Whatever difficulty you face, there are time-tried ways you can listen your way through. Because listening is the doorway to everything that matters. It enlivens the heart the way breathing enlivens the lungs. We listen to awaken our heart. We do this to stay vital and alive.
Interpretation
Listening is essential for understanding and connection in difficult times.
In this quote, Mark Nepo emphasizes the importance of listening as a vital skill that helps us navigate through challenges. He suggests that listening not only enhances our understanding of others but also enriches our own emotional and spiritual well-being, much like breathing sustains life.
In practice
This quote can be used during a workshop on effective communication skills.
Four hundred year old trees, who draw aliveness from the earth like smoke from the heart of God, we come, not knowing you will hush our little want to be big; we come, not knowing that all the work is so much busyness of mind; all the worry, so much busyness of heart. As the sun warms anything near, being warms everything still and the great still things that outlast us make us crack like leaves of laurel releasing a fragrance that has always been.
Let's be in awe which doesn't mean anything but the courage to gape like fish at the surface breaking around our mouths as we meet the air.
Water reflects everything it encounters. This is so commonplace that we think water is blue, when in fact it has no color.... But the water, the glorious water everywhere, has taught me that we are more than what we reflect or love. This is the work of compassion: to embrace everything clearly without imposing who we are and without losing who we are.
The further I wake into this life, the more I realize that God is everywhere and the extraordinary is waiting quietly beneath the skin of all that is ordinary. Light is in both the broken bottle and the diamond, and music is in both the flowing violin and the water dripping from the drainage pipe. Yes, God is under the porch as well as on top of the mountain, and joy is in both the front row and the bleachers, if we are willing to be where we are.
We work so hard to get somewhere, to realize a dream, to arrive at some destination, that we often forget that though some satisfaction may be waiting at the end of our endurance and effort, there is great and irreplaceable aliveness in the steps along the way.
But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides. Compassion, in practice, does not require us to give up the truth of what we feel or the truth of our reality. Nor does it allow us to minimize the humanity of those who hurt us. Rather, we are asked to know ourselves enough that we can stay open to the truth of others, even when their truth or their inability to live up to their truth has hurt us.
I'm learning in my old age that the only thing you can do to keep your sanity is to stay in the moment.
The right question is usually more important than the right answer.
Let each man take the path according to his capacity, understanding and temperament. His true guru will meet him along that path.
It is not necessary for eagles to be crows.
I'm encouraging you to know what you're worth. And know that no matter who has more money in class, who has more stuff, who has a country house - nobody is worth more than anybody else.
Doubt is a pain too lonely to know that faith is his twin brother.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.