Mark Nepo on What It Means to Live with an Open Heart | EP 713

32:23And I would share with you now, all these years later, that I've discovered, I think, over time, that the creative process and the introspective process are really the same thing. I just happen to write it down because that's how I learn. And one of the reasons that I've been blessed to be prolific is that I've learned that writing is really listening and taking notes more than speaking my beliefs. And so I've been able to explore a lot because I write about what I need to know, not what I know. If I'd written about only what I know, I would have written very little. And so this raises a whole thing.

33:12That's a paradox in life. And that is we all, whether the art is in living, not in what we produce. And so this starts to move into the fifth season, my latest book about creativity in the second half of life. Because really what I'm exploring there is not that, well, now that I'm retired, I can paint more or I can write more. What I'm exploring there is our life is the work of art. And by immersing ourselves, by devoting ourselves, we take our place in the mystery of life. We live as fully as we can as holding nothing back. Our relationships become a work of art. And so another lesson from my father, which I learned a lot because he was a creative force as a master woodworker.

34:12And he built a 30-foot sailboat catch when I was a boy out of wood that I spent a lot of my youth on. And so I didn't learn a lot by him talking about creativity, just by watching him. and I remember being 10 or 11 and we had a small home on Long Island and the basement was where his workshop was and he was working because one of the things he would do as a hobby as well was he would carve half models so what he would do is he would get blueprints for sailing ships from the 1800s and then he would build them to scale maybe six foot long and they were half models because he you would only build half and so you could mount them on a wall so part of it was flat and i remember watching him through the see-through stairs of the basement and he was immersed in with a tweezer with black thread pulling two-scale rigging through the masts and the that what were dead eyes or turnbuckles they call them now today and he didn't know I was watching him and I didn't know what it meant, but I've come to understand he was showing me the secret life of detail.

35:33This goes back to dealing with the one thing that's in front of you. And I learned that he was so immersed. And this is interesting given what I learned by attending him when he was in his last years there in the hospital. but back then he was so immersed that he was in the moment of everyone who ever built a boat and so while what he the work he did was excellent it's about immersion not excellence excellence is the byproduct of immersion if you light a flame you don't have to work for it it will give off heat by virtue of it being lit and if we're immersed we will do excellent work but if we just strive for excellence we may not be immersed and we then the reward for immersion is the experience of oneness and connection to life and now we come back to reverence and doing no harm and one of the things today when we get back to your question about someone who's not feeling connected who's feeling numb who's feeling isolated what do you care about what can you immerse yourself in it doesn't have to be a big career it may be caring for one plant it may be bringing dinner to a neighbor it may who knows what it would be it could be stamp collecting can be working on cars it doesn't really like the soul wants us to throw care on the fire of aliveness yes so like any fire a fire doesn't care what kind of wood you put on it and I don't think the soul or the life of spirit cares what care we put on the fire of aliveness just that we care I can completely relate to what you're saying.

37:39For so many years of my life, I was chasing success. I was trying to chase happiness. And I found the more I chased, the emptier I became. And that none of that comes from trying to chase it. It comes from meaning in our lives. It comes from those who we surround ourselves with. And I think Viktor Frankl got it right. We find meaning at work or in pursuing a creative element that we're passionate about. We find meaning in love. Love could be love of our partner, caring for someone who might be sick, love of another human being. It could be a friend. It comes in suffering. And I think as Dacher Keltner teaches, I think it can come in moral beauty by doing acts of kindness to others.

38:28So I agree with you that when you start pursuing those things and you immerse yourselves in them, that is the secret that I found in this chapter of my life is that is bringing me more happiness and success than I ever felt before when I was trying to chase it. It becomes a result of having meaning and purpose and service in life. Yeah, I think absolutely, which doesn't mean that we don't do things. One of the things in our modern world, we have rightly an emphasis on heart and being because we're so out of balance with thinking and doing. But ideally, I think like you need two good feet to walk, being and doing complement each other.

39:21And at their best, When we're fully inhabited, they're one in the same. Just like when we're really there for each other, it's hard to know who's giving and who's receiving. They really become the same thing. Yes. And that is the reward for that deep immersion. And there is an epidemic of loneliness in our age, and I know especially with young people. And I was on an interview with a young editor in London, a young woman who asked about this. And I don't give advice. I just share. And, you know, what I share are examples, not instructions. And, but I found myself speaking from my cancer journey and that, and what came up was you don't interview ambulance drivers.

