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What if the goal isn't to chase enlightenment, but to realize the sacred is already present in this breath, in this moment? I'm joined by one of my favorite spiritual teachers, Mark Nepo, for a conversation that will change how you relate to fear, pain, and your own journey. We explore how to keep your heart open when life gets hard, why we must learn to "blossom and not strive," and the profound truth that we all belong to each other. If you're longing to live a more porous, courageous, and authentic life, this episode is a deep drink of soul medicine.

TIMESTAMPED OVERVIEW

00:00 Introduction to the Angel Reiki School
03:18 Julie Introduces the Episode and Guest Mark Nepo
04:02 Discussing Creativity in the Second Half of Life
07:53 The Shift from Being Driven to Being Drawn
10:38 The Purpose of Memory and Dream
13:45 Women’s Retreat Invitation
16:30 Reframing Energy Shifts and Archetypes
17:41 Is Life Itself God? Mark’s Perspective on the Divine
20:21 How Deep Listening Changes and Opens Us
22:33 Blossoming vs. Striving: Keeping Your Heart Open
26:02 The Ancient Parable: Stop Being a Glass, Become a Lake
31:10 How We Belong to Each Other: Solitude and Community
36:51 Compassion as an Act of Courage
42:21 Every Ending is a Beginning: The Chick and the Egg
50:03 The Miracle is Already Here: You Don’t Need to Chase It

TRANSCRIPT:

Julie Jancius: [00:00:00] Friends, before we dive in, I wanna extend an invitation into something sacred that could be part of your unfolding. I’m hosting three Angel Reiki [00:00:11] schools upcoming in person, September 19th, November 7th, January 23rd. Those are all the dates when they start. When you join, you don’t just [00:00:22] receive one certification, you’re initiated into three.
Julie Jancius: In the Angel Reiki school, mediumship. Energy healing and becoming an angel messenger yourself. [00:00:33] This is a one-stop sanctuary where all of your spiritual gifts are activated and grown together. Your unique gifts. People are called to this [00:00:44] program for so many reasons. Some are searching for a second career that is deeply fulfilling, one where they can witness lives transformed through the creatives.
Julie Jancius: Soul [00:00:55] led work that they’re putting out into the world. One that starts with the Angel Reiki school. Others feel the longing to create an income that supports the life they’ve [00:01:06] always dreamed of. More time freedom, the ability to take family vacations, to be there walking their children to school, and be there when they get home from school to make the [00:01:17] memories that matter most in this life.
Julie Jancius: I often remind my students to say out loud, I am a high six figure angel. Medium. Time and time [00:01:28] again, they come back to share how claiming that vision and going through the Angel Reiki school has opened new doors to financial abundance, radiant joy. The [00:01:39] freedom to live a life on their terms. Yes, it does take devotion to build your own business, but the Angel Reiki school is where you begin.[00:01:50]
Julie Jancius: You might not yet understand why your soul is being pulled here, but once you step in, I promise you’ll feel it. The remembering the recognition. The [00:02:01] sense of coming home and because the Angel Reiki school weekends are so intimate, so wonderful, uh, alumni love coming back, uh, that you don’t have to, but they love [00:02:12] the energy so incredibly much they asked to come back.
Julie Jancius: So we did include an alumni, uh, option where you can. But because the Angel Reiki school weekends [00:02:23] are so intimate, half of our in-person dates sell out. So if you feel that stirring in your heart, trust it. Save your space. Now [00:02:34] I keep our, our groups small on purpose so that I get to know. Every single one of you.
Julie Jancius: Well, and join us for one of the upcoming Angel Reiki School Weekends. Remember, [00:02:45] that’s in September, November or January. All of them start on a Friday evening at 6:00 PM and all of them end by Sunday, somewhere in [00:02:56] between 12 to two. You can register@theangelmedium.com. Slash get certified. Step into the Angel Reiki school today and begin to embody [00:03:07] your spiritual gifts to the fullest expression.
Julie Jancius: Everyone who joins the Angel Reiki school gets access to both the online and in-person school. Join today, [00:03:18] the angel medium.com. Now here’s today’s episode. Hello, beautiful souls. Welcome back to the Angels and Awakening [00:03:29] Podcast. I’m your host and author, Julie Janis. Friends. Today we have on the show Mark Nepo.
Julie Jancius: If you don’t know who he is, he’s one of my favorite spiritual [00:03:40] teachers. I think that he has influenced every major. Spiritual teacher that is out there, his work, he just phrases things in a way that you’re going to hear today [00:03:51] that make you go, okay, I might’ve heard that in ways in the past, but the way that Mark says it, ooh, it hits different.
Julie Jancius: It resonates on a completely [00:04:02] another higher level. And he really threw the poeticness. Of his words, the sacredness of his words. Ooh. Pulls you into just [00:04:13] another level of depth with your spirituality. Marga, thank you for being here and welcome to the show.
Mark Nepo: Oh, thank you. Thank you for your kind introduction.
Mark Nepo: I’m, I’m glad to be with you. [00:04:24]
Julie Jancius: Yay. So, um, we have, uh, your next book or your latest book that has just come out the fifth season, creativity in the Second Half of [00:04:35] Life that just came out this summer, so people can go online, find that everywhere. Um, I do wanna talk about that a little bit and I’ve got so many other questions as well.
Julie Jancius: Sure. [00:04:46] It, it seems to me, I’ve kind of been on this journey for a while, right? Like when I was growing up as a kiddo. Things weren’t really easy. I had to work for everything. [00:04:57] I’m really glad that my dad instilled that in me young. But I mean, by the time I was in sixth grade, I, I was trying to make [00:05:08] ways to, uh, find ways to make money because, um.
