{"product_id":"the-exquisite-risk-isbn-9780307335845","title":"The Exquisite Risk","description":"\u003cb\u003eThis stunning meditation from the renowned author of \u003ci\u003eThe Book of Awakening \u003c\/i\u003eoffers a fresh perspective on the art of being alive and provides essential insight into how we can overcome the barriers holding us back from living life to its fullest.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e“Once again, Mark Nepo draws us to the heart of what matters. He illuminates love with the light of his own understanding.”—Marianne Williamson\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eHow can we stay awake and authentic when our wounds make us numb and hidden? How can we minimize what stands between us and our experience of life? How can we make a practice of wearing down what thickens around our mind and heart?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn these fast-paced times, the exquisite risk facing each of us every day is to slow down so that we may experience life rather than simply manage it. In \u003ci\u003eThe Exquisite Risk\u003c\/i\u003e, poet and teacher Mark Nepo encourages us to become quiet enough and open enough to listen to what truly matters—our own hearts, our loved ones, the wonders of nature—in order to live a life with nothing held back.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn moving, thoughtful prose, Nepo bravely demonstrates the vulnerability he urges us all to practice, sharing the development of his own spiritual path and how his battle with a rare type of cancer transformed his perspective on himself, his connections to others, and the world around him. Along with personal anecdotes, Nepo pulls wisdom from ancient teachings to explore the importance of staying present and mindful in the face of life’s myriad challenges and concludes that only by daring to embrace all that life has to offer—good and bad—can we come to a deeper appreciation of its meaning and beauty.“A rich and lyric reflection on what it means to live a truly authentic life.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eBody \u0026amp; Soul \u003c\/i\u003emagazine\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Enthralling . . . Nepo is a great storyteller who has much wisdom.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eSpirituality \u0026amp; Health\u003c\/i\u003e magazine \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Perfect for reading at the beach—or anytime you feel the urge to be surprised by the lyrical suddenness of life.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eYoga Journal\u003c\/i\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Meant to be savored like a fine meal. Nepo’s book is filled with poetic imagery and language, enticing the reader to linger over its delicate flavors. Filtered through his personal experience, Nepo pours wisdom from the chalice of many cultures and faiths.”\u003cb\u003e—\u003ci\u003eCleveland Plain Dealer\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Once again, Mark Nepo draws us to the heart of what matters. He illuminates love with the light of his own understanding.”\u003cb\u003e—Marianne Williamson\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“In this exquisite book, the suffering of one man speaks with the voice of wisdom and beauty to all of us.”\u003cb\u003e—Jacob Needleman, author of \u003ci\u003eThe American Soul, A Little Book on Love,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eMoney and the Meaning of Life\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“\u003ci\u003eThe Exquisite Risk\u003c\/i\u003e is a celebration of an honest life, lived on purpose. Mark Nepo’s words, like water on a stone, gently but firmly score a path for us to follow, a path that leads us into the place of remembering what a life is for; an invitation to tell the truth, remain close to the earth, and love well. What, more than this, can we ever ask of a book as our companion?”\u003cb\u003e—Wayne Muller, author of \u003ci\u003eLearning to Pray\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSabbath\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eHow, Then, Shall We Live?\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Every page of \u003ci\u003eThe Exquisite Risk\u003c\/i\u003e is alive with Mark’s compassion, rich with his soulfulness. If you are looking for one of those rare books that offer companionship on the journey, you will find none better than this.”\u003cb\u003e—Parker J. Palmer, author of \u003ci\u003eA Hidden Wholeness\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThe Courage to Teach\u003c\/i\u003e, and\u003ci\u003e Let Your Life Speak\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e“An inspiration . . . \u003ci\u003eThe Exquisite Risk\u003c\/i\u003e affirms that there are essentially two responses to life—a risky opening up to love and a controlling move into success and isolation. The direct reporting of Mark Nepo’s epiphanies moves and flows in a wonderful sequencing of revelations that deepen and fill out as we read. . . . An exquisite gift.”