40:09You take the first one. And if you're lonely, you say hello, get out of the house. Doesn't mean that every interaction will be, some may be awkward. Some may not work out. Some may be irritated, but you're engaged in life. And so even as simply as instead of reading at home alone, reading a cafe where there are, even if you never say hello to another person, you're around other life. you're exchanging presence and energy. So expand our sense of solitude to let others in so that the line between self and other blurs. I want to go into the fifth season here in a second, but I want to ask you one more question about the book of Awakening, which really was a turning point for millions of readers.

41:06And as I understand it, it's not something that immediately became a New York Times bestseller. It was out there for 10 years before Oprah discovered it. And then it had its own journey on the other side. But this book was written after your cancer journey. And what I've heard you say when you talk about it is you call the book short doses of what matters. Today, looking back, what rises to the top of that list? What matters more now than it ever did before? Well, thank you for that question. I think I would return to that what matters most is being as fully present and wholehearted as we can be.

41:54Knowing that we can't do it all the time. but how do I behold the life that I meet because I think one of the things about the fifth season to go to the latest book it was the journey for every human being once we're here is to awaken so that there's as little as possible between what lives in here and what lives out here And why I speak so much about authenticity is that I believe that when we're authentic, the practice and devotion to being authentic makes us a clear inlet between the inner life and the outer life, makes us kind and useful, makes us receptive. and that's an endless one of my books is the endless practice that staying that open is an endless practice because we're never done and there's a great metaphor for this which is in what's called an asequia now an asequia in the southwest it's actually the word comes from the Arabic because in desert climates and you'll see what this means but in the southwest Native americans for centuries and the sequia is a sluice way or a natural water flow let's say from the top of a mountain where snow after winter will create a water course to the bottom of the mountain and villages and tribes would would settle there because there's a natural water source it's right there so so what naturally over a winter debris would fill the asequia trees limbs would fall in it animals would build nests stones would erode so that once a year at least there was a ritual where the entire tribe including children and elders would take a few days and from the top of the mountain to the bottom clear out the asequia so nothing was blocking the flow from source into the world well this is a fantastic metaphor for a spiritual practice and what both collectively in relationships and families and towns and nations but in our own individual work and the Esequia the source the waterway between spirit and our lives gets clogged not because we're deficient or stupid because it's natural this is what experience does and so we have to clear it out so just like we would do a house cleaning every spring at least once a year we each need our own form of cleaning out the pathway the sluice way between source and how we live in the world so this gets back to what patterns what patterns what wounds what patterns what ways of closed-minded and closed-hearted thinking and feeling what ways of assumptions and judgments?

45:18How do we make a practice of clearing that out so that we start with, I don't know, rather than I told you. Man, that really hit me. And I think you're still right. As I was immersing myself into the fifth season, because I'm myself now the second half of life. One of the things that struck me that I find so true is that you point out that the years behind us grow longer than the years ahead. And when that happens, the proper place of dreams and memory shifts. And you say that dreams are the kindling of our aliveness. And I love that because given my work centers on mattering, that belief that our presence has weight, meaning, and value is so important.

46:05So how do you think presence, what you were just talking about, memory and dreams contribute to that feeling that we matter. Well, so this is one of the things, as you from the book, a shift in our horizons and as we age. So I'm 74. I'm hoping to live to 100. Who knows? But even there's more years behind and ahead. One of the things that doesn't mean I don't dream anymore, but often one of the liabilities of dreaming in our world is that without realizing it, we defer our better self to the future. Oh, when I do this, then I'll be whole. When I'm in that relationship, then I'll be happy. There's always a if then, oh yeah.

46:52But what we do is when we're dreaming, we're actually putting forward some of our potential and possibility so that we can see it so that the alive we can then see where is that aliveness in us right now how can we bring it alive now and i think i've been helped with this because almost dying from cancer all those years ago, while I dream, it always boomerangs back, well, okay, what I have is now. So if I'm dreaming that, how can I bring it alive now? And the same thing with memory. When we look back, which we tend to do as we get older, okay. But the difference between what I try to uncover in the book as the helpful use of memory versus one that kind of entraps us, nostalgia entraps us.

