Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

What if we mistake ourselves for the stories we've been told - that life is about our happiness, that we should wrestle control from circumstance, that we're separate from the world around us? A conversation about discovering that we didn't parachute into nature but grew from it, like apple blossoms on a vast tree of generations of living things. We ask: what becomes possible when we allow ourselves to feel the fullness of being human, grief and joy and all the rest, rather than contracting around our preferences? Could recognising ourselves as nature's response, rather than isolated egos demanding certainty, reveal what we're here to do?This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Welcome to Turning Towards Life02:45 Creating Conversations That Matter04:35 The Irony of Pursuing Happiness08:21 The Metaphor of Apple Blossoms13:28 Rethinking Happiness18:10 The Complexity of Human Experience22:46 Engaging with Life's Uncertainty26:32 Responding to Life as Nature30:29 The Practice of Consciousness32:31 Closing ReflectionsThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Your Life is Not About YouOne of the cruelest ironies of Western life is that, today, the key, unquestioned, seemingly self-evident axiom of the Western wellbeing and self-help industry is precisely that our life is about us; that we have to wrestle the reins of our life from mere happenstance and circumstance and determine its course ourselves; that we have to proactively pursue our agenda and project meaning onto it; and - perhaps cruelest of all - that our life is about our being happy. All of this is unnatural and unjustified to the point of being grotesque... Is the life of an apple blossom about the apple blossom? If not, then for precisely the same reason ours cannot be about us. And this is the great discovery of the second half of life: our life isn't, has never been, and can't ever be about us. Why would it? We are part of nature; why would our life be about us and not nature as a whole? … Nature is, of course, impersonal. It's agenda is universal and holistic, not restricted to the petty egoic tastes and preferences of a person. It is naïve to expect a human being to be able to comprehend the … universal agenda, just as it is naïve to expect an apple blossom to comprehend what its role is in the grand scheme of apple trees and life on Earth. We are segments of nature, not mere witnesses; we didn't parachute into nature, but grew out of it. Therefore, we are nature, as expressed in a particular volume of spacetime.Bernardo Kastrup - The Daimon and the Soul of the WestPhoto by Anastasiya Romanova on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, OnlineOur two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coachingTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We tend to divide our experience into two parts, which we usually name ‘good’ and ‘bad’. And we do so for good reason - to belong in our family systems and communities, to keep a particular image or identity going, because we are afraid of who and what we will be if we let love, or joy, or anger, or longing touch us. But the cost is high - in realness, in our capacity to bringing our gifts to the world, in our fully taking up the possibilities of this one precious life. So how might we welcome and re-include that which has been split off? And how might we do so in a way that is life-giving, mature, and responsive to our cares, concerns and commitments?This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Episode Overview00:00 Welcoming 2026: A New Beginning02:45 Exploring the Soul: Care and Reclamation05:37 The Complexity of Anger: Embracing Our Emotions08:53 Curiosity and Connection: Tending to Our Souls11:46 The Journey to Wholeness: Integrating Rejected Parts14:43 Realness in Relationships: The Value of Authenticity17:53 The Power of Curiosity: Transforming Reactions into Growth20:55 Nurturing Wholeness: The Role of Care in Soul Work23:39 The Gift of Realness: Embracing Our True SelvesThis is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast in all the usual podcast places.Here's our source for this week:Undividing OurselvesWe all tend to divide experience into two parts, usually the good and the bad. But there may be all kinds of suspicious things going on in this splitting. We may simply have never considered the value in certain things we reject. Or by branding certain experiences as negative, we may be protecting ourselves from some unknown fears. We are all filled with biases and ideas that have snuck into us without our knowing it. Much soul can be lost in such splitting, so that care of the soul can go a long way simply by recovering some of this material that has been cut off.From ‘Care of the Soul’ by Thomas MorePhoto by Mario Gogh on Unsplash---Join Us Live in 2026Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, OnlineOur two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'.www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coachingTurning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice.You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live----About Turning Towards LifeTurning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

