Our Authority of Being

An essay by Mark Nepo.

‘…All that was left was the bare fact of his own existence, the fact of his breath connecting him to the fact of all existence. He was a piece of life living—that was all.

[…]

In discovering your own authority of being, you may want to spend time with the great poem SONG OF MYSELF by Walt Whitman. I urge you to read it slowly, and to be in conversation with the places it awakens in you.

And the next time you’re told you’re good or bad, the next time you’re ignored or rejected, I encourage you to practice your inner resolve; not by criticizing yourself or finding yourself wanting, but by climbing to that place in you that is immune to both submitting and resisting, that place of unquestioned certainty about the fact of life, which Walt Whitman confirms in SONG OF MYSELF when he says:

I do not trouble my spirit
to vindicate itself
or be understood;

I see that the elementary
laws never apologize.

I exist as I am—that is enough;

If no other in the world
be aware, I sit content;

And if each and all be aware,

I sit content.’

Full essay:

 http://parabola.org/2016/08/01/our-authority-of-being-by-mark-nepo/