47:48So nostalgia is when I look back to 20 years ago to a very wonderful experience and I go gee well I wish I could have that again I wish I could go back there wish I could go back to Spain right 25 again but what the helpful use of memory is I go back to whatever that memory is to touch into what was alive then and trace it because that stream of aliveness is always there. Oh, where is it showing up in me now? So just like we go back in memory to say, oh, yeah, where is that aliveness in me now? And I dream forward. Well, now forget going forward. Where can I trace it back so that both memory and dream help us realize what is wants to be alive in us right now.

48:46I want to switch to celestial topics here for a second. I love how you use metaphors. And there's one of the meteor that I think is really profound. And the meteor is this idea that as we burn through what doesn't matter, we shine brighter. And I thought that this is an extraordinary metaphor. How did that arrive for you? And what is it? Well, I think, yeah, metaphor. And again, it has been my native language. Even when I was a kid, I didn't know what metaphor was, but it was how the world's always spoken to me, how spirit has always spoken to me. And so what I would, I want to share from that is every one of us has a gift And part of our job of awakening and immersing and following our heart is to discover what our gift is and let it be our teacher.

49:41Let it be our teacher. So the metaphor just entering the second half of life myself and trying to understand from all the things I've been through, this paradox of how while outwardly, yes, the body starts to wear away and we have physical limitations, but at the same time, throughout our life of the spirit is deepening and broadening and expanding and illuminating. And if we don't become a student of that, then the limitations of the earthly body will take over and be way out of proportion. So it's not reframing. It's not turning from one to the other. It's allowing both to accurately right size what our experience is as a spirit in a body in time on earth.

50:41So I guess trying to live into all of that, this metaphor came about the meteor. So we know that meteors very few reach earth because they burn up in the atmosphere. And so when a meteor starts, it's a certain size. And as it moves through the atmosphere, more and more of it flakes off and it gets brighter and brighter until there's nothing left but light and that became a teacher for me that oh this is what it's like to be a spirit in a body over a lifetime on earth throughout our life we through the life of experience and gravity and wonder and suffering and beauty and erosion, our outer life flakes off and we become more and more light till the spirit leaves the body.

51:41And so nobody likes the flaking off. A year ago, I had major back surgery. I had fusion surgery. So I have those titanium screws in my back and And it's been a blessing. You had that too? My father had that. Oh, your father had that. And it was a scary moment, but he was in so much pain that he said it's given him a new release on life in some ways because he was in so much distress before that. Exactly. And I felt it was so difficult. Since my cancer journey, it was the most difficult thing I've been in. And the surgery has been a tremendous success. I'm so blessed. i'm thankful that i and that was a flaking off and i'm brighter for it so there's just again it's not to deify suffering it's like everyone has to deal with gravity this is part of gravity this is part but the opposite of the outer world has the force of gravity and the inner world has the emanation of spirit and these two four we live subject to these two amazing forces in the world One of the things before we close, I wanted to make sure we talked about is throughout the book, you have stories of saying yes to life and they're really powerful.

53:02I wanted to ask, in your view, what does it mean to say yes to a life in a way that affirms I matter? This moment matters and what I give of myself matters. Yeah. So I think that saying yes to life is again is not being obedient. it. Often we need to say no to situations and relationships and patterns in order to say yes to life. Saying yes to life, and I come back down to means leaning in when pain and worry and fear push us away. It means holding nothing back when we hesitate. It means loving again after we've been burned by love. It means never, and you may familiar with Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah song.

53:58Yeah. So he talks about a broken Hallelujah there. And saying yes to life, this coincides with what I think the real meaning of the story of Job is. I don't think it's a blind obedience to God. I think it's a saying yes to life by accepting and not turning away from all the hardships that there's a mystery. There's a paradox. You and I could be on a raft at sea and a huge wave comes and smashes the raft. We're hanging on. That's not a good day for us. And it doesn't diminish the majesty of the sea. And we're asked to hold both. That's the broken hallelujah. Not just a everything's wonderful, don't worry, it'll work out.

54:44No, the fact that saying yes to life is there is a incomprehensible mystery that we're a part of. This is why you've heard the old proverbial question, is the glass half full or half empty? Well, that is really not helpful for me because it's always both. And our job in the broken hallelujah in saying yes to life, in facing life and embracing life is how do we relate to both? How do we let both be a teacher? How do we open our heart to the mysterious wholeness of life that is both fragile and gentle and at times harsh and can break us and break us open? And that's where the work of being a spirit in a body and time on earth is and no one knows how to do this which is why we need each other i think that i've come to think that life is made just difficult enough so we need each other to ensure the journey of love and it's bouncing back and forth from positive to negative from true to false from is again like that question it's not helpful yeah because it's always both Yeah, it's definitely both and one of the most important shifts I think we need to make.