Julie Jancius: The home life was just so chaotic. Yeah. And that kind of brings you into a [00:05:19] survival mode that you can be in your, your whole life, even if you have that spirituality piece. And that’s always been a huge thread within me. Um, but you [00:05:30] kind of get to this point, and I’ve heard, uh, celebrities talk about this.
Julie Jancius: I’ve heard, um, he’s a brain kinda researcher, Dr. Daniel Amen. Talk about [00:05:41] this. Highly successful people, when they put them in brain researcher look at their brain. Scientifically they find that they’ve gotten everything that they want. And so they [00:05:52] tend to not want as much, uh, the mechanisms kind of change.
Julie Jancius: And so when you step into the second half of life and creating, it’s not [00:06:03] from this survival mode anymore. It’s more from your, your authentic soul self is what? Yeah, I think. Tell us more about what you found as you [00:06:14] researched and, and put together that book.
Mark Nepo: Yeah, so, so let I, let me back up a little bit and yeah.
Mark Nepo: And I hold, I hold some of that a little differently, so do it. Yeah. [00:06:25] Yeah. So I, you know, I think that one of the things that happens for most of us in life is that we struggle to discover our own gifts, and we [00:06:36] struggle to not take on the dreams of other people. That imposed that on us. And so my experience has been [00:06:47] that, you know, we, there’s a paradox here.
Mark Nepo: You know, on the one hand we reach, you know, Robert Browning said, uh, a [00:06:58] person’s reach should exceed his grasp. If I reach over here, I may not get that, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll reach farther than if I didn’t at the same time. Um. [00:07:09] There’s really nowhere to go.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And great love and great suffering break our grasping.[00:07:20]
Mark Nepo: And so in addition to maybe, you know, on the one hand, as you were saying, researchers are showing scientific researchers that, you know, people don’t want as much [00:07:31] because they achieve what they want. I think more often than not, you know, we reach for things. We have dreams and we give it our all. [00:07:42] And often our dreams don’t come true.
Mark Nepo: But in giving our all, sometimes we come true. And that’s more important.
overlap: Mm.
Mark Nepo: So [00:07:53] we all struggle between, you know, wanting, needing, striving, and then, you know, little by little life [00:08:04] kind of lets us know that we’ve got everything we need. It doesn’t mean I don’t look forward to things or I don’t work toward things, but they don’t [00:08:15] define my worth.
Mark Nepo: And I think that, yeah, some of the things in, in, you know, creativity in the second half of life, you know, um, I’m 74 now, and now that I’m in [00:08:26] this, you know, I’m in the continent of aging. I’ve always used my life as a, uh, a case study for the common passages we all go through. And I think that. [00:08:37] And, and between, you know, earlier in my life, in my, uh, late in my thirties, I almost died from a rare formal lymphoma.
Mark Nepo: And, and so I’ve [00:08:48] learned from both aging and for going through difficult passages like the cancer, these kinds of journeys make [00:08:59] more acute.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: All the passages we all go through. And so we can learn from them. So even though this book focuses on the second half of life, [00:09:10] they really lift up choice points for everyone, whatever age you are, because you’re aging, whether you’re aging from 20 to 40 or 40 to 60 or 60 to 80.
Mark Nepo: And so one of the [00:09:21] things that I really found is and and have been finding is that when I say. Creativity in the second half of life. [00:09:32] I, I, I don’t mean that we have to strive to create great art mm-hmm. More that our life is the work of art.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And by being [00:09:43] authentic and loving and listening and as courageous as we can be, life paints, paints us.[00:09:54]
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And, and so our journey of. The challenges between where do we use our will in a good way and where do [00:10:05] we surrender? Yeah. And accept. And I think that that’s a practice that becomes more heightened as we get older.
overlap: Mm-hmm. What,
Mark Nepo: yeah, [00:10:16] what can we accept? And I think also I’ve been learning that we we’re, as we get older, we’re asked to develop different skills.
Mark Nepo: [00:10:27] Different skills so that we keep growing inwardly as we, what
Julie Jancius: are those, those different skills?
Mark Nepo: Yeah. So, you know, so one is, um, and, and again, while this [00:10:38] becomes present as we age, I think it applies our whole lives. One is how we relate to memory and dream. So, you [00:10:49] know, the real purpose of of memory. It is not, you know, nostalgia is when I look back on an earlier time and say, it was [00:11:00] wonderful, and I go, oh, I wish I could go back there.
Mark Nepo: Yeah, that’s nostalgia. But the true purpose of memory is to visit that moment [00:11:11] and see where the spark of life that I experienced there lives in me now because it hasn’t gone anywhere. It’s [00:11:22] just in a different place. And the same thing with dream. You know, often we dream and then we work toward a dream, which is wonderful.
Mark Nepo: But also we sometimes put our worth [00:11:33] in that dream ahead of us.
Julie Jancius: True.
Mark Nepo: And likewise. No, no. Whatever brought the dream into being, we can still work toward it, but. That [00:11:44] is alive in us now. Mm.
overlap: So
Mark Nepo: dream and memory, if we can stay open to what’s really speaking. Yeah. They help us live more fully now [00:11:55] and, and this becomes more heightened as we age because, you know, as I said, I’m 74.
Mark Nepo: I hope I’ll live to a hundred and, uh, but even so, there’s more years behind in [00:12:06] my life than ahead.
overlap: Mm-hmm. So
Mark Nepo: it doesn’t mean that I still don’t dream. Or that I still don’t remember. But the real engagement of that is to help me live [00:12:17] more fully now.
Julie Jancius: Beautiful soul. I just wanna take a moment and say, I am so excited to share something truly sacred with you.
