The Heart Must Surface — Or We Die

“Oh, the heart like a whale has no choice but to surface.”

– Mark Nepo, “The Book of Awakening”

’Tis always the season for love.

Although a quick glance at the news or social media would indicate that Big Love — the unconditional kind we are supposed to have for one another, regardless of our differing viewpoints and opinions — is not in the air.

As such, I thought sharing some poetic wisdom about passion by Mark Nepo would be both prudent and purposeful.

“From where does our passion come?” asks author Mark Nepo in his beautiful, book, “The Book of Awakening; Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.”

“It is not taught,” he continues. “It is only allowed through. Or not. When resisted, it carves out the heart daily. When allowed through, it rises and swells and almost drowns us with its heat.”

“Despite gravity, against gravity, in counterpoint to the weight of the world,” he writes, “a glowing heat that can be blocked but not contained emanates through all beings as love, thought, longing, and peace. When letting this vibrancy through, we open the common heart that lives beneath all human longing and the fire at the core begins to rise.”