The Endless Practice: Becoming Who You Were Born to Be

ATRIA BOOKS, August 2014
and as an audiobook from Simon & Schuster, August 2014

Availble on Amazon

AUDIO DESCRIPTION

As a poet, philosopher and beloved teacher, Mark Nepo has been breaking a path of spiritual inquiry for more than thirty years.  This new audiobook explores how the soul works in the world, and how by engaging our soul in the world, we are shaped by the endless practice of becoming the person we were born to be.  To bring who we are out and to let the world in is a brave and endless practice that clarifies and solidifies the gifts we are born with.

These chapters explore the difficult and rewarding aspects of being human, which are often inter-related, including how to restore our trust in life, when suffering makes us lose our way; how to begin the work of saying yes to life, so it can enliven us; and how to make our inwardness a resource and not a refuge.  By unfolding topics such as Exhausting the Struggle, Staying in Relationship, and The Sweet Ache of Being Alive, Nepo continues to reveal how the covenant of being and the practice of becoming strengthen both the inner life of spirit and the outer life of service in the world.

At the heart of each spiritual tradition are the questions: how to be in the world without losing what matters and is living an awakened life is of any use if we don't bring what matters to bear on the world? Though every path offers company and refuge, the journey of every human being is to discover—through their personhood—their own living relationship between the soul and the world, between being and experience, and between love and service.  This audiobook helps the reader discover that essential relationship.

Speaking about what led him to this inquiry, Mark says, "I believe and give my heart to the notion that spirituality is listening for and living into the soul's place on Earth.  A life of spirit, regardless of the path we choose, begins with a person's acceptance that they are part of something larger than themselves.  The want to know who we really are and to know the truth of our existence and our connection to a living Universe is, to me, the fundamental life-giving question that the heart commits to once opened by love or suffering.  How we are led and pushed to our true nature is what spirituality and personal growth are all about."

The point of experience is not to escape life but to live it.  Each of us carries some wisdom waiting to be discovered at the center of our experience, and everything we meet, if faced and held, reveals a part of that wisdom.  The Endless Practice is filled with universal insights and stories woven with guidance and practice, which will bring the reader closer to living their life to the fullest.