Mark Nepo – Reduced to Joy
Omtimes: What inspired you to write Seven Thousand Ways to Listen?
MN: As nature erodes the earth into magnificent forms, life through endless experience opens us further and further to the essence of what matters.
Each time I’ve been opened further, the way I experience life and receive things has changed.
I needed to write this book to understand how we are opened and deepened and widened by life, for this entire process is how we are given the chance to stay close to our aliveness.
Omtimes: What does it mean to truly listen and how are there many ways to do this?
MN: To listen means many things. Essentially, it is how we stay open to life. It is through listening that we stay fresh, resilient, gentle and strong.
To listen also means to stay in relationship, the central challenge of our time, and this requires us to constantly minimize whatever stands between us and life.
Everything in life opens and closes, sheds and renews. We are no different.
Listening in its endless forms is the way we stay open, the way we stay in relationship, the way we refresh who we are and what we’re doing here.
Omtimes: What steps can we all take to become better listeners?
MN: In the same way that we have to clean wax from our ears and dirt from our eyes, we’re all asked to clean out our conclusions and judgments, which block our heart from meeting the world. This doesn’t mean we stop learning but that we stop solidifying our temporary knowledge into walls that separate us. We are also asked to lean into life and not away from experience. When we can help each other do this, we begin to open a conversation with life that keeps awakening our deeper nature.