Julie Jancius: This October [00:12:28] 3rd, fourth, and fifth will gather for the women’s retreat. Three days of deep rejuvenation, angelic connection, and soul remembrance. If [00:12:39] you’ve been feeling disconnected, unsure of your future, or longing for something more, this retreat was created just for you. Imagine [00:12:50] stepping away from the weight of daily life into an energetic sanctuary where you’re held, supported, and guided back to the truth of who you are.
Julie Jancius: [00:13:01] Here you’ll laugh, release and reconnect with your soul’s deepest yearnings. This is your time to reconnect with your angels and awaken to the [00:13:12] next chapter of your journey. And because I never want finances to stand in the way of a retreat, I’ve created a scholarship option just for this retreat. If [00:13:23] your heart is called this space friends, I promise it’s a waiting just for you.
Julie Jancius: Come join us. At the Angel medium.com/retreat, [00:13:34] say yes to your soul. Say yes to your angels. Say yes to this retreat. Questions. Email me at [00:13:45] julie@theangelmedium.com and now here we go back into the show. Yeah,
Mark Nepo: and that’s a different skill.
Julie Jancius: I’ve heard women say it in a way, they [00:13:56] sometimes talk about, um, the archetypes, uh, maiden mother crone.
Julie Jancius: And that as you step into, um, crone, a lot of times what you [00:14:07] didn’t realize is that you weren’t gonna have that energy of the drive your entire life. And they kinda look back on those maiden mother [00:14:18] years as wishing they still had that same. Energy. Um, how can you reframe that to bring that energy? [00:14:29] Well, I think the energy,
Mark Nepo: yeah, the energy shifts.
Mark Nepo: It’s not just, we had it a certain way when we’re young and then it doesn’t appear that way, so we quote, lost it. Mm-hmm. [00:14:40]
overlap: You
Mark Nepo: know, I, I think I first learned this when I did in my thirties, uh, blessed to survive cancer. It was, it was a very challenging. Even, [00:14:51] even coming out of it, because before that I was a driven young artist.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And I was blessed to survive. But then I woke up and I [00:15:02] lost my drive.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And then I was worried, gee, well did I lose my gift? And it, and it was very confusing. And after six or eight months, I discovered I hadn’t [00:15:13] lost it. I was now drawn to things not driven.
overlap: Mm-hmm. And
Mark Nepo: the image that that helps me, helped me [00:15:24] understand that is the way rivers come to the sea.
Mark Nepo: You know, when a river, a strong river is going it, the banks make it rush and it makes a lot of [00:15:35] noise and it’s powerful. Well, when it reaches the mouth of the sea, that energy and current doesn’t disappear.
Julie Jancius: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: It goes deeper and [00:15:46] joins the ocean.
Julie Jancius: True.
Mark Nepo: And so what had happened to me is going through all of that, almost dying and still being here, my gift just went [00:15:57] deeper.
Mark Nepo: And so it was more subtle. And another way that we understand this is, you know, very un uh, when we’re young, you know, we wanna be the light. [00:16:08]
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And as we, as we are shaped by life. We want to be in the light.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And so it’s not so much a [00:16:19] loss of passion or energy as it deepens and expands and has a different feel to it.
Julie Jancius: Yeah. [00:16:30] I think right now, just for the sake of this conversation, um, it feels a little scary. You know, I, I’m 43, I think some [00:16:41] women hit Meno, uh, perimenopause earlier. I just had a hysterectomy this year and my hormones have just been like. All over the place and you come through brain fog and Yeah. [00:16:52] You know, part of it is just like, who, who am I on the other side of this?
Julie Jancius: Um, and so a part of it does feel intense, but I love the way that you’re [00:17:03] framing it because it helps you understand who you’re gonna be on the, on the other end. I. Wanted to let you know that sometimes when I read your work, I kind of sit and wonder [00:17:14] because sometimes I look at life and God as being two separate things.
Julie Jancius: But when I read your work, I sit and wonder if we should think of life itself as God, [00:17:25] like this beautiful open door welcoming us into an unknown future that lies ahead. If we’re only willing to be curious enough, brave enough to put one foot in front of the [00:17:36] other and march forward into a greater and greater and greater understanding of God as life.
Mark Nepo: Yeah. So, you know, my journey has been, and, and so [00:17:47] let me, and I think that’s a wonderful, wonderful question. Um, so again, back back with my, you know, I was raised Jewish and I have a great tie to the Jewish heritage, [00:17:58] but during that journey, uh, my cancer journey, I was blessed to have people. That I knew and people I didn’t know from all faiths and walks of [00:18:09] life, formal and informal, including friends who are atheists, all give me some kind of blessing and help and support.
Mark Nepo: Blessed to be here on [00:18:20] the other side. This is how I was drawn to become a student of all parents because yeah. I was not, and still, not all these years later wise enough to know what worked and what didn’t. [00:18:31] And I feel like I was challenged to believe in everything.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And so I see that common Unnameable Center, which has a thousand names, [00:18:42] you know, God, Dharma, Ottman, nature, everything.
Mark Nepo: Nothing, I don’t know. I Holy Ghost, Allah, you name it. There are a thousand names [00:18:53] and. That unknowable mystery, you know, that’s, and, and I really encourage people to use whatever synonym is a doorway for [00:19:04] you. We don’t have to argue over names and, and to be held in the wholeness of life
overlap: mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: Is to experience the divinity and oneness
overlap: mm-hmm.[00:19:15]
Mark Nepo: That we could call God or, or again, a thousand things and our authenticity, our realness. Our kindness, um, is [00:19:26] kind of the admission ticket to experience that. Mm-hmm. And we could say that one definition of joy is the experience of oneness. Mm-hmm. So, you know, I [00:19:37] think it’s, you know, if you believe in anything bigger than yourself, I would call you a mystic.
overlap: Mm-hmm. And as
Mark Nepo: soon as we start to try to name what that is, then we go [00:19:48] to our theological or scientific corners. But. I’m not interested in what we call it. I’m interested in how you relate to it, and I relate to it, and then we can compare notes. [00:19:59] And so, you know, uh, an atheist believes in something larger than themselves.
