Of course, this fails and things do change. Nepo writes: Things that matter come and go, but being touched and feeling life move on, we tend to cling and hold on, not wanting anything to change. I envy the tree, how it reaches, but never holds. As you inhale, allow yourself to reconnect with this silenced part of your nature.As you exhale, consider a time when you gave up some aspect of yourself in order to be loved.Sit quietly and consider your own history of love.For no matter how badly we want to love or be loved, we cannot alter our basic nature and survive inside, where it counts. Yet here, too, is another false bargain that plagues everyone who ever tries it. On the surface, her desire for legs seems touching and sweetly motivated by love and the wanting to belong. When not making waves means giving up our chance to dive into the deep, then we are bartering our access to God for a better driveway.Īs a story about relationship, the lesson of Ariel is crucial. The catch is when we are asked to give up our voice in order to move freely, when we are asked to silence what makes us unique in order to be successful. Of course, there is nothing inherently wrong with change or variety or newness or with improving our condition. For aren’t we taught that mobility is freedom, whether it be moving from state to state, or from marriage to marriage, or from adventure to adventure? Aren’t we convinced that upward mobility, moving from job to job, is the definition of success? This is a seemingly innocent fable that captures our deal with the modern devil.
Nepo writes: In the Hans Christian Andersen classic, “The Little Mermaid,” Ariel gives up her beautiful voice in exchange for legs. Note the lessening of your sadness or anxiety, however slight, and call this the beginning of peace. Try to stay with the feeling until it begins to pass.
And at the source, no one feeling can last by itself. … But what I discover, again and again, is that feeling one feeling deeply enough somehow opens me up to the common source of all feeling.
For myself, my resistance to unpleasant feelings has been my fear that if I give over to the sadness or anxiety or confusion or pain that is upon me, I will drown in it. It is a hard thing, though, to lean into a sadness we don’t want, to let the tremor of anxiety work its way through. Once the mind like a long guitar string is somehow plucked with the slightest agitation, there is nothing to do but let it ring itself out. Nepo writes: I used to struggle, fighting off sadness or trying not to be anxious, but as most of us learn, once that drop of melancholy or unrest beads on the heart, trying to feel anything else is denial. Scroll down for five of our favorite passages. The journey of unearthing and shaping these entries has helped me bring my inner and outer life more closely together. It’s given me a chance to gather and share the quiet teachers I’ve met throughout my life. “This book is meant to be of use, to be a companion, a soul friend. “It has become a spiritual sonnet of our age, a sturdy container for small doses of what matters,” he says. Stepping back, Nepo believes that in the last 25 years of his life before writing “The Book of Awakening,” the daybook has been answering a collective need. “These are woven from my own story, the stories of others’ struggles with their humanness, and truths from the great wisdom traditions,” Nepo shares, noting that he was drawn to this form because as a poet, “I was longing for a manner of expression that could be as useful as a spoon.” “My goal is to open you up to a new season of freedom and joy-an escape from deadening, asleep-at-the wheel sameness-that is both profound and clarifying,” he insists of the 429-page daybook that provides readers with 365 ideas to ponder. He summons us to take each day one at a time, and to savor the beauty offered by life’s unfolding. In “The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have,” philosopher-poet and cancer survivor Mark Nepo offers a challenge.
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