56:12That is a much bigger part of Eastern thinking than it is for us in the West, or it's more either or, which I found throughout my career. Well, the last thing I wanted to talk to you about, Mark, and you've talked about this already in the way you wrote about it in the book, which is one of the most profound ideas is shift in horizons. And you've talked about how much of life we look forward, and then we look back. But I want to talk about shift in horizons a little bit differently. I have a really good friend of mine who I went to college with, I've known him for three decades now, who was the chief astronaut at NASA.

56:50And he tells me that one of the most profound things for him was being up in the ISS and having that opportunity to look down. and he said it completely shifted the horizons in his life because he started to realize the true idea of a ripple of kindness or a ripple of love or a ripple of compassion when you're looking from above how it could impact the world. And from that moment on, he would do these things that no one knew about where even if he was up in space, he would telephone or find out about a sick child who might be suffering from cancer and he would call them just to brighten their day, or he'd go on treks in the Amazon forest to bring awareness to climate change, or he would kayak to help bring awareness to suicide in veterans who would do all these things, but so much of us don't have that opportunity that he did.

57:52How can more of us shift our horizons? I think that certainly, and those are amazing things you shared, certainly we can ready ourselves. But I don't know that we can will, will a shift in horizon. And so this is where I think that great love and great suffering have always been the great teachers. and we usually grow human beings by two major ways many but two major one by willfully shedding and the other by being broken open and if you don't want to willfully shed don't worry you'll be broken open and it's usually a combination of both and what you know your friend has shared which I totally agree with, is when we are broken open or we are loved open or we willfully shed the parameters of what we know so that we can grow, we glimpse the wholeness of life like seeing the earth from space.

59:05and that changes everything because while we want to live the moment that we're in seeing things from the whole changes and again it's both we talk about this is where the native americans are famous for saying every decision needs to be considered from the perspective of seven generations but we're still chopping wood to warm the fire to keep the family warm to only see from above or beyond is conceptual and to only be in the moment is to be at the mercy of the turbulence of life. And we are asked to inhabit both. In a way that I understand this, another metaphor from the sea is we look at any part of the ocean, we see the surface and we see waves.

1:00:08Well, actually, if you look below, you can't tell where a wave stops and the deep begins. it's all one water but if we only stay on the top 18 inches or two feet we will be bounced around in the turbulence of the surface which is always being disturbed by weather by living in the world if we feel we don't leave the surface but if we allow all of that water if we so i would say to you that top foot or two, that is the waters of our psychology that meets the world every day. But now if we are allowed to go below, we are allowed to go into the depth of life. We are allowed to go beyond just the framework of our opinions, whether it's going out to see the earth from space or in to see all like my father in that moment of applesauce everyone who ever fed a dying parent in the depths that depth takes the edge off the turbulence of the surface and that is the depth of spirit and being when we live in the surface and so what happens when we're living is we're talking about this we're more in the depth right now now we'll get off this wonderful talk and i may take the garbage thing down to the curb and trip and skin my knee and now i'm by its very nature i'm drawn into the surface but i don't have to stay there

1:02:03i can feel i can't it's not running from it but by going back into the depth of being that right sizes we have to live in both so let me give you like an example and a story so the example is i go back to when i was going through especially before my back surgery the incredible as your father knows pain that i was in i've never experienced chronic pain before i was right here at my desk my studies on the second floor in our home and i could have worked on the first floor i wanted to be in my study well during that time it took me like a half hour to get up the stairs because i had to take each step wait for the pain to stop lean on the banister okay so So an example of what we're talking about now is I would sit here and I couldn't escape the pain and the fear that was in me.

