To listen is to continually give up all expectation and to give our attention, completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by what we hear.
Mark NepoThe real challenge is to remember to see clearly when everything's flying around us and we're wrapped up in our [emotional] wounds and traumas.
Mark NepoThe journey is made easier when we can accept that the process of living is designed for what matters to come through us tenderly.
Mark NepoPerhaps the noblest private act is the unheralded effort to ... open our hearts once they've closed, to open our souls once they've shied away.
Mark NepoTragedy stays alive by feeling what's been done to us, while peace comes alive by living with the results.
Mark NepoThe paradox is that we have this amazing capacity in our minds and hearts to learn and gain insights and then to build a kind of personal storehouse of knowledge. The underside is that those insights harden and fill the spaces in our hearts and minds. They become assumptions, conclusions and judgments.
Mark Nepo