Navigating Our Way Between Fear and Safety with Mark Nepo

MP3 Download

Nepo helps us to understand that the heart plays a central role in how our life-force manifests. It’s one of our greatest resources as a conduit for our intuitive mind. He gives us an analogy from India regarding how to meet fear and pain. Oftentimes we inflate our fear and pain. Nepo gives a practical suggestion in “right-sizing” pain and fear. He also shares how we each have an attending guiding spirit within and how we can have direct connection to it. In order to honor what is foundational in our lives Nepo suggests that we describe one, two or three reliable truths, which are our personal foundation, which we can return to as we meet the challenges of daily life. Nepo writes about how the net of relationship distributes our suffering: [W]e are each being called to outlast the siren of fear until we touch upon the reliable truths that reside beneath all fear. Like a strong net that softens the carriage of weight, the strength of our connections, even while physically apart, will soften the sharpness of uncertainty inherent in times like this.” (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 (Free Press 2012)
• The One Life We’re Given: Finding the Wisdom That Waits in Your heart (Atria Books 2016)
• More Together Than Alone: Discovering the Power and Spirit of Community in Our Lives and in the World (Atria Books 2018)
• Drinking from the River of Light: The Life of Expression (Sounds True 2019)
• The Book of Soul: 52 Paths to Living What Matters (St. Martin’s Essentials 2020)
• Surviving Storms: Finding the Strength to Meet Adversity (St. Martins’ Essentials 2022)
• Falling Down and Getting Up: Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength (St. Martins’ Essentials 2023) 

His many audio learning courses include: 

• Staying Awake (Sounds True 2012)
• Holding Nothing Back (Sounds True 2012) 

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

Topics explored in this dialogue include: 

• How the heart let’s our life-force move through us, inform us, and awaken us
• How the heart-mind and head-mind have different functions
• Why the heart is not irrational but intuitive
• What does Nepo mean by the phrase spiritual physics
• How a woman hit by a car and in extreme pain was transformed by seeing the blue sky and enlarging her sense of things
• What are some examples of questions we can walk with and use to open the door to our inner wisdom
• How to use books as oracles
• What did Nepo learn about the remarkable journey of soul in Dante’s Divine Comedy
• How Justine’s conversation with her guest begins long before the recording starts
• The original definition of genius is embracing the light of your life so that your attendant spirit shows up to guide you
• How do we stop our busy lives in order to hear our guiding spirit
• A useful practice of honoring is to write down two or three reliable truths that are foundational in your life
• How the practice of loving one thing deeply and wholeheartedly will lead to loving all life
• How we can support one another to reach below our fear to a more reliable truth 

Host: Justine Willis Toms   Interview Date: 6/30/2023   Program Number: 3792

Music Playlist

From Album: Windham Hill Retrospective
Artist: Alex DeGrassi
1992 Windham Hill (2010 Valley Entertainment reissue) 2-VWH-21011

Opening Essay: Track 02 Causeway
Music 1: Track 03 Western
Music 2: Track 04 Window
Music 3: Track 06 Blue Trout