1:03:00But I had to start to ask, OK, the whole world and life is not in pain and afraid right now. I am. So where is the nearest thing to me that's not afraid or in pain? It was the floor beneath my feet. It's the ceiling of this study. It's the sky above the ceiling. It's the earth that's holding up the foundation of our house. And not escaping my pain and fear, but allowing myself to feel it and what is holding it is akin to your friend. helping a child but seeing the earth from space so the story which is a i love these anonymous teaching stories from centuries this is an ancient hindu teaching story about how to meet pain and fear which also speaks about this in a very wonderful way so in this story it's an ancient hindu story there's a master and a apprentice always and the master of the truth be known finds the apprentice very annoying because all he does is complain about life and complain so the master says to him i want you to get a handful of salt put it in a glass of water and bring it to me quietly so he does the master says drink from the glass so he drinks he spits it out the master says what's the matter and the apprentice says it's bitter master says i want you to get the same exact amount of salt cup it in your hands and follow me quietly and he does and the master leads him to a lake he says put the salt in the lake he does he says now drink so this student kneels he scoops some water it dribbles down his chin master says well and he says oh it's fresh and the master says stop being a glass become a lake stop being a glass become a lake look from the whole perspective of the earth from the ocean of spirit be where you are but let everything in because what that ancient anonymous story is saying is is we will never eliminate fear and pain, but we can right-size it by enlarging our sense of things.

1:05:32By enlarging our sense of things. So we may hear this story, people who are listening with us, and say, well, it's not good to be a glass. I won't do that. Well, yes, you will, and I will, and you will, because that's how fear and pain say hello. But we don't have to stay there. So the practice question, the daily practice question is what experiences, relationships and practices, yes, experiences, relationships and practices are in your toolbox to enlarge your sense of things. When you stumble into fear and pain and worry and numbness and despair. So you don't have to reinvent the wheel. Yeah.

1:06:18And even there may be times when I know what I need to do and I can't do it. And then I got to call you up and say, help. Mark, it has been such a profound honor to speak with you today. If you could leave one thing for listeners to carry with them as they're entering the fifth season, what do you hope they will finally release? well i think what i would offer can we go back to the heart being our strongest muscle and our finest instrument is to trust our heart and i encourage people not to think that everything that's in the way is a problem or a deficiency but a teacher we're in our world modern world we've been mistaught to think we're entitled to a obstacle-free existence.

1:07:13And no, obstacles, nobody loves obstacles, but they're not demons, they're teachers. And what's in the way is the way. And that's how our light goes brighter and how our heart shows up for each other. Mark, thank you so much for joining us today on Passionstruck. I know this will be a fan favorite. Thank you so much for everything you have done for so many people throughout these 27 books of knowledge that you have put out into the world, which I know as you were writing them, I know you hoped that they would touch people, but you probably never in a million years thought they would touch as many people as they have.

1:07:56Not at all. It's beyond anything I imagine. I'm just so grateful. And thank you, John. Wonderful to be with you. That's a wrap on today's conversation with Mark Nepo. What stood out to me most from today's episode is his definition of surrender, not as giving up, but as cooperating with truth. It's the realization that we don't need to bend life to our will. We just need to inhabit the life that is already here. When we stop fighting the current and start swimming with it, we don't just find ease, we find aliveness. But that brings the next structural challenge. How do we know what is actually true?

1:08:32In an age of misinformation and divided minds, how do we distinguish between our own intuition and the knowledge that we've been fed? That's exactly what we explore next. In our upcoming episode next Tuesday, I'm joined by Steve Sloman. Steve is a cognitive scientist and author of The Knowledge Illusion. We're going to deconstruct the boundary of the mind, exploring why we think we know more than we do and how the illusion of knowledge can actually prevent us from finding true meaning. If Mark Nepo helped us explore the spirit of presence, Steve Sloman will help us understand the cognitive mechanics of how we perceive our world.

1:09:08If you really want to make good decisions, you need people with contrasting views to yours, right? You don't necessarily need them to generate ideas, to generate hypotheses, but you need them to test those ideas. Like the best way to perfect your own thinking is to describe it to someone who disagrees with you vehemently. And that way you'll construct really good arguments. Before you move on today, I'd encourage you to pause. Look at the one thing right in front of you, the smallest detail. Can you give it your full immersion in just 60 seconds? That small stitch is how we repair the fabric of our lives.

1:09:51If you want to support these ideas, join me inside The Ignited Life at the ignitedlife.net. And remember to check out You Matter Luma for a reminder that you are significant just as you are. As we move through the meaning makers, remember significance doesn't come from doing more. It comes from doing what aligns consistently and with care. Until next time, I'm John Miles. You've been PassionStruck. Thank you.