\u003cb\u003e—Robert Inchausti, author of \u003ci\u003eThe Ignorant Perfection of Ordinary People\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eMark Nepo\u003c\/b\u003e, a member of Oprah’s SuperSoul 100, is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for forty years. A \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e #1 bestselling author, he has published fourteen books and recorded eight audio projects. His work includes \u003ci\u003eReduced to Joy\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eSeven Thousand Ways to Listen\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eAs Far as the Heart Can See,\u003c\/i\u003e and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Mark has appeared with Oprah Winfrey on her \u003ci\u003eSuper Soul Sunday\u003c\/i\u003e program on OWN TV, and has also been interviewed by Robin Roberts on \u003ci\u003eGood Morning America\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cb\u003eOPENING THE GIFT\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBefore stories were recorded, what happened to the living was told and retold around fires, on cliffs, and in the shade of enormous trees. And it is said that somewhere on the edge of what was known and unknown, a man and a woman paused in their struggles to survive  and faced each other. One asked the other, \"Is there more to this  than hauling wood?\" The older of the two sighed, \"Yes . . . and no.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis may have been the beginning of our sense of being and our search  for meaning. I imagine these two faced everything we face. For the  journey is the same: how to open our pain and listen to all that  matters, so we can make it through and rejoice from day to day.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLike those before us, we have the chance to wake and love, the chance to welcome the gift of surprise and befriend the Whole. For beneath the life of problem-solving waits the struggle to be real, from which  no one is exempt. We each are asked to make our way through the drama of our bleeding to the stripping of our will, through the tensions of our suffering to the humility of surrender where we might learn the ordinary art of living at the pace of what is real.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo, is there more to this than hauling the wood of our history around? More than just replaying our patterns? Whether yesterday or five thousand years ago, there has always been the need to break our  habits in the world—the need to give up what no longer works.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eUltimately, there is always the need to risk being new. Yet even succeeding, to be authentic—living as close to our experience as  possible—is arduous. For being human, we remember and forget. We  stray and return, fall down and get up, and cling and let go, again  and again. But it is this straying and returning that makes life  interesting, this clinging and letting go—damned as it is—that  exercises the heart.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThey say that, after a time, the two who paused on the edge of what  was known and unknown stumbled into humility. \"Please, tell me, is  there more to this than hauling wood?\" the one would ask again. And the more tired of the two replied, \"No, no. It is all in the hauling, all in the wood, all in how we face each other around the small fires we can build.\"\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt was then that they rested, as we rest, when accepting the grace of our humanness. You see, we've always been on a journey, like it or  not, aware of it or not, struggling to enter and embrace things as  they are. And when we can accept our small part in the way of things, when we can build a small fire and gather, it opens us to joy. So join me on this journey we are already on. We can help each other hold nothing back. We can help each other live a sincere life. We can help each other wear down what gets in the way, waking close to the bone.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCome. There are teachers everywhere: in the stories around us, in the stories within us, in the life of expression that sings where we are broken, in the kinship of gratitude that keeps reminding us that we need each other as we become the earth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eMOVEMENT 1: There Are Teachers Everywhere\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLISTENING TO THE VOICE INSIDE\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIf I dare to hear you, I will feel you like the sun and grow in your direction.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI remember the first time I was forced to listen, not by adults or teachers, but by running as a boy in the playground so fast and free that I fell and scraped my knee. After the cut reduced to a throb, I couldn't get up. It was then that I saw my blood sprinkled in the dirt. It was then I first realized that this great thing we ran on was the earth. I had never paid attention to it. I was just a boy. I  put my ear to the ground and listened. I don't know what I thought I would hear. But it was summer and the ground was warm. So I thought I heard warmth. I told my teacher, but she said you can't hear warmth. Yet some forty-five years later, I think you can. Whenever you put  your ear to the earth or to your own heart, the deeper instruments play, swelling our sense of things. When lost, we simply have to remember to put our ear to the earth, or to our heart, and we will hear a warmth that guides.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe next time, I was more drawn to listen than forced. It was a few years later on my father's sailboat, which was the oasis of my youth.  