Tag: Mark Nepo The Book of Awakening

The Nautilus Shell

Reading Mark Nepo’s “The Book of Awakening” last night, I found this beautiful passage and contemplation of the Nautilus shell creature that with time becomes a spiral shell. As it builds a new layer, it only resides in the newest chamber, leaving the other chambers to be full of liquid or a gas to aid buoyancy.

Nepo uses the Nautilus as a metaphor and lesson for our own lives: “…live in the most recent chamber and use the others to stay afloat. . . Can we internalize where we’ve been enough to know that we are no longer living there? When we can, life will seem lighter . . . only time can put the past in perspective, and only when the past is behind us, and not before us, can we be open enough and empty enough to truly feel what is about to happen.”

As hurting, wounded humans, we carry our pains and traumas around as added baggage that weigh us down and affect our daily lives in negative ways. Would that we could leave the weights of our stings and distress behind and move ourselves forward into our new lives, like the Nautilus, using our past tribulations to hold us up rather than hold us down.

How we do that is not easy. For me, research, reading, talking to others, listening to others, journal writing, quiet contemplation and meditation, walks in nature, and prayer all help me to internalize my life journey and then step back with the lessons I’ve learned to move in a positive forward direction. “Be here now” is a mantra that is built on our past experiences by not denying our past but not being weighed down and led by it.

Cracked Open

December 11, 2018, was the anniversary of Tom, my beloved husband’s death. Eight years ago, he passed away into another world. Facebook, my main social media site, has a feature that takes you back on your timeline with each passing day. You are able to see what you did and said on December 11 from 2008, 2009, and so on. I was able to trace my life for the weeks and days preceding Tom’s death. I could see all the things that were happening and my comments on them, and I couldn’t help but think over and over again, If I only knew that one week later, three days later, Tom would be dead. It put a very different perspective on life for me. We just never know, do we, what life will bring. It reminded me even more to live each day fully, with zest. This is the main theme of my book, our story, in 10 – A Story of Love, Life, and Loss that I published after Tom’s death. His death and the grief over the subsequent years has taught me much about living a full life.

Grief has softened me. Not at first. First I felt raw and torn, laid open like a jagged wound. But with time that has healed and in the opening of that wound, deep in my gut, I have come to recognize a soft, vulnerable place. And I mean I physically feel it that way. There used to be a hole, a place where the pain of losing Tom and never having him in my life again sat like a dark cavern. It has been replaced. Now there is a fullness filling that empty hole, a soft spot, almost like the yolk inside an egg. It sits in the same place, never forgetting, but always accepting. Tom’s death took away a piece of my soul, but left behind a soft, accepting centre of love and gratitude. It may be delicate, but it’s not weak. In its softness is strength, courage, empathy. It’s pliable, secure, and forgiving.

Reading Mark Nepo’s , The Book of Awakening, I came across this passage. He seems to know about that soft spot within that comes after deep pain. He writes:

“It leads me to say that if you are unhappy or in pain, nothing will remove those surfaces. But acceptance and a strong heart will crack them like a shell, exposing a soft thing waiting to take form. It glows. I think it is the one spirit we all share.”

Grief has cracked me open, and because I was able to look and experience it full in the face, it has left behind a soft jewel in the centre of my soul.