Mark Nepo: They call it nothing. I call it everything. So what’s the difference? We still can talk. Ooh,
Julie Jancius: [00:20:10] yes. That’s beautiful, mark. Oh, um. You talk a lot about listening, how listening changes us. Um, and that true listening [00:20:21] isn’t passive. It opens us, softens us, reshapes us. I was wondering what your experience of hearing that all that is, how that works for you [00:20:32] personally.
Julie Jancius: Do you see it as listening to your own intuition or how do you hear?
Mark Nepo: Well, I think that there is a, a continual kind of. [00:20:43] Learning and cleaning cleansing, if you will, that in order for me, you know, I need to process and face and deal with my own feelings and [00:20:54] thoughts and confusions and fears, and then that clears me out so that I can hear everything that I’m not.[00:21:05]
Mark Nepo: That I can hear everything larger than me, and so you know, when I do that, then I can better receive you, and then by listening to [00:21:16] each other deeply, the details will be different. But we will strengthen that common kinship we have with all things. So, you know, [00:21:27] the, this, um, so this way I can write when I express and I think of, you know, I’m not channeling, but I do feel like I re [00:21:38] I feel like an inner explorer.
Mark Nepo: I retrieve things. In metaphors, stories, poems, things from my, uh, through [00:21:49] processing my own experience that opened me to the common experience that is in others and in other times and in the whole [00:22:00] mystery of life. And that’s not just a, it’s not like just looking through a telescope or a microscope that, that openness, [00:22:11] um.
Mark Nepo: Connects us that the, the, the wholeness of life is a resource.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: It can fill us. It’s healing. [00:22:22] It’s, it can give, give us resilience.
Julie Jancius: Mm-hmm. You also talk about. How life asks us to blossom and not strive. I [00:22:33] really love that life asks us to blossom, not strive like a flower. Our task is to open and the bees will come.
Julie Jancius: Um, you often say that [00:22:44] natural tendency when life gets hard is to kind of close off to protect, to resist, to wall off. Um, but you say the real work of the soul is to keep the heart open, [00:22:55] even in those moments. And I found over the last year, um. The audience knows, uh, my daughter’s going through some hard stuff.
Julie Jancius: I went through some hard stuff this year [00:23:06] and, um, I have found that that is hard. It’s hard not to kind of close yourself away and isolate, and [00:23:17] it’s hard to keep yourself. Open. Yeah. Can you kind of describe this to folks and Yeah. Just go deeper into it.
Mark Nepo: Sure. [00:23:28] Well, I think the first thing is that every, that everything about life opens and closes as we’re talking.
Mark Nepo: Our lungs are opening and closing. Our eyes are opening and closing, [00:23:39] and, and so you know what, what’s. Difficult and painful is when we get stuck in the extreme of one or another. Mm-hmm. And it’s [00:23:50] certainly human and understandable that we all, so we’re not gonna eliminate, it’s not the idea to be open 24 7.
Mark Nepo: Um, because again, even, you know, if, if the heart was closed or open, [00:24:01] it wouldn’t pump and keep us alive. So we have to find what is the healthy rhythm for each of us. And when we’re afraid and hurt, um, it is [00:24:12] natural. To, to close. But then the cha, the spiritual challenge is to always open after we close.
overlap: [00:24:23] Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: Not to say, oh, well I shouldn’t close, but to be gentle with ourselves and then open. We can practice opening, but it really matters when we’re closed to open. [00:24:34] And I think that because at least for me, there, there is a. A cost or a pain if we stay closed. [00:24:45] There’s a cost.
Julie Jancius: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: And the fear of opening, that feels hard too.
Mark Nepo: But I have found that being closed and staying closed is more [00:24:56] corrosive. It starts to eat at your soul. This is, I love these anonymous, ancient teaching stories and this is a, uh, an ancient Hindu story. Um, there’s a master and [00:25:07] apprentice always. This time the master is, if you ask him, really, he’s really finds the apprentice annoying.
Mark Nepo: ’cause all he does is complain about life. [00:25:18] So he says to the apprentice, I want you to get a handful of salt. Bring it to me, put it in a glass of water and return to me. So he does, and he says, drink the apprentice drinks. And he [00:25:29] spits it out. Mm-hmm. And the master says, what’s the matter? He says, it’s bitter.
Mark Nepo: The master says, I want you to get the same exact amount of salt in your hands and follow me quietly. And he does. He [00:25:40] follows him to a lake and the master says, put the salt in the lake. He does. He says, drink. So the apprentice kneels down. He scoops the water, it dribbles down his chin. The master says, well, he goes, oh, it’s [00:25:51] fresh.
Mark Nepo: And the master looks at the apprentice and he says, stop being a glass. Become a lake.
Mark Nepo: Stop being a glass, become a lake. So [00:26:02] now we, this is anonymous centuries old teaching story from India.
overlap: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: And what it says to us about fear and pain, we’re never gonna eliminate fear and pain. They [00:26:13] have their purposes. You know, we might say, oh well it’s not good to be a glass. I won’t do that. Well, we will.
Mark Nepo: You will. And I will. Because that’s how fear and pain say hello. We tighten up. But the work of [00:26:24] self-awareness. An open heart needs to become a lake.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: To, it won’t, it won’t eliminate fear and pain, but it will right size it. The question is, [00:26:35] and this goes back to opening when we’re closed, what experiences, relationships, and practices will help [00:26:46] you enlarge your sense of things when you’re afraid or in pain.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: Because that. That you know, and if we don’t, not only in the glass, [00:26:57] will the pain or fear be more acute, but will turn bitter.
