Let everything happen, beauty and terror.
No one feeling is final. Keep going.

—Rainer Maria Rilke

Eventually, everyone will be dropped into the depth of life. It may happen because of some life-threatening illness or a sudden loss or from being loved unconditionally for the first time or by the sudden beauty of grace. But once broken open, the deeper, relational journey begins by which we truly know that we are alive.

Along the way, we all experience fear, pain, and grief. As human beings, we all experience the tendency to inflate and deflate our sense of self and the nature of our experience. And so, much of our spiritual practice centers on learning how to see things as they are. While this can help us move through fear and pain, grief is another matter. Regardless of what we may lose that is dear, such a ripping away is life-altering and there is no going back. These deeper teachers will all find us in time. Our challenge has always been to help each other face what is ours to face, so we can be as alive as possible for as long as possible in the tender journey we call love.

This workshop aims to uncover and personalize pathways that allow us to right-size our pain and fear in our journey to be fully here. So that our pain and fear can live in us rather than we drowning in our pain and fear. And to help us move with our grief from the old world to the new in all that life unearths in us. To be sure, fear, pain, and grief are inevitable teachers, and together, we must try to understand their language and their lessons.

My hope is that our time together will help you befriend your fear, pain, and grief and not be crippled by them. My hope is that you will discover one or two specific ways to move forward in your journey toward a blessed and authentic life.

Have a journal handy.

SPONSORED BY SHEPERD INTEGRATIVE DERMATOLOGY

Mark Nepo is a Great Soul. His resonant heart—his frank and astonishing voice—befriend us mightily on this mysterious trail.

—Naomi Shihab Nye, author of You and Yours, 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East, and Red Suitcase

Mark Nepo is one of the finest spiritual guides of our time.

—Parker J. Palmer, author of A Hidden Wholeness and The Courage to Teach

Mark Nepo joins a long tradition of truth-seeking, wild-hearted poets—Rumi, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Mary Oliver—and deserves a place in the center of the circle with them. 

—Elizabeth Lesser, Cofounder, Omega Institute, author of Broken Open: How Difficult Times Can Help Us Grow

Nepo is a consummate storyteller with a rare gift for making the invisible visible.

—Publishers Weekly

This event is VIRTUAL and a recording will be provided for all those who register.