Mark Nepo - The Book of Soul

A FTER BEING BORN physically, we unfold within a second womb, meant to incubate our better angel. The second womb is an experiential one that, through the labor of a lifetime, births the soul on Earth. This book explores that process of transformation in its mystery, difficulty, and inevitability. Because things that matter are vast and timeless, I offer each chapter as a different path by which a soul can drink from what matters. And because things that matter take time, Ive designed this journey as a weekly reader, to be entered a chapter each week over the course of a year, so you can weave your inner reflection into your days, letting one inform the other.

This dynamic transformationhow we are revealed and shaped by experienceconnects two of my recent books. By living The One Life Were Given, we release the wisdom that waits in our heart, and that tender, human process leads us to The Way Under the Way: The Place of True Meeting. When we commit to these holy engagements that join who we are with the world, we discover that the temple is the world. This is the central inquiry of this book: how we inhabit the soul on Earth through a messy human life, living tenderly and authentically enough that we can be who we are everywhere and create a path to what matters.

Eventually, all the love, suffering, and humility we go through wear away our walls of resistance until Spirit shines from within us like an inner sun. This is how Spirit is revealed on Earthas the coverings we carry are worn away by life, the light we carry can pour into the world.

Our constant challenge is to accept how life wears away what doesnt matter until the miracle of life is revealed in everything. Once living this barely in the open, our work is to let the light of Spirit come through, never thinking that we own it, but letting it use us to brighten and warm the hearts of others. This is the purpose of the human journey: to live openly and honestly until we become a source of uncovered light. Then life pours forth to renew us and all we meet.

Like a comet reduced to its center by the time it reaches Earth, the gravity of our journey leaves us bare and unadorned as we reach the simple, enduring center where all souls meet. To live so fully, we have to summon the courage to take off our armor and let things in. Then the soul has a chance to show itself. Through our immersion in being here and our devotion to do so kindly, we begin to enliven our compassion. This helps us endure our walk in the world.

The human tribe, at its best, is resilient, and, at its worst, relentlessly stubborn. Weve spent centuries trying to keep things apart, when everything in life wants to come together. Weve worked hard to separate light from dark, when together they form the threshold of depth. Weve tried desperately to separate beauty from suffering, when its beauty that softens our suffering. Weve willfully insisted on separating good from bad, when the heart burns both in the fire of compassion. And in our terror, were frantic to separate life from death, when each soul on Earth is a conduit between them. Every part of life is an intersection and emblem of all life. As a seed carries a fully grown tree and a spark ignites the life of fire, we each carry the shimmer of all there is.

We do need to separate things, not to alter life, but to move through life, the way a swimmer parts the deep. Though as soon as we finish a stroke, the Whole of Life joins around us. So the goal is not to control or conquer life, but to immerse ourselves in it. And for all the places we can travel and all the ways we can study, theres no greater teacher than when we dare to share the truth of our lives. When facing whats ours to face, were surprised to learn, time and again, that under what seems unbearable is the rest of life waiting to be lived.

In time, the inexhaustible Universe can touch anyone brave enough and tender enough to embark on a quest to know who we are in relation to everything around us. Whether you call that vastness God, Atman, dharma, Allah, nature, or quantum physics, each of us can be infused with what matters if we can face the truth of our lives, love each other in spite of and because of our differences, and live into the deeper questions through acts of love.

Our journey from innocence to experience is how we emerge from the second womb. The fifty-two chapters of this book mark the passages we all face in moving through this experiential unfolding: enduring our walk in the world until we discover our true inheritance, which lets us live in the open by widening our circle until we help each other stay awake. The arc of this transformative journey is inescapable. We venture out only to discover the truth we carry within. And this exposure of depth and truth gives us the strength to open ourselves further in the worlduntil we use the ore we find inside to shape and repair the world.

Though no one can endure, discover, open, or stay awake for us, we are inextricably knit together. While youre discovering, I may be enduring. While Im awake, you may be struggling to open. But your discovery helps me endure, as my wakefulness helps you open. Were linked in our humanity the way the earth holds a tree, so that tree can hold a nest, so that nest can hold a bird, so that bird can drop a seed that will in time give birth to the next tree. All our attempts seed each other.

To learn from life and its web of relationship, we are constantly challenged to stay in conversation with the moments of our lives. And so, I invite you to listen and reflect your way through this book, one chapter per week, and to write your way through the topics and stories by way of a journal. To help with this process, I offer Questions to Walk With at the end of each chapter. The doorway of questions here refers to a field of inquiry that includes but goes beyond literal questions. These sections include prompts to self-reflect in your journal as well as entry points to dialogue with a trusted friend or loved one.

It seems the purpose of suffering is to exhaust us of our differences, and the purpose of love is to awaken us to how were at heart the same. Then we discover that the temple is the world. Still, every life, every generation, every age takes its turn at pushing each other away, only to be loved and worn back to the one tribe we belong to. This seems even more relevant in our tense, modern world. For there is no they. We are they. We are each other. And theres a deep Unity that always waits below our righteous insistence that we know the way.

So, yes, we can talk, but ultimately we make no ground until we listento each other and to the current of humanity from which we rise and return. We only have one turn at being here together before we pass what weve done or not done to the next generation. I pray we can listen to what love and suffering open us to, so we can drink from that well and build a better world.