Julie Jancius: Yeah. What helps you with that fear and that pain?
Mark Nepo: Well, you know, in the last last year, I’ll give you a, a recent [00:27:08] kind of example. I’m fine now, thankfully, but a year ago I, I had back surgery and so I was what kind it was fusion back surgery,
Julie Jancius: so that’s [00:27:19] what my daughter’s looking at right now.
Julie Jancius: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: Oh, oh my. Well, you know, I, I had a wonderful surgeon and it, yeah,
Julie Jancius: it,
Mark Nepo: I, my back is better than it ever.
Julie Jancius: Ooh, [00:27:30] yay.
Mark Nepo: Yeah, it took me, you know, it, it took some time. Yeah. And I had, and I feel for your daughter. ’cause I had never experienced any chronic pain. Yeah. And like, [00:27:41] this was like 10 months and so when, but I am, my back is fine.
Mark Nepo: I, you know, I just have to strengthen the muscles. I didn’t use all that time. Yeah. Um. [00:27:52] Also first, because this also pertains to different skills, but first, so during that time, you know, it was very difficult and I was in [00:28:03] pain and I was afraid. And right here, I’m in my study, you know, it would take me 20 minutes to get upstairs to my study.
overlap: Mm-hmm. And,
Mark Nepo: and then I’d sit here and I ha I couldn’t [00:28:14] deny the pain or the fear, but I began in terms of opening what that looks like, I had to say. Okay. Everything in life is not afraid and in [00:28:25] pain because I am. So what’s the nearest thing to me that’s not afraid and not in pain? Well, the floor. Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: Though I had to feel my pain and fear, but also [00:28:36] realize that the floor I’m standing on is not afraid and not in pain. Nor is the ceiling, nor is the sky above the ceiling or the ground the house is built on. And [00:28:47] so. That is enlarging my sense of things. And again, it didn’t, it didn’t eliminate the pain or fear, but it Right sized it.
Julie Jancius: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: [00:28:58] Not everything, you know, it’s, it’s understandable that when we are afraid or in pain, we want to see the whole world as in pain and, and not a safe place. And thankfully that’s [00:29:09] not all true, which doesn’t mean we minimize what we’re going through, but thank God it’s not everywhere at the same time.
Julie Jancius: Yeah. A hundred percent. Oh, I love that. I [00:29:20] love that. And as you were telling that story, I could feel how you, as the glass melted into you as the lake energy
Mark Nepo: and, and yeah. And this is [00:29:31] why, you know, I wasn’t coming up here to write, you know, and, and accomplish things during those months. I was coming here because this [00:29:42] conversation.
Mark Nepo: Between us and every and life
Julie Jancius: mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: Is inner medicine.
Julie Jancius: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: And that’s one of the things that also is a [00:29:53] skill as we age that we’re asked is how do we, you know, if we don’t keep that conversation going, or if you and your daughter don’t keep that conversation going, then the [00:30:04] difficulty we’re in will take over.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: It will, you know, it’ll, the, that pain and that fear will be everything. It’s big enough, you [00:30:15] know? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. But if, but at the same time, so, uh, uh, as we age, not to turn from pain and fear, not to rationalize it or, or cheer up, [00:30:26] but to go deep and wide while to let beauty in while we’re suffering.
Julie Jancius: I wrote down that you say, and this is just one of [00:30:37] the lines that I, I love so much. We belong to each other and it makes me feel so much more even beyond the [00:30:48] oneness that we all are, that we belong to each other. I wonder what does that mean to you and how would you describe that?
Mark Nepo: Well, [00:30:59] so again, I, I talk a lot about paradox ’cause it’s been a great teacher.
Mark Nepo: And, and, and paradox for our conversation is simply, uh, any moment where more than one thing [00:31:10] is true at the same time. Sure. So one of the chief you unending paradoxes of life is that, um, between our [00:31:21] solitude and our belonging.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And so, you know, each of us. We, we affirm our worth and [00:31:32] through our direct connection to life.
Mark Nepo: But if all I do is rely on my own experience, oh boy, I’m in [00:31:43] trouble. But so what? The other is that we are more together than alone, which is a title of one of my books, and, and so we also need that belonging. [00:31:54] So, you know, if I go deep enough into me, I find you and you me. So there are two metaphors here that are very helpful.
Mark Nepo: One is the teacher that [00:32:05] whales and dolphins are so, you know, they’re mammoth creatures and they’re air breathing creatures. Though they can stay under a long time, they have to break surface to breathe air [00:32:16] or they will die and they also can’t stay outta water too long. Because they have to be immersed in the deep or they will die if they come out of, and, you know, they [00:32:27] breach.
overlap: Yeah. And
Mark Nepo: so they’re not out of water that long, but if they were on land and weren’t able to get back in the water, the, the lack of their body being immersed in water that [00:32:38] will, they need the depth because that immerses them and, and refurbishes their whole body by the water. They’re great teachers about solitude and [00:32:49] community because.
Mark Nepo: You know, it’s not, doesn’t matter whether we’re introverts or extroverts, we each need by ourselves to return to the deep. Yeah. And we also need to be in [00:33:00] the world. And so the question is what is your, your, the healthy rhythm for you? What is the healthy rhythm for you? So we belong to life [00:33:11] and we belong to each other.
Mark Nepo: So I can’t just stay as much as I’d like to. I just can’t stay down there forever. I’ll, I’ll die. Yeah.
overlap: Yeah. And
Mark Nepo: I can’t just be in the world all the time and never [00:33:22] renew my direct experience of life by going into the deep, and, and they do this and we, so the question that I often ask folks in circle is right now, are [00:33:33] you.
