{"id":1661,"date":"2013-07-16T09:42:16","date_gmt":"2013-07-16T13:42:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/awakeintheworld\/?p=1661"},"modified":"2013-07-16T09:42:49","modified_gmt":"2013-07-16T13:42:49","slug":"1661","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/awakeintheworld\/2013\/07\/1661.html","title":{"rendered":"How Joy Finds Us: Interview with Mark Nepo"},"content":{"rendered":"

The things we need arrive at the right time, and so it has been with Mark Nepo and his work. For those of us on a spiritual path<\/a>, Mark\u2019s writings possess the power to immediately move us into connection with a subtle and powerful awareness at the deepest, most soulful level. Though Mark Nepo<\/a>\u2018s writing has been with us for a while, it wasn\u2019t until Oprah received a copy of Mark\u2019s Book of Awakening<\/a><\/em> through one of her staff assistants that it came to the notice of millions. This all happened at a critical time. \"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I first interviewed Mark around the time he\u2019d just lost his day job and faced some health problems<\/a>. At what seemed like one of his darker hours, Oprah also discovered Mark\u2019s work, and that darkness turned to light as his book, which he\u2019d written some ten years earlier, became a New York Times bestselling book. Oprah recently did two more interviews with him for upcoming shows from her home in Hawaii. Regarding all the success, Mark remains grateful but unfazed by the recognition of his work, and he continues to teach and practice presence<\/a> in much the same way as before. I asked him to share some his recent experiences, as well as tell us more about his latest book, Reduced to Joy<\/em>. He\u2019s also offered us one of the poems from his book at the end of this post.<\/p>\n

Debra Moffitt: You have written about awakening,\u00a0silence,\u00a0and finally joy. Reduced to Joy<\/em>, your latest book of poems, feels like a culmination of your many years of spiritual connection. Are joy and bliss the final experiences that arrive on the spiritual journey?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Nepo<\/strong>: <\/b>I\u2019m not sure there is any final experience to this mysterious journey. I think we continue to be brought closer and closer to the aliveness we carry.\u00a0For me, joy is different than happiness. While happiness is a fleeting mood, joy is larger and more lasting than any one feeling. If each feeling is a wave of emotion, then joy is the ocean that holds all feelings. As I get older, I\u2019m coming to realize that joy is central to our knowing peace. It\u2019s one deep way that we access Oneness. I\u2019m also beginning to see that joy is the hum of Oneness. It\u2019s the sensation of being connected to life<\/a> itself. Another way to speak of joy is to say that it\u2019s the reward for facing our experience. Often, what keeps us from joy is the menacing assumption that life is happening other than where we are. So we are always leaving, running from or running to. What keeps us from joy, then, is often not being where we are and not valuing what is before us.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Debra Moffitt: How did Reduced to Joy<\/em> come into being?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Nepo:<\/strong>\u00a0Poems come slowly. They break surface like dolphins after long stretches of going under. So writing a book of poems for me is different than writing my other books. I have to sit when I\u2019m able and try to make heart-sense of what life has been doing to me and with me. Like wringing out a sponge, I squeeze what matters onto the page, let it dry, and see what\u2019s there the next day. One by one, they gather into an instructive whole. All this is to say that by trying to make sense of my own experience, I\u2019ve discovered a theme to the journey, that we are all reduced to joy, worn away of all excess. To survive this, we often need to hold each other up in order to discover and return to what matters. This book explores these essential relationships, which keep shaping me.<\/p>\n

Debra Moffitt: I love the title of your book. As your poem, \u201cWhere is God?\u201d expresses, it seems that once all is stripped away there\u2019s nothing more to obscure joy. Can you speak more to what joy is and is not and how we might know the difference?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Nepo:<\/strong>\u00a0After all these years, I\u2019m beginning to see that tranquility is the depth of being that holds what we think and feel, not the still point after we\u2019ve silenced what we think and feel. Serenity is the depth of being that holds difficulty, not the resting point after we\u2019ve ended difficulty. And peace is the depth of being that holds suffering and doubt, not the raft we climb on to avoid suffering and doubt. This leads us to joy, which is much deeper and larger than any one feeling. Happiness, fear, anxiety, contentment, doubt, regret, unworthiness, anger, despair\u2014all these and more are the waves that rise and fall in the sea of being.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Debra Moffitt: Is there anything else you\u2019d like to share with readers?\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Mark Nepo: These poems have been retrieved and shaped over the last thirteen years. They have been my teachers about the nature of working with what we\u2019re given till it wears us through to joy.\u00a0My hope is that the poems in this book will serve as a threshold to an underlying connection to the greater life we are all a part of. I hope the book will be a resource for you when faced with the difficulties of living. I hope the poems will confirm that, no matter the struggle you find yourself in, you are not alone. May these poems be honest companions on the journey to joy.<\/p>\n

A Poem from Reduced to Joy<\/em> by Mark Nepo reprinted with his permission.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Where is God?\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n
\u00a0It\u2019s as if what is unbreakable\u2014<\/div>\n
the very pulse of life\u2014waits for<\/div>\n
everything else to be torn away,<\/div>\n
and then in the bareness that<\/div>\n
only silence and suffering and<\/div>\n
great love can expose, it dares<\/div>\n
to speak through us and to us.<\/div>\n
It seems to say, if you want to last,<\/div>\n
hold on to nothing. If you want<\/div>\n
to know love, let in everything.<\/div>\n
If you want to feel the presence<\/div>\n
of everything, stop counting the<\/div>\n
things that break along the way.<\/div>\n
* * *<\/div>\n
Debra Moffitt is the award winning author of Awake in the World: 108 Practices to Live a Divinely Inspired Life<\/a> and \u201cGarden of Bliss: Cultivating the Inner Landscape for Self-Discovery<\/a>\u201d (Llewellyn Worldwide<\/a>, May 2013). A visionary, dreamer and teacher, she\u2019s devoted to nurturing the spiritual in everyday life. She leads workshops on spiritual practices, writing and creativity in the U.S. and Europe. More at http:\/\/www.awakeintheworld.com.<\/a><\/em><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The things we need arrive at the right time, and so it has been with Mark Nepo and his work. For those of us on a spiritual path, Mark\u2019s writings possess the power to immediately move us into connection with a subtle and powerful awareness at the deepest, most soulful level. Though Mark Nepo\u2018s writing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":409,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,26,125,3],"tags":[346,1172,345,872,7,8,844,147,1171,664],"class_list":["post-1661","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-inspiration","category-meditation","category-oneness","category-spiritual-practice","tag-awake-in-the-world","tag-awakening","tag-debra-moffitt","tag-garden-of-bliss","tag-happiness","tag-joy","tag-mark-nepo","tag-oprah","tag-reduced-to-joy","tag-silence"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Joy Finds Us: Interview with Mark Nepo - Awake in the World<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/awakeintheworld\/2013\/07\/1661.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Joy Finds Us: Interview with Mark Nepo - Awake in the World\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The things we need arrive at the right time, and so it has been with Mark Nepo and his work. 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