185 Quotes by Mark Nepo

Rather than finding heaven on earth, we are asked to release heaven by living on earth.

I think happiness is overrated, but joy is the key to the thousands of possible moods we can feel. And when we can rest in that joy, then peace is the moment of openness that holds all feeling.

There, in the silence that’s never quite silent, I realized that, if there are at least seven thousand wants to speak, there are at least seven thousand ways to listen.

What we reach for may be different, but what makes us reach is the same.

In life as in water, when we curl up or flail we sink. When we spread and go still, we are carried by the largest sea of all: the sea of grace that flows steadily beneath the turmoil of events. And just as fish can’t see the ocean they live in, we can’t quite see the spirit that sustains us.

The many ways to listen have been reaching into me for years. To enter deep listening, I’ve had to learn how to keep emptying and opening, how to keep beginning. I’ve had to lean into all I don’t understand, accepting that I am changed by what I hear.

The glassblower knows: while in the heat of beginning, any shape is possible. Once hardened, the only way to change is to break.

In a world that lives like a fist mercy is not more than waking with your hands open.

When the sweet ache of being alive, lodged between who you are and who you will be, is awakened, befriend this moment. It will guide you. Its sweetness is what holds you. Its ache is what moves you on.