Mark Nepo: Too much in the deep or too much in the world. Mm. What do you need to balance to healthfully balance yourself? And the other is a metaphor is [00:33:44] comes from the third century Christian, uh, desert fathers, and they have this wonderful metaphor of a wagon wheel. And so, you know, wagon wheel has a hub and [00:33:55] spokes and a rim.
Mark Nepo: Well, they, they said, well, every soul on earth is a spoke
overlap: mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: In that wheel and. When we inhabit who we are [00:34:06] and discover our gifts and we go outward, that’s the life of becoming. And then no two spokes, uh, each spoke holds up a different part of the rim. [00:34:17] And that’s community. And we need everybody’s unique gifts for community to be strong.
Mark Nepo: If I go inward to the center of the wheel, we [00:34:28] all meet in the middle.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: That’s our life of being. You can call the center God or whatever you want, but the beautiful thing about that metaphor is it, it holds the paradox of our [00:34:39] becoming and being.
overlap: Yeah. And
Mark Nepo: so that this is also how we belong to each other.
Mark Nepo: Because if you take out any one of those three parts, there’s no wheel.
Julie Jancius: Yeah, [00:34:50] you
Mark Nepo: take out the hub. You take out the spoke, or you take the rim off.
Julie Jancius: Do you remember in the 1980s or the 1990s when I grew up as a kid, you had those kind of [00:35:01] clip-on little things that you could put on your bike wheel and they Oh yeah.
Julie Jancius: Were kinda like. Uh, like jewelry for your bike, right? And as you would turn the wheels of the bike and you’re riding the [00:35:12] bike, they would go up and down. They would go up and down those spokes. And so, as you were saying that, I was thinking that’s a rhythm too. Just like the dolphin, you know, [00:35:23] coming up to the surface and going back down.
Julie Jancius: Um, all of humanity is on this wheel, kind of going to the center and back out to the surface. Yes to [00:35:34] God and back out to the world to live.
Mark Nepo: Yeah. That’s beautiful. Absolutely
Julie Jancius: beautiful. Oh, um, you’re always giving us new terminology to use. I [00:35:45] love it. Mark, you’re, you’re the original AI before we had chat, GBT, the most beautiful language.
Julie Jancius: Um. You know, speaking of that, I think [00:35:56] in this new day and age of social media teachers, um, actually, you know what, I’ve, I kind of covered that question, so I’m not gonna go into that one. Sure. I’m gonna have my podcast [00:36:07] editor take that piece out. Andy, can you take that last question out, um, that I just asked, like the last five seconds.
Julie Jancius: Okay. Um, one of the other things that you say that [00:36:18] really grabs my heartstrings is compassion is an act of courage. To see another’s pain and to remain open like we’ve been talking about, is one of the, the bravest [00:36:29] things that we can do, and it makes me think about seeing things from another person’s perspective, having grace.
Julie Jancius: For other people giving grace to [00:36:40] other people. Um, compassion as an act of courage. Yeah. Talk about that.
Mark Nepo: Yeah. Well, let’s start with compassion. The word literally means to [00:36:51] be with.
Julie Jancius: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: And so to be with means if I am. If I’m gonna be with you, that means I’m gonna feel your pain. I’m gonna [00:37:02] feel, you’re gonna feel mine.
Mark Nepo: I’m gonna feel your wonder. I’m gonna feel your questions. So it’s, compassion isn’t a spectator sport, you know? It means that we’re really gonna be on this [00:37:13] journey together. Yeah. And so a couple of things about compassion. It takes courage because we have to open. Our heart and, you know, a very simple thing, which will be very [00:37:24] normal.
Mark Nepo: I’m sure you recognize, but you know, my wife Susan and I have been together almost 30 years and somewhere, I don’t know, in the first 10 years or, or something. Um, and she was upset [00:37:35] about something and I don’t remember what, but I was trying to help. And so, you know, I started to problem solve, you know, and she very, uh, [00:37:46] you know, strongly and wisely stopped and said.
Mark Nepo: You just don’t wanna feel what I’m feeling.
overlap: Hmm.
Mark Nepo: And I was like at first, like, what do you mean? [00:37:57] And I said, you’re right. I’m sorry.
overlap: Hmm.
Mark Nepo: Let’s, you know, I need to sink in to what you’re feeling. I need to be with it. [00:38:08] And um, and that means I’ll feel some of that. And so that first, you know. This also requires the courage is being [00:38:19] human.
Mark Nepo: We might not always be ready to do that, which is not a, a deficiency. We just have, it’s being human. So if you’re [00:38:30] sharing something with me and I’m there for you, you know, I could be listening to you and all of a sudden, just as you’re opening your heart, for some reason, I remember I didn’t pay the [00:38:41] phone bill.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And I go, oh no. And I miss what you said. Well, the courage is not pretending I heard you.
overlap: Mm-hmm. The
Mark Nepo: courage is saying, wait a minute. I know this is important. [00:38:52] I got distracted. Can we back up? I don’t wanna miss this.
Julie Jancius: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: So there’s a, there’s a courage in accepting our humanness so that we can be [00:39:03] totally compassionate.
Mark Nepo: And that means accepting our limitations. So another simple example is you’re gonna get a new refrigerator and we gotta move the old one. And you ask, I come over to help, [00:39:14] and we start to lift it. And you say you got your end.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: And if I’m not honest, I could hurt you. Mm-hmm. So part of that courage is [00:39:25] honoring my own limitations and saying maybe we need a third person.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: Yeah. Let’s call up somebody else to help.
overlap: Ooh.
Mark Nepo: So this starts to [00:39:36] open us into help and honesty and so compassion whole. And so there’s another thing about, I think about compassion that is. [00:39:47] And, and, and this go, this is, this is kind of a, uh, a lifelong, uh, practice. And as human beings, we also tend, you know, [00:39:58] I wanna be there for you and I am, and now I have no boundaries, and I’ve become your suffering.
