243: Why Sit Still

How can we learn be the ones who don't turn away when we encounter other people's difficulties and suffering? And how can we learn to be the ones who offer a profound welcome... to others and to ourselves? One way we've learned to do this is to take up a regular 'sitting' practice - an apparently simple practice of sitting very still for long enough that we get to encounter our own inner vastness and all that comes with it.

This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how to practice being the ones who turn towards all of it. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about last week.

Why Sit Still

The point of sitting through anything is to cultivate trust in our own strength and ability to meet whatever arises in our lives, and to know that we can welcome everything, resist nothing, and allow it all fully into our hearts without walking away. The point of sitting is to see just how equipped we are at dealing with the unknowable, and with what feels intolerable — and then, we might feel able to offer our presence and strength to others. You’re suffering the insufferable? Okay, I’ll go there with you, I’ll help you hold that. I will not abandon you.

I began a sitting practice because I felt gutted and ill equipped to meet the circumstances of my life – much less anyone else’s. I know you’ve felt abandoned by someone who could not meet you in your darkest hour. I’ve felt it, too, and it breaks my heart to see how I’ve been an abandoner, as well. Yet I feel a becoming, and a transition that I feel only the persistence of residency has allowed: a turning outward and the cultivation of, I hope, an ability to not abandon the world or others in painful service to my own wounds.

Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe on Unsplash