Mark Nepo - More Together Than Alone: The Power of Community

The #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Book of Awakening, Mark Nepo, presents an empowering guide to the power of community and why its essential in our lives, now more than ever.

He investigates what brings us together and what throws us apart. He considers what we have in common as well as what makes us unique. He gathers stories and lessons from across cultures and history to show that, despite the hardships we face, we have the power to create connections and draw strength from one another.

Featuring thought-provoking analysis and practical takeaways, More Together Than Alone will help us inhabit a stronger sense of togetherness in our lives to achieve our highest potential, as individuals, and as communities.

Mark Nepo has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. A poet, teacher and storyteller, Mark has been described as one of the finest spiritual guides of our time, a consummate storyteller, and an eloquent spiritual teacher. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. In 2016, he was named by Watkins: Mind Body Spirit as one of the 100 Most Spiritually Influential Living People.

A LSO BY M ARK N EPO

NONFICTION

Things That Join the Sea and the Sky

The One Life Were Given

The Endless Practice

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Finding Inner Courage

Unlearning Back to God

The Exquisite Risk

The Book of Awakening

RECORDINGS

More Together Than Alone

Flames that Light the Heart (video course)

The One Life Were Given

Inside the Miracle (expanded, 2015)

Reduced to Joy

The Endless Practice

Seven Thousand Ways to Listen

Staying Awake

Holding Nothing Back

As Far As the Heart Can See

The Book of Awakening

Finding Inner Courage

Finding Our Way in the World

Inside the Miracle (1996)

Advance Praise for
MORE TOGETHER THAN ALONE

In our digital age, we can be connected to everybody and everyone, but not truly connected in the ways that matter most. More Together Than Alone is a compelling testament to the power of community to help us lead happier, healthier, and more fulfilling lives. Mark Nepo has given us not only a much-needed message of hope and inspiration, but a practical guide on how to build a better tomorrow, together.

Arianna Huffington, founder and CEO of Thrive Global and founder of Huffington Post

More Together Than Alone is a beautifully crafted message from the heart, a powerful cry that we are one, interconnected living community, stretching through time and space. It is such a profound book, so many stories across millennia, so much on which to meditate deeply, that a few words of endorsement seem inadequate. Mark Nepo offers a vital message that belongs to all of our human history, but is especially needed at this moment in our shared destiny.

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, PhD, editor of Spiritual Ecology: The Cry of the Earth

In this dazzling series of meditations, Mark Nepo returns us to an enduring truth: We must love one anotheror perish. Just as medieval monks kept literacy alive during the Dark Ages, he shows us how we too must keep alive the literacy of the heart, no matter how deafening the noise of hate. For this essential task, More Together Than Alone is required reading.

Valarie Kaur, civil rights activist and founder of the Revolutionary Love Project

What is more needed in our time than a book about the power and promise of community, a book rooted in the simple fact that we are part of one another, whether or not we know it? And who better to issue the call to community than a gifted poet and philosopher whos spent his life helping to stitch the world together?

Parker J. Palmer, author of On the Brink of Everything, Let Your Life Speak, and The Courage to Teach

This book is dedicated to Howard Zinn (19222010), who was not only a rare historian but an extraordinary teacher and an actively engaged citizen of the world. He repeatedly pulled open events, past and present, with such honesty and integrity that we have been forced to reassess who we are and where we come from, all in the service of the common good. Personally, I am deeply grateful to have been in his presence for a short time and to have learned from him. Being with Howard always felt cleansing. And reading his unwavering sense of history is an affirmation in truth-telling and of the community that lives within us all. Like many others, I miss him and draw strength from his voice.

When you have models of how people can come together, even for a brief period, it suggests that it could happen for a longer period. When you think of it, thats the way things operate in the scientific world, so why not socially? As soon as the Wright brothers could keep a plane aloft for 27 seconds, everyone knew from that point on that a plane might be kept aloft for hours. Its the same socially and culturally.

Weve had countless incidents in history where people have joined together in social movements and created a spirit of camaraderie or a spirit of sharing and togetherness which have absented them, even momentarily, from the world of greed and domination. If true community can stay aloft for 27 seconds, it is only a matter of time before such a community can last for hours. Only a matter of time before a beloved community, as Martin Luther King, Jr. spoke of, can come into being.

HOWARDZINN

IN THE HINDU Upanishads, theres a passage that speaks to how those who become wise lose their names in the Great Oneness, the way rivers lose their names when they flow into the sea. In this transformation from the solitary to the communal, theres a mysterious physics that each generation has to relearn regarding what is possible when we can work together.

Time and again, were asked to discover, through love and suffering, that we are at heart the same. How do we come to this knowledge in our lives, in our families, and in our communities? What brings us together and what throws us apart? How do we inhabit what we have in common as well as what makes us unique in ways that deepen our daily practice of service and compassion?

To explore these questions, I have gathered stories and lessons from across cultures and history, which reveal moments of community and the qualities of being and relationship that bring people together. My aim is to affirm that, despite the hardships always present, we are more together than alone.

The back-and-forth struggle between solitude and community is an archetypal passage. Being alone and being together each has its lineage. There are countless stories of those who have shunned the world for the depth of their own journeybe they contemplatives, monks, hermits, or misanthropes. And countless stories of those who have given up who they are for the common good.

The word community derives from the Latin, commun, meaning common. The same root informs the word