Mark Nepo - Finding Inner Courage

Advance Praise for Finding Inner Courage

When Mark Nepo publishes a new book many, many readers rejoice. This time around, they have special reason to do so. Finding Inner Courage is perhaps Mark's finest book, a deep and graceful exploration of couragethe courage it takes to live life deep and live it wholethat will illumine your mind, strengthen your heart, and nourish your soul. May this book touch your life as it has touched mine. And may it help all of us live from that sacred core of selfhood that can heal us and our wounded world.

Parker J. Palmer, author of A Hidden Wholeness, Let Your Life Speak, and The Courage to Teach

What an extreme delight to be engaged with this writing that issues from the heart that thinks and the mind that poeticizes! How rare it is these days to find truly original writing and, even more, thought that has moved way, way beyond and beneath and above the kind of spectator consciousness that characterizes most writing. Finding Inner Courage is one of the handful of books I cherish.

Robert Sardello, PhD, author of Love and the World and Silence

Mark Nepo is a rare being, a poet who does not overuse language, a wise man without arrogance, a teacher who always speaks with compassion, and an easygoing love-to-listen-tohim storyteller. Finding Inner Courage is a collection of delicious essays. A feast for the spirit.

James Fadiman, PhD, cofounder, Institute for Transpersonal Psychology

Mark Nepo has the ability to provoke honest inquiry which simultaneously ignites reflection and motivates action. This is an invaluable book and resource for our changing times.

Angeles Arrien, PhD, cultural anthropologist and author of The Second Half of Life and The Four-Fold Way

Also by Mark Nepo

Nonfiction: As Far As the Heart Can See, Unlearning Back to God, The Exquisite Risk, and The Book of Awakening

Poetry: Surviving Has Made Me Crazy; Suite for the Living; Inhabiting Wonder; Acre of Light; Fire Without Witness; and God, the Maker of the Bed, and the Painter

Editor: Deepening the American Dream

Recordings: Inner Courage, Finding Our Way in the World, and Inside the Miracle

First published in 2007 by Conari Press,

an imprint of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

With offices at:

665 Third Street, Suite 400

San Francisco, CA 94107

www.redwheelweiser.com

Copyright 2007 by Mark Nepo. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC. Reviewers may quote brief passages. Originally published as Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where it Lives, Red Wheel/Weiser, 2007.

Permissions and copyright acknowledgments begin on p. 281.

ISBN: 978-1-57324-531-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available upon request.

Cover design by Jim Warner

Text design by Jessica Dacher

Typeset in Bembo and Priori

Cover photo Carl Vilhelm Balsgaard/SuperStock, Still Life of Oranges.

Author photo by Brian Bankston (www.brianbankston.com)

Printed in the United States of America

TS

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Text paper contains a minimum of 50% post-consumer-waste material.

To my dear friends who have stayed in conversation.
Together, we somehow see into the center.

If your everyday practice is to open to all your emotions, to all the people you meet, to all the situations you encounter, without closing down, trusting that you can do that then that will take you as far as you can go. And then you will understand all the teachings that anyone has ever taught.

Pema Chdrn

The word courage comes from the Latin cor, which literally means heart. The original use of the word courage means to stand by one's core. This is a striking concept that reinforces the belief found in almost all traditions that living from the Center is what enables us to face whatever life has to offer. This book is an exploration into how to find our way to our core, to stand by our core, and to then sustain the practice of living from our coreto live out of our courage. To encourage means to impart strength and confidence, to inspire and hearten. So the questions unfold: How do we encourage ourselves, each other, and the world? And just what does it mean to live a life of encouragement?

If to find our way to our core is to face the lion, then to stand by our core is to be the lion. And to sustain the practice of living from our coreto live out of our courageis to find our way in the world by tracking inner courage and where it lives. These notions frame the journey of this book.

The courage we all admirewhere ordinary people summon unexpected strength to run into burning buildings or to stand up to tyrants, whether an abusive father or an abusive leader, this inspiring and mysterious impulse to rise and meet a dangerous situation, which Hemingway referred to as grace under pressuregrows from another kind of courage: inner courage. By inner courage, I mean the ground of quiet braveries from which the more visible braveries sprout. These are the ways of living and being that make bravery possible in the first place, not just as an event, but as an approach to life, as a way of life. This book is devoted to exploring those quiet braveries, in an effort to understand not only what constitutes courage in its deepest sense, but what is the soil in which it is seeded, watered, cared for, and grown.

Thinking about courage in this way opens us to an array of small and constant efforts that no one ever sees, but which have changed the world: the courage to feel, to see, to accept, to heal, to be. Efforts of this nature often go unnoticed and unrecognized. Like the courage to break life-draining patterns and let the story of our lives unfold. Like the courage to persevere through the doorway of nothing into the realm of everything. Like the courage to choose aliveness over woundedness, to remember what matters when we forget, and to build on the past instead of hiding in it. Like the courage to choose compassion over judgment and love over fear, to withstand the tension of opposites, and to give up what no longer works in order to stay close to what is sacred.

These subtle yet essential states, and more, make up the elements of living, and so it serves us well to explore how they grow singly and together. This is an education I never had in school, but which life has been shouting for as long as I can remember. This is an education of what matters.

How we hold this question is important. It's interesting that the question, what does it mean? in Spanish, que quiere decir?, literally translates as, what does it want to say? The difference inherent in the Spanish view is that whatever holds meaning is alive and has its own vital authority and, therefore, demands us to be in relationship to it in order to learn its meaning. The English view readies us to apprehend