It was a thirty-foot ketch that he'd built. Once out to sea, I remember being pulled forward by the water till the family noises faded. I found myself sitting in the bow of the boat, legs over the side, staring into the endless waves parting around us. I didn't have the words or concepts for it, but it felt like God's voice murmuring  in the waves. This was my first experience of solitude.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAt a very early age, both the earth and the sea opened me to  something deep inside that has carried me ever since. It was years  before I had names for any of this, and after years of study in many  spiritual traditions, I believe it is the simple, mysterious pulse of  what is sacred.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn these small childhood experiences of listening, I discovered a  spiritual law: that we are both forced and drawn by everything larger  than us to hear what is essential. Repeatedly, we are given chance  after chance to stop and listen to all that is fundamental. When  forced to our knees, we are offered the chance to hear the warmth in  all that holds us up. When drawn into the rhythms of vastness that  surround us, we are offered the chance to hear the waves of God's  voice, of which we are one, if we can leave the noise of others  behind.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen we can listen deeply, we are strengthened to feel that  everything around us lives within us and that everything within us  lives as part of the world. When we experience both the circumference  and center of the circle of life at once, we are then in the larger  Self, the Universal Self, as Carl Jung describes it.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eImagine a nineteen-year-old in the chaos of war, running through mud  and explosions, seeing others fall around him. Imagine him slipping  into a ditch, a small pocket of stillness that seems out of reach,  for the moment, from all the destruction. And in that small empty  space between the mud and his frightened mouth, he is forced to  listen to his breath. In that small cloud emitting from his lungs, he  is forced to hear the breath of everything that ever lived. The  conflicts change and the ditches change, but sometimes listening to  that small breath is all we have. And sometimes it opens up  everything.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThis falling down and emptying ourselves of noise so that we can hear  the sacred pulse of things is at the heart of all the meditation  practices invoked throughout the ages. Sooner or later, if we want to  feel what it is to be alive in a Universe that is alive, we will have  to empty ourselves, open our hearts, and listen. This emptying and  opening and listening is the practice that allows us to hear that  voice of God (whatever name you give to it) that resides in each of  us. By listening with all of who we are, we are briefly illuminated,  like stained glass; letting everything move through us in those  privileged and enlightened moments.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut how do we listen? It is so simple and so hard. So obvious to  begin and so elusive to maintain. In this lies the vitality of deep  listening. To keep beginning. Over and over. To keep emptying and  opening. And simply to keep listening. For to listen is to  continually give up all expectation and to give our attention,  completely and freshly, to what is before us, not really knowing what  we will hear or what that will mean. In the practice of our days, to  listen is to lean in, softly, with a willingness to be changed by  what we hear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOver the years, I have been opened to a deeper listening when called  to sit with the dying. In the sacred air between us, I have heard the  weight of things fall away, have seen ancient hands that held me as a  boy search for something that has always been near, have wondered  what hundred-year-old eyes see with their last look.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eI remember my grandmother at ninety-four staring into some holy place  I couldn't see. It was the moment after I'd left. I had turned back  for one more taste of her. She didn't know I was there, and I saw her  as devoutly amazed as any reluctant prophet. Somewhere between the  bedpan and her dirty window, eternity was singing. I'll never forget  her face.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt seems that those pared down to only what is essential peer into  the one untranslatable place, the sweet place that no one can speak  of. And when waking on the edge of life or death, when pressed to be  fully here, we peer into a truth that changes everything. Then, if  still here, we come back with our hearts seared anew by that seeing.  If blessed, we come back to live in days that say so sweetly that  everything, even dust, is beautifully ordinary and irreplaceable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe can't seek out such wakefulness. In truth, it happens to us. But  we can ready ourselves for such privileged moments. We can, if  present enough, listen to each day the way we would listen to those  who are dying. We can keep beginning, keep emptying, keep breathing  ourselves open.","brand":"Harmony","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46305063928037,"sku":"NP9780307335845","price":19.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9780307335845.jpg?v=1767739251","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/the-exquisite-risk-isbn-9780307335845","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}