Mark Nepo

But if we only stay on the top 18 inches or two feet, we will be bounced around in the turbulence of the surface, which is always being disturbed by weather, by living in the world.

If we feel we don't leave the surface, but if we allow all of that water, if we, so I would say to you that top foot or two, that is the waters of our psychology that meets the world every day.

But now if we are allowed to go below, or we are allowed to go into the depth of life,

We are allowed to go beyond just the framework of our opinions, whether it's going out to see the earth from space or in to see all like my father in that moment of applesauce, everyone who ever fed a dying parent in the depths, that depth takes the edge off the turbulence of the surface.

And that is the depth of spirit and being when we live in the surface.

And so what happens when we're living is we're talking about this.

We're more in the depth right now.

Now we'll get off this wonderful talk and I may take the garbage thing down to the curb and trip and skin my knee.

And now I'm by its very nature, I'm drawn into the surface.

but I don't have to stay there.

I can feel, I can't, it's not running from it, but by going back into the depth of being that right sizes and we have to live in both.

So let me give you like an example and a story.

So the example is I go back to when I was going through, especially before my back surgery, the incredible, as your father knows,

pain that I was in, I'd never experienced chronic pain before.

I was right here at my desk, my studies on the second floor in our home, and I could have worked on the first floor.

I wanted to be in my study.

Well, during that time, it took me like a half hour to get up the stairs because I had to take each step, wait for the pain to stop, lean on the banister.

Okay.

So an example of what we're talking about now is

I would sit here and I couldn't escape the pain and the fear that was in me.