Mark Nepo: And that doesn’t help anybody. You know, I need [00:40:09] to feel what you’re feeling, but if I become just like you, whatever you and I are experiencing, that doesn’t help. Plus. And then I go, oh my God, I didn’t know it was gonna be like that. [00:40:20] And then I back up and I go, the other extreme. Now I got a wall up and I’m unreachable.
Mark Nepo: So I think that that the practice of compassion and the courage is. [00:40:31] How do we stay in the corridor of aliveness? How do we practice, um, having porous boundaries?
Julie Jancius: Oh yeah, you talk about that. That’s so cool. Talk about the [00:40:42] porous.
Mark Nepo: Well, the fact that it’s not, I’m not either closed completely or o so open that I’m washed away.
Julie Jancius: Yeah. So.
Mark Nepo: [00:40:53] And it doesn’t. So we’ll all do this, you know, one day I might be one way and another day too much. So we’re always course correcting
Julie Jancius: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: Into that corridor of aliveness. And so, and the, and [00:41:04] so I think that that requires, um, one of the wor the purposes of self-awareness is to, how am I doing? What am I doing here?
Mark Nepo: Oh, little. I, [00:41:15] I gave myself away today. Oh, I was untouchable today. And how do I get back into that corridor of aliveness? And the, the, the last kind of thing to I that I [00:41:26] has been really teaching for me is that the entry point for compassion is always what we have in common. You’re. [00:41:37] I had back surgery. Your daughter is looking at that.
Mark Nepo: You have a broken heart. I have a broken heart. Oh, I, you know, we, I can help or you, you know, but that, and that never goes away. And [00:41:48] it’s an apprenticeship so that we can open our hearts to people that we don’t have anything in common with.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Julie Jancius: A lot of your work just like, [00:41:59] makes me, um, reframe a lot of things, especially this year looking my, at myself, um, from a different perspective of goddess still shaping me [00:42:10] and molding me and chipping away at the clay and showing me who I am.
Julie Jancius: Um, another thing that you talk about a lot, um, that I’ve really. [00:42:21] Sunk into and held onto this year is every ending is also a beginning. Death loss change are all thresholds for new forms of life to [00:42:32] emerge. And there’s a part of that that’s really, really exciting too, of, okay. You know, I feel that I’m in that right now.
Julie Jancius: God’s shaping me, God’s molding me. And [00:42:43] let’s look at this as exciting because we’re going someplace new that we’ve never been before.
Mark Nepo: Well, and it’s always both. Yeah, it’s always both. And there is a journey [00:42:54] of learning and transformation that comes from a. You know, loss and grief and disappointment and all of those things, and the, the re the pain of [00:43:05] being rearranged.
Mark Nepo: And it’s also, uh, it’s also exciting and a new birth. And so there’s two, two stories. I would, one one’s a metaphor and one’s, well, I [00:43:16] said they’re actually two little stories, um, that help with here. And one is how a chick is born out of an egg. We see these little kind of sweet, almost saccharine, [00:43:27] little hallmark cars.
Mark Nepo: There’s a little crack egg and a little furry chick. Well, let’s look at it from the chick’s perspective. Okay, so this unborn chick is in an enclosed [00:43:38] shell, an egg. It has so much, it’s dark, it has so much air. It has so much liquid food around it. So it starts to eat. It starts to [00:43:49] breathe. It starts to grow.
Mark Nepo: Now it’s starting to use up the food in the air, and it’s getting bigger so it’s doesn’t, it’s cramped.
overlap: Yeah. [00:44:00]
Mark Nepo: So eventually it starts to run out of food.
overlap: Mm.
Mark Nepo: And run out of air and has no room. So for the chick. It feels like the world’s [00:44:11] coming to an end as it knows it. And it is so it, it’s pretty traumatic.
Mark Nepo: It’s suffocating, it’s starving. It has no room. And so then it [00:44:22] assumes its full stature and breaks. Its world open only to be born.
Julie Jancius: Mm-hmm. [00:44:33] That’s beautiful.
Mark Nepo: And so that, you know, we fa both are true. So. When we experience that difficulty, that’s when we have to enlarge our sense [00:44:44] of things and ask for help.
Mark Nepo: Yeah. ’cause that is also part of the transformational journey of being born anew all the time.
Julie Jancius: Yeah.
Mark Nepo: Um, [00:44:55] and what’s her dog’s name? Oh,
Julie Jancius: Lulu. This is Lulu. Lulu. She must have known that we were talking about animals ’cause she the way up and wanted to be with us. Yeah. Oh, great.
Mark Nepo: Great. [00:45:06] Um, yeah. Our dog is Zuzu.
Mark Nepo: She’s not, she’s with my wife Suzu right now.
Julie Jancius: Lulu and Zuzu.
Mark Nepo: Yeah. So the other story
Julie Jancius: yeah,
Mark Nepo: is in Dante’s [00:45:17] Divine Comedy. You know, he is guided by a spirit guide, Virgil, who was a, wrote the, the Epic, the Roman Epic, uh, the Aian, but he’s [00:45:28] guiding Dante through this. Path through hell and purgatory into paradise.
Mark Nepo: And there’s all these things they see. But anyway, right smack in the middle, in the whole thing, they come [00:45:39] upon a wall of fire and Dante goes, well this has been great. Thanks so much, but I’m good. You know? And Virgil, Virgil sweeps in front of him as a spirit [00:45:50] and says, this is the fire that will burn, but it will not consume.
Mark Nepo: You must go through it.
Julie Jancius: Oh, that’s powerful,
Mark Nepo: Dante. I’m okay. [00:46:01] Really? I’m good. I, I think we, you know, this has been great. I don’t need to, and he really gets in his face and repeats it. This is the fire that will burn but not consume. I will meet you on [00:46:12] the other side. And he vanishes.
overlap: Mm-hmm.
