This morning, a good friend reminded me that today is “my” day in Mark Nepo’s The Book of Awakening.
My good friend, Mark Nepo, once heard me tell a story from my travels. Mark listened intently and then wrote up my story and its inner meaning – better than I could ever have done.
Every year, someone opens the book to August 22 and brings it to my attention. Each time, I read it again – grateful to have the chance to revisit the story and, through Mark’s words, learn from it again. Many thanks to the friends who find the passage and for Mark Nepo for capturing it so well and including it in his wonderful book.
If you don’t have Mark’s book — The Book Of Awakening: Having The Life You Want By Being Present To The Life You Have — go to your local book story and buy yourself a copy! It is a remarkable book. It is deceptively simple – daily quotes, reflections and practices – and quietly powerful. A year spent reading an entry each day is a rich investment in your life. When you come to the end of the book, you won’t have all the answers, but you will have taken yourself on a wonderful journey.
After that? Why, begin again! You’ll find new awakenings the second, third and fourth time around.
The Book of Awakening: Beneath Arriving
I’m only lost if I’m going someplace in particular.
— Megan Scribner
A friend was traveling around Europe, training from city to city. Despite her plans, her interest drew her in different directions and a path unfolded that she couldn’t have foreseen. Each point of discovery led to the next, as if some logic out of view were guiding her. During this phase of her journey, though she often wasn’t sure where she was, she never felt lost. It was when she needed to arrive at a certain station at a certain time, that she felt she was off course, astray, and at the fringe of where she was supposed to be.
All this led her to realize that the more narrow her intentions on any one day, the more she felt behind, late, and lost. In contrast, the wider her net of designs, the more often she felt a sense of discovery. Regardless of where she had to be, it seemed that the more open to possibility and change she was, the more she felt like every moment she came upon was holding a treasure she was supposed to find.
Of course, there will always be times that we need to find our very precise way. But more often than not, our image of a destination is only a starting point that we cling to needlessly. When we can free up our sense of needing to arrive in a certain place, we lessen the weight of being lost. And once beneath arriving and beneath our fear of failing to arrive, the real journey begins.
* This is a walking meditation. Choose somewhere nearby you’d like to walk to—a bench in a park, a coffee shop downtown, or a schoolyard not too far away.
* Choose a simple route and begin your walk.
* As your walk unfolds, be open to what catches your interest—a bird song, a ripple of light, or maybe the sound of children playing. Follow that interest.
* Practice letting go of your plan and discovering the path of interest that waits beneath your plan.
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