[blockquote source=”Mark Nepo”]”“The exquisite risk is a doorway that lets us experience the extraordinary in the ordinary.”[/blockquote]

In his book, The Exquisite Risk, Mark Nepo tells the story of a dear friend who began to slowly lose her sense of hearing. With each conversation she found herself straining to hear all the words, until one day – she began to ‘listen’ in an entirely new way. Leaning in, she could see the subtle changes in body movement and gesture, the delightful warmth of those ‘smiling eyes’ – and, more importantly, she began to see the ‘face behind the face.’

Suddenly, a whole new world revealed itself to her – and, through the guise, and blessing, of this ‘disability.’

Ironically, it was through the loss of her senses that she ultimately gained awareness.

There’s an important question to be asked here, that is – how do we remain open to our pain, “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.”

In other words, how do we begin to listen to that which truly matters? To slow down, and experience this life at the pace at which it was intended?

“We don’t have to go far to know this,” Nepo observes. “For our suffering quickly breaks down what we think we know and have to say into a more authentic and humble taste of being and feeling.”

Whether through illness or injury or the myriad of life’s circumstances—inevitably, we will face our greatest challenge yet:

To struggle through complacency or risk being new.

“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.” – Mark Nepo

Indeed, it is only through this exercise of heart—that we may begin awaken that which has been with us all along; that is, the true spirit of the bodhisattva warrior.

And, did you know that when you’re still enough you can finally hear that heart whisper?