Life presents itself to us in all its strangeness and beauty, but given the kind of beings we humans are, we might find ourselves tuning out or looking away. And that is so easy to do. But what if we started to see life as a question that is being asked of us, a call to pay attention and to receive the world, and to respond in the light of that? What aliveness might come? What possibilities for actually living our lives? And what generosity might we find towards this one life we are given? This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to the Conversation 01:31 Connecting this conversation to Integral Development Coaching 05:32 Exploring Mary Oliver's 'The Swan' 08:07 Awakening to Life's Beauty 12:26 The Interplay of Beauty and Heart 16:28 The Call to Receive Life 22:13 Understanding Affordance in Life 29:50 Shifting Perspectives: What Life Asks of Us This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: The Swan Did you too see it, drifting, all night, on the black river? Did you see it in the morning, rising into the silvery air – An armful of white blossoms, A perfect commotion of silk and linen as it leaned into the bondage of its wings; a snowbank, a bank of lilies, Biting the air with its black beak? Did you hear it, fluting and whistling A shrill dark music – like the rain pelting the trees – like a waterfall Knifing down the black ledges? And did you see it, finally, just under the clouds – A white cross Streaming across the sky, its feet Like black leaves, its wings Like the stretching light of the river? And did you feel it, in your heart, how it pertained to everything? And have you too finally figured out what beauty is for? And have you changed your life? Mary Oliver  Photo by Timothy Abraham on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We carry other people inside us, when we're with them and when we are apart from them. After all, where does my experience of you live, apart from inside me? And your experience of me, apart from inside you? In this conversation we explore what it is to hold others in us in this way, and how our imaginative capacities might allow us to receive the sacredness of others while they are alive alongside us - with all the gifts and compassion that can bring - and when they are no longer alive. A conversation about loving fiercely, receiving one another, and grieving well so that we can live well. This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: Love Letter from the After Life My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets … Andrea Gibson Dec 21 2023 You can read and hear the full poem at Andrea Gibson’s Website https://substack.com/@andreagibson/p-139965380 Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We’re so good, we humans, at telling stories about ourselves, other people, our lives. Sometimes our stories bring us close in to the ground of what is - they remind us of our humanity, our dignity, our care, our vulnerability, and the brief span of our existence alongside one another on this planet. Other times our stories serve to take us away, to numb us, or make ourselves feel safe - perhaps at the expense of others, or to judge ourselves and others harshly for our shared human complexity and fallibility.  So what would it be to have practices of speaking, looking, naming, writing that bring us back close to the ground of what is most unarguably true, and then pay attention to the stories we build on top of that so we have a greater chance to spread our wings and be the ones we long to be? Stories that recognise the sacredness of being human? Stories recognise how often we’ll fail, and what we can yet create, and call on us to include both? We begin this week with a luminous piece by our friend Joy Reichart, whose work you can find at soulwriting.org This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: What I know to be true What I know to be true is that I needed to zoom this google doc to 125% to comfortably see the words I’m typing. I need to hold packages and bottles far from my face, under lamps and near windows, to read the instructions. What I know to be true is that I didn’t take a certain way home last night, driving in the dark, because I could not say for sure where exactly to enter the intersection.  What I know to be true is that there is a light gray streak in my hair, and I love it. And that I bought two pairs of reading glasses at the dollar store but never use them—not out of vanity, but simply because it still works to hold the thing under the light, or far away from my face, or to zoom in on the text (if zooming is an option). What I know to be true is that no matter how enlightened we become we are still in human bodies, and now I get what the Buddhists talk about when they chant, over and over again, that we are going to get sick, and die, and lose everything.  Add to that list mistakes: we are going to make them. Even after learning the lessons. We’re going to, as a dear friend puts it, “step in it,” again and again. We’re going to watch ourselves with disbelief. How on earth did it happen again? Especially given how much I know, given how much it hurts?  Add to that list disharmony, unfinished business. Add to that list hatred and greed and all those very human tendencies that none of us—no matter who we are—are above.  Add to that list fear: the root of everything we don’t like about ourselves, of all that goes wrong. I am human, I will fear. I may not be consumed by it every day. In fact in most moments I actually may get bigger than it; may attach myself to the love, to the joy, that I know is the actual truth. Still, it will sneak out from behind corners in the evening hours. It will stalk me when I am dehydrated, or overcommitted. It will brush me with its little fingers of worry, pelt me with tiny flashes of terror. It’ll make me want to solve things using my little human mind: the one that thinks it can singlehandedly battle fear, instead of reaching for a truer, realer source. What I know to be true is that I will not escape any of this. Five decades on this earth in this meat suit, this bone ship, have made that abundantly clear.  What I also know, though, is that there is endless room for my soul to spread out here, and get bigger, and understand more, and giggle when I do the human things, and greet it all with equanimity, and accept the mission I assigned myself in the time before memory, in the time of clear sight, way back before my vision started to blur.  Nov 17, 2025 Written by Joy Reichart www.soulwriting.org Photo by Naoki Suzuki on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

