BREAKING SURFACE

Let no one keep you from your journey,

no rabbi or priest, no mother

who wants you to dig for treasures

she misplaced, no father

who won’t let one life be enough,

no lover who measures their worth

by what you might give up,

no voice that tells you in the night

it can’t be done.

Let nothing dissuade you

from seeing what you see

or feeling the winds that make you

want to dance alone

or go where no one

has yet to go.

You are the only explorer.

Your heart, the unreadable compass.

Your soul, the shore of a promise

too great to be ignored.

~ Mark Nepo

(from “the Self-Acceptance Project” (2016))

 Mark uses the term genius- we all have a genius – original definition of this term is “attendant spirit.” He writes the poem is about a “commitment to stay in our relationship with our attendant spirit.” Not to do so is “more damaging than any worldly rejection we could meet.”

 And from  http://www.personaltransformation.com/james_hillman.html:

 Hillman: That's true. Daimon is an earlier word than demon. It became Christianized as demon because Christian theology doesn't approve of those figures who speak to us as inner voices and so forth. The Greek word was daimon, the Roman word was genius, and the Christian word is guardian angel. They are all a little bit different, yet each expresses something that you are, that you have, that is not the same as the personality you think you are.