The Heart of All Paths
by Mark Nepo
“I don’t want the peace that passeth understanding; I want the understanding that bringeth peace.” Helen Keller
While I was raised Jewish, my journey through cancer, twenty-seven years ago, led me to be a student of all paths. When close to death, a friend, a Catholic priest, wanted to lay hands on me. We didn’t have a theological discussion. Desperate to be here, I bowed my head, took his hand, and said, “Yes, thank you.”
And then, a woman I’ve never met led a Sufi meditation weekly on my behalf. And an artist painted his version of Michelangelo to give me strength. And a poet made a bookmark of sweet grass meant to heal. And deep friends pulled crystals from the earth and washed them for me to carry as protection. And yet another gave me a petal from the Philippines which appeared in a miracle in 1948. And old friends in New Hampshire designed a cancer-free diet which they assumed with me. And my brother insisted that I exercise and consume vast quantities of vitamin C. And a sweet friend who doesn’t believe in God sat with me in silence when I had nothing left to say. And still another dear soul prayed to her dead mother and to Thomas Merton that I be healed. And I even talked to Grandma sometimes and visualized my cells repairing as I sat in her golden chairs.
In truth, I was blessed that all these efforts carried me, for each is indispensable. We need Catholic, Jew, Mystic, Sweet Grass, Sufi, Herbs, Crystal, Dead Mother, Dead Grandmother, Dead Monk and Golden Chairs to heal.
I only know that everything helped. I am not great enough or wise enough to break down into percentages how much vitamin, how much medicine, how much prayer, how much God, how much Jesus, and how much mental fight. I only know that those who suffer partial belief are only partially healed. I only know that, like the deepest wind, the unnamable miracle will move us all and remain unseen.
Blessed to wake yet one more time, I was challenged to believe in everything. Ever since, I’ve been devoted, through all my books and teaching, to revealing the common center of all spiritual paths; while lifting up the unique gifts and tools of each, looking for how we can apply these timeless tools to our daily lives.
Today, we suffer an epidemic of worldwide fundamentalism, when we need all the spiritual paths to enliven the human family. To understand this, consider nature’s gift of spring. Each insect and bird is born with a yearning and inclination toward a specific nectar by which each inadvertently carries a particular pollen to a particular plant, fruit, or flower. And every year, we need all the insects and birds to bring spring alive.
But what if the bees became fundamentalists, imposing their way of pollination on all the other pollinators? We wouldn’t have spring. Spring depends on every living thing being true to its own nature. Likewise, we need all the traditions to enliven the human spring. Even atheism, for believing in nothing is the same as believing in everything, just inverted. And so, we’re each born with a particular yearning for love and Oneness, each of us with an inclination toward a specific way by which we inadvertently do our part to seed the world. Without all the traditions and without each person being true to their own nature, we have no chance of blossoming the human spring.
In the heart of all paths, we discover we are the same. In the center of all our stories, we drink from the same well. It is this well of grace that issues peace. To know this well of inwardness is to know who we are, not by surface markers of identity, not by where we work, or what we wear, or how we like to be addressed, but by feeling our place in relation to the Infinite and by inhabiting it. This is a hard, lifelong task, for the nature of becoming is a constant filming over of where we begin, while the nature of being is a constant erosion of what is not essential. Each of us lives in the midst of this ongoing tension, growing tarnished or covered over, only to be worn back to that incorruptible well of grace at our core.
In our daily lives, the heart of all paths reveals itself through our kindness, the one gift we’re born with. Indeed, kindness is the work of love. The Chinese philosopher, Mencius, offered a beautiful metaphor about human kindness. He said that water, left to its own nature, will always flow downhill. It can be manipulated to flow uphill, but left alone, it will always flow to other water. Likewise, human beings, left to their own nature, will always be kind. We can be manipulated to be unkind, but left alone, we will always flow to each other.
This speaks to kindness as a way of life. To flow to the life around us is part of staying awake. When we can flow to life, we find that kindness reveals kinship, and being wholehearted lets us experience Oneness. But it’s often hard to get there by ourselves. Another reason we need each other. Later in life, the great sociologist, Ivan Illich, defined spiritual hospitality as helping another cross a threshold. This is a beautiful way to describe the work of love: to help another cross a threshold.
As for me, I am still committed to all paths, and my efforts now turn from trying to outrun suffering to accepting love wherever I can find it. Stripped of causes and plans and things to strive for, I have discovered everything I could need or ask for is right here, in flawed abundance. Ultimately, we cannot eliminate hunger, but we can feed each other. We cannot eliminate loneliness, but we can hold each other. We cannot eliminate pain, but we can live a life of compassion.
And so, in our time, as in every time, we need every resource and example of heart and resilience we can unearth. It’s both comforting and challenging to realize that no one person can wrestle from the Earth the song of how we can survive together and no one voice can sing that chorus. We need each other more than ever.
In the heart of all paths, we’re asked to swim with the stream till we become the stream, to move with the music till we become the music, and to rock the wounded till we become the suffering.
In the heart of all paths, we are asked to live for the grace beneath all we want, until we can see it in everything and everyone; until we admit to the mystery that when I look deep enough into you, I find me; and when you dare to hear my fear in the recess of your heart, you recognize it as your secret, which you thought no one else knew.
Oh, let us embrace that unexpected moment of unity as the atom of God. Let us have the courage to hold each other when we break and worship what unfolds. Oh, nameless spirit that is not done with us, let us love without a net beyond the fear of death, until the speck of peace we guard so well becomes the world.
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About the Author
Mark Nepo moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times Best Seller, The Book of Awakening. A best-selling author, he has published sixteen books and recorded eleven audio projects. Mark was part of Oprah Winfrey’s The Life You Want Tour in 2014, and has appeared several times with Oprah on her Super Soul Sunday program on OWN TV. Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship.
http://MarkNepo.com
