MP3 Download

Mark Nepo has discovered that writing and other forms of expression can be especially effective in assisting our spiritual growth. Nepo tells of his experience, how he loosens the knot of his limiting mind when it is swirling with assumptions and conclusions. “When I am stuck in my mind, when I can’t figure out a problem, when I am confused or things are complicated and I can’t take things in and express them, I turn to the heart and that will start to loosen the knot in my mind. Also, when I’m struggling and stuck in my mind, I will loosen the knot if I give my attention fully to the nearest thing. I will become present again.” He is a learner of the heart, not a specialist of the mind. His work, his writings, his many books, his poems, and his workshops are all about creating a sacred place where the experience of honest truth can happen. Even in our deepest moments of suffering, he encourages us to seek out slivers of light seeping through the broad slats of darkness. This deep dialogue explores how art and creative expression can bring our deepest truths to light and give voice to our most original self as a way to fully enliven our life. His genius is to discover metaphors as a way of understanding and making meaning of our lives. He says, “Metaphor has its own agency. We don’t create it or invent it. We discover it.” (hosted by Justine Willis Toms)

Bio

Mark Nepo is a poet and philosopher and a most eloquent spiritual teacher. In 2015, he was given a Life-Achievement Award by AgeNation and in 2016 was named by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit as one of the Most Spiritually Influential Living People. He was part of Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour in 2014 and has appeared several times with Oprah on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. 

Mark Nepo is the author of many audio learning projects and over 20 books including:

• Reduced to Joy (Cleis Press 2013)
• Seven Thousand Ways to Listen: Staying Close to What Is Sacred (Atria 2012)
• The One Life We're Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your Heart (Atria Books 2016)
• The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting (Sounds True 2016)
• More Together Than Alone: Discovering the Power and Spirit of Community in Our Lives and in the World (Atria Books 2018)

 His many audio learning courses include:

• Staying Awake: The Ordinary Art (Sounds True 2012)
• Holding Nothing Back: Essentials for an Authentic Life (Sounds True 2012)
• More Together Than Alone: Discovering the Power and Spirit of Community in Our Lives and in the World (Atria Books 2018)

 To learn more about the work of Mark Nepo go to www.marknepo.com.

Topics Explored in This Dialogue

• What is the thread of individual soul that held Nepo through a rare form of cancer
• What was the gift from having to lie perfectly still for days when he was healing from a spinal tap and only being able to look out at an apple tree
• How the heart of poetry is metaphor and how to discover metaphors in our writing
• How grief pulls on the tangle of relationships we’ve spent a lifetime creating
• What Mark learned from his mentor, Doc Palmer, the head of the Theater Department at Cortland State University
• How reading Nepo’s books is a participatory event rather than instructional one
• How the by-product of immersion in a singular experience of oneness leads to excellence
• How whales and dolphins teach us the lesson of going deep to renew ourselves and then coming up to give our gifts to the world
• How erosion in nature can be a metaphor for what suffering is to human beings
• What are the four Native American diagnostic questions asked when we are out of balance and experiencing illness
• How life is always where we are. There is no there only here.
• How counting things and comparing things takes us away from the present moment. It is only presence that restores our worth
• How our assumptions and conclusions can calcify our brains and why we must become present regularly so there is nothing between us and our direct experience of life
• How our preferences can get “installed” as our internal landscape
• How the metaphor of the fishbowl illustrates where we are limiting ourselves by our own bowls
• How the very act of living is the original art

 Host: Justine Willis Toms      Interview Date: 8/10/2019      Program Number: 3685

Music Playlist

From Album: Bloom Road
Artist: Dan Kennedy 

Opening Essay: Track 01 - Moonrise
Music break 1: Track 02 – Prayer for Janice
Music Break 2: Track 04 - Falling
Music Break 3: Track 05 – Beautiful Day (with You)