Mark Nepo: So, Dante, someone’s up his courage and he moves through the wall of fire and he’s nicked there’s a burn here, but he’s [00:46:23] okay.
Mark Nepo: And Virgil is never to be seen again or heard from again. Now this is, it’s like a spiritual riddle or a koan. You know, what do we, [00:46:34] did he lie to Dante? Did he deceive him? Well, we don’t know. There’s nothing, there’s nothing said about it, but I hold it when, as in the things [00:46:45] we’re talking about, I think he vanished because that fire, that wall of fire is the fire of transformation.
Mark Nepo: Everyone has to go through it [00:46:56] in their lifetime. It may not look like a fire, you know, it could be, uh, whatever difficulty that’s suddenly there that, uh, whether it’s losing someone or a dream [00:47:07] changes or a job changes or you know, who we are, breaks apart. But once going through that wall of fire, he didn’t need Virgil because.
Mark Nepo: Going through [00:47:18] the wall of transformation, he became his own guide.
overlap: Beautiful. And that
Mark Nepo: doesn’t, that doesn’t mean we don’t learn from others still, but then we consult our own spirit. [00:47:29] Our own soul.
Julie Jancius: One of the things that I’ve been looking at, um, and there’s just three things that you say that are big aha moments for me that I just wanna share with people before we, before we [00:47:40] break.
Julie Jancius: I think that you show that our stories are medicine for one another, and that by kind of opening up to what we’ve lived through, we [00:47:51] heal not only ourselves, but others can benefit. From that as well. I think it’s so needed. Even where we’re going in the future, those stories are just always going to be so [00:48:02] needed.
Julie Jancius: So thank you for showing me that. And um, yeah, I have in here big aha moments. To live fully is to be porous. Let life move through us without clinging or [00:48:13] resistant, uh, re. Is freedom and the miracle is already here. We don’t need to chase enlightenment. This is something that you say too. I love that the miracle is already here.[00:48:24]
Julie Jancius: We don’t need to chase enlightenment. The sacred is present in this breath, in this moment.
Mark Nepo: Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I, and I, I really, in my [00:48:35] experience, for me, uh, in this life we’re taught that. To chase. Meaning to chase, you know, that we gotta go from here to there. And [00:48:46] even the, uh, fomo, fear of missing out, almost dying and still being here has taught me there is no there, there’s only here.
Mark Nepo: We may travel on the surface from here to there, [00:48:57] but once we’re together, it’s the same eternal moment that opens. We really, we grow in to out, not from here to there. And flowers are a great [00:49:08] teacher in this. Because think, think for a minute, okay? A wild flower or a planted flower, the seed starts underground [00:49:19] and it starts growing to a force it has never seen, heard, or experienced light.
Mark Nepo: It’s in the dark and it’s growing toward [00:49:30] light. When we follow our heart, that’s how we become. Who we are. And then when, then we, then the flower breaks [00:49:41] ground and now it grows in two directions, roots and shoot out and in at the same time. And once it’s strong enough, it starts to flower. [00:49:52] And when a flower blossoms, it is revealing its inner beauty by literally turning itself inside out.
Julie Jancius: Oh, it’s so beautiful. [00:50:03]
Mark Nepo: And it does this without going anywhere. So this is a great teacher of the courage of being who we are, [00:50:14] of living our lives of showing up for each other.
Julie Jancius: Mm-hmm. Mark open invitation. Every time you hear, we go so much deeper [00:50:25] and I, I just feel the depth and, and presence and sacredness and I just thank you so much for who you are and for having the courage to be who you are in this lifetime and share with all of [00:50:36] us because you’ve just changed so many lives and I’m so.
Julie Jancius: Full. Um, tell everyone where they can find you and your books. And I have in my library a whole Mark [00:50:47] Nepo section. All of your books are in one section. Oh,
Mark Nepo: thank you. Thank you. Yes. Well, you know, folks can find me and where I’m teaching and everything on mark nepo.com or [00:50:58] live dot mark nepo.com.
Julie Jancius: Amazing.
Julie Jancius: Amazing. Thank you so much for sharing.
Mark Nepo: Oh, you’re so welcome. It’s great to be with you.
Julie Jancius: Beautiful [00:51:09] souls. Before we close, I just wanna say thank you. Thank you for being here, for listening, for walking. This path of radiant energy oneness [00:51:20] alongside me. Your presence means so much. If you feel called to go deeper, there are so many ways that we can journey together.
Julie Jancius: The Angel Reiki School, the [00:51:31] upcoming Women’s Retreat, the Angel membership. In September, we begin a brand new course in the Angel membership called Clearly Hear Your Intuition, and in October we’re starting [00:51:42] a course called Find Your Purpose in 30 Days. These are soul shifting, life-changing offerings, and I would love to hold space for you inside them.
Julie Jancius: You [00:51:53] can join the Angel membership to receive these courses or simply purchase them on their own at the angel medium.com/membership. Or if you [00:52:04] wanna purchase them on their own, you can go to the angel medium.com/shop. Now let’s take a moment together. I want you to take three deep [00:52:15] breaths in and out with each breath.
Julie Jancius: Feel love moving through you. Ask your angel the question or questions that are resting on your [00:52:26] heart, and then listen. Their whispers arrive as intuition, as knowing as peace. Friends, if you long to hear your angels [00:52:37] more clearly, don’t forget, I’ve got a course for this coming up in September where you can really start to hear your intuition more clearly.
Julie Jancius: I’ll walk you through step by step. Until next [00:52:48] time, friends, breathe, trust, and know that you are never alone. Your angels are always, always, always with [00:52:59] you. Love you.