of awe. It's full of awe. It's full of awe. And I think the value of impermanence within one, we tend from the Buddhist perspective of impermanence, we always immediately think, oh, that means we're going to die and we all will.

But impermanence within a life means that whatever we're going through, including all the difficulties, that's not permanent either. It won't last. It doesn't make it easier, but it won't last. Depending on the state you're in, impermanence is either good or bad news, but it's always true. That's right. on the show that I talk about a lot is how do you balance ambition and striving with being right where you are in life? So you're somebody who has, you know, you have written an enormous number of books, books of poetry, books of nonfiction. So you're clearly, you know, you have some degree of ambition is probably not the right word, but creative drive, call it what you will.

And yet you've also said things, and this conversation confirms a lot of it, like that we think that accomplishing things will complete us when it is experiencing life that will. So how do those things balance out in yourself? Yeah, well, thank you. That's a wonderful question. And, you know, they don't balance out because I don't have any ambition. And I'll tell you how this all, I was very driven before my cancer journey in my 30s. I was a driven artist. And through no wisdom on my part, it wasn't like I almost died and said, Oh, well, I'm going to give that up. You know, I just woke up on the other side, and I was living from my heart and not my head. And I also had lost my drive. And this was very disorienting at the time. I mean, I it really

was troubling. And, you know, it was enough that that I almost died died and I was still here. And now I was here and I felt like I'd lost my gift. I'd lost my creativity. And I was very wandering for almost, you know, eight months or so or nine months when I slowly came to understand that I was now freed of the drive and I was drawn to things. of the drive and I was drawn to things. And the image that helps me understand that was it was like a river, you know, a strong river makes a lot of noise because the banks are holding it. And so it roars down through kind of the gully of the banks and the riverbed. But when that river reaches the sea and all rivers reach the sea, that current doesn't disappear. It goes deeper and continues to run strong. But because it's deeper, it doesn't make any noise. And it joins with all the other water. And that's what going through

cancer and almost dying and still being here did to me against my will without my knowledge you know and and so then when i started to understand i was drawn to things i was actually freer and there was so much more joy in creating and so things started to shift because I wasn't, I was no longer creating to produce something. I was creating to stay in conversation with life. And the trail of that conversation started to become my teacher. So while of course, these writings these writings have parts of me, they have a lot of me, but I wouldn't say that I create them out of nothing. I would say that I retrieve them and I give of myself and myself is in the mix, just like silt on the bottom of a river gets taken along by the river but then what what comes becomes my teacher so you know if i the key to my being prolific has not been ambition

it's been that i've learned how to get out of the way and that i've learned how to uh to write about what I need to learn. I don't write about what I know. And the truth is, I don't know if many authors will admit that. I think that's true for everybody. I write about what I need to learn, and then it becomes my teacher. If I only wrote about what I understood, I would have written very little. So, you know, I wrote a book about awakening the book of awakening because i needed to be more awake and i

wrote a book called the exquisite risk because i needed to be able to learn how to take more risks i wrote a book about courage because whether people you know thought i was courageous in in facing what i had to deal with that That doesn't matter. I had reached the end of what was courage for me. And in order to continue to grow, I needed to learn more about how do I be more courageous? And listening, the book on listening. So, you know, I think that one of the inescapable gifts, hard gifts of almost dying has been that, you know, I look forward to things. I plan things. You know, I look forward to our call. But my dreaming is always returned to now. It's always, my work is always now. There's nowhere to go. There is no ambition. I'm not going anywhere. There's nothing to achieve, you know. And so in this way, you know, we've been taught eternity as you stack up years forever, like on some imaginary ladder. Actually, eternity to me is more like it's all of life that is released in the center of every moment when we can be fully here.

So it's more like a drop of water that ripples clearly in all directions. And, you know, I write and express and am blessed to be in teaching circles because that conversation is when I feel most alive. So let me say one other thing about this, because it's a very important subject. So let's talk about ambition and goals and dreams. I think that we have to have them. And this is where I don't think we need to choose between becoming or being. I think that, you know, we have to have them in order to engage ourselves in life. But we hold on to our dreams and our goals and ambitions too tightly, as if that's where we're going. I think they're kindling for the fire of aliveness. Dreams and goals and ambitions are what the heart and the soul use to bring us alive. And it's the aliveness that matters.

So, you know, we work toward dreams and a lot of times our dreams don't come true. we give our full heart and all of our work and effort, which I believe in, to whatever we think we're working on, our dreams may not come true, but by being so devoted, we may come true. Yeah, that's a beautiful way to phrase that. Do you have any regular spiritual practices that you engage in that help you to stay more alive, to stay in tune with these things that we're talking about? Yeah, you know, I mean, I've practiced a lot of different things, you know, from meditation to prayer to, you know, all kinds of things. And at this point in my life, and they're all wonderful. So it's like whatever works for for anybody, okay? You know, it could be gardening, it could be a formal spiritual practice. And it could be

being an auto mechanic on weekends, you know, it doesn't really matter what it is. But what I at this point in my life, I'm really committed to an integrated practice. So I try to have my days, you know, I purposely interrupt my days. I begin by working and then I'll take our dog for a walk and I'll work some more and then I'll purposely go out and do errands to to break up the day. And so I try to really have things be integrated throughout throughout the day. And and and I'll tell you why. throughout the day. And, and, and I'll tell you why. And it's, um, and I wrote about this in another book, uh, but you know, it comes from the life of Beethoven and Beethoven among many things, but Beethoven, one of his amazing innovations is he, he created it's Opus 131 it's a it's a concert a string uh concerto for a quartet and um and at that time

quartet uh concertos string quartetos um they they only had four movements and he wrote this one with seven and the musicians at the time were all kind of like, you know, they were like, what, what is he thinking? And they were also like challenged to see if they could play it, you know. And one of the other things he did in this was that, you know, in music, there are rest stops, there are pauses where there is no beat. And it just, you know, that beat is filled with silence, there's a rest. Well, not only did he make this with seven movements, but he made the entire thing without any rest stops. There were no pauses. Now, professional string classical, you know, musicians who play string instruments, they're gifted enough and practiced enough that they use those pauses to retune their instruments

because you can't play more than one movement, if you're lucky, without your strings going out of tune even slightly. So Beethoven was saying to the musicians, and it was a comment on life, you can practice, you can do all of this, but yeah, you're going to have to tune as you go. tune as you go. It's not going to be perfect music and you're not going to be able to get a rest stop and you're going to have to tune as you go. And certainly we do have rest stops and we can pause, but there are times in life, you know, we talk here and then we'll get off and you'll go into your life tomorrow and I'll go into mine. And when life happens, we're going to have to tune as we go. your life tomorrow, and I'll go into mine. And when life happens, we're going to have to tune as we go. It may sound out of tune. And it doesn't matter because we're not here. We're not here to do it perfectly. We're here to do it thoroughly. Yeah, I love that story. That's a great way to think about engaging in life. Well, I think that is a great place to wrap up the

interview. I have really enjoyed talking with you. I really enjoy your writing a lot. You are a great writer. There's a lot of poetry, even in the prose, it's very poetic. And then of course, you write a lot of poems. So we will have links in the show notes to certainly your latest book as well as many of your other works. But again, Mark, thank you so much for taking the time. It's been a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you, Eric. It's great to be a part of your good work, too. Okay.

Well, take care. All right. Bye-bye. you can learn more about this podcast and mark nepo at one you feed.net slash nepo that's n-e-p-o thanks