Earlier this week we ran a workshop for our Thirdspace coaching graduates on ‘supervision’ - the practice of supporting one another in being of service to others. Our source this week comes from one of the participants in that day, and asks what it is to ‘become a place’… in which we stand stable without dissolving, in which we hold a field of possibility and relationship without being claimed by it, in which we can be both ‘flame’ and ‘vessel’. We know what good ‘places’ can be in human life. At their best and most resonant they are affordances for us to find our courage, love, presence, realness, generosity. When a place is made with care and attention it can awaken in us awe, wonder, a sense of home, belonging. They can turn us towards one another in genuine reciprocity. And so, we ask in this conversation, what is it to cultivate our capacity to ‘be a place’? And what might that make possible? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how 'inclusivity' starts with us and between us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: I bring my small universe with me, the part that simmers, the part that stews, the part that grows roots in uncertainty, and still feels everything. And yet, I remain my own. Autonomous. Upright. Or lying down Always a quiet spine of presence in the storm-light of relation This is the work: to stand stable without hardening to share without dissolving to hold the field without being claimed by it to become a place I remember myself as both flame and vessel. Ella Dessington Photo by Robert Lukeman on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

We are glad to bring you a repeat of our most popular ever episode "Always Be Vulnerable to All That You Are) from October 2021. We were unexpectedly interrupted for this week's live recording but will be back next week. When we learn to include more and more of ourselves, we also become more able to include more and more of one another. Being able to do this - to welcome that in us that's fearful, ashamed or lonely, as well as what's joyful, grateful and love-filled - is greatly helped by finding the bigger-something that we are... the something of us that's wide and deep, curious and compassionate and which is, essentially, welcome. And that's something we can also help one another with. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how 'inclusivity' starts with us and between us, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This is Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: VULNERABLE Always be vulnerable To your pain, your fear, your loneliness, To your pleasure too, and your joy, To all that travels through you. Don’t close the doors To these pilgrims from a far-off land, But welcome them all --- One a wild, restless spirit Secretly longing to be tamed,  Another a lover on a long, sweet night, Who only wants to melt in your embrace. For this is how you grow --- By including everything. Always, always be vulnerable  To all that you are. From “Poems of Love and Awakening” by John Welwood Photo by Erika Fletcher on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

On the astonishing power of metaphors to reframe our sense of who we are, what’s possible, and how we might hear and speak with one another… and on the ocean’s vastness and depth as a invitation for us to contain multitudes, especially when in the midst of our most challenging conversations. This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context Setting 03:05 Exploring the Poem: 'Until I Thought of Myself as the Sea' 05:58 The Ocean Metaphor: Embracing Complexity 09:05 The Power of Metaphor in Self-Understanding 11:47 Widening Perspectives: The Ocean as a Shared Experience 14:52 Navigating Difficult Conversations with Oceanic Awareness 17:50 Truth and Multiplicity: The Ocean of Perspectives 20:59 Systems Thinking: The Ocean of Relationships 24:02 Conclusion and Reflection Here’s our source for this week: Until I thought of myself as the sea I used to separate good days from bad until  I thought of myself as an ocean. I used to  split times I felt strong from when I felt weak  until I imagined myself as the sea. Calm and  rocky, wild and soft, still and powerful and vast  and more than any one thing. In the ocean it's  hard to divorce one mood from another, one wave  from the next. Now, on my worst days, I think  of how good life is too, how I still can greet joy  while swimming through grief. How fragile  strength feels. How I'm not any one thing in any  one moment on any one day. I'm all of it and  all of it is me. Hannah Rosenberg @hannahrowrites Photo by Sean Oulashin on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

What if we see ‘the self’ not as something fixed, but as an ongoing act of responsibility and ever-unfinished creation… a way we make ourselves by how we live, the choices we make, and the way of relating to others and the world that we follow? This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction to Turning Towards Life 02:44 Exploring the Source: Be Yourself 04:37 The Creative Act of Being Ourselves 08:09 FindingTribe and Belonging 15:20 The Power of Choice and Response 18:55 Gentleness and Boldness in Self-Creation Here’s our source for this week: Be Yourself Really? Which self? The self you were when you were two years old, almost out of diapers? The self you were when you were screaming with the fans at the big game? The self you were after a long night? How about this: Become the self you’d be proud to be. Hang out with people and ideas that help you become that self. Act like that self every chance you get. Seth Godin from Seth’s Blog Photo by Nijwam Swargiary on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife

How do we discover what brings life and vitality to us? How do we identify and acknowledge the destructive forces within ourselves? Can we approach the complex, ongoing process of discernment with maturity and nuance, avoiding simplistic judgments? And what resources or practices can we trust to guide us through this challenging work? This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Episode Overview 00:00 Introduction and Context of the Conversation 02:57 Our Source for This Week, by Nick Cave 06:05 The Nature of Evil and Human Complexity 08:41 The Inherent Potential for Goodness in Humanity 12:00 The Cosmic Disposition Towards Goodness 14:47 The Duality of Good and Evil in Human Experience 17:45 The Responsibility of Attending to Sorrow 20:46 The Choice to Cultivate Goodness 24:05 The Power of Intentional Living 26:41 The Complexity of Human Relationships 30:01 The Importance of Slowing Down and Reflecting 33:01 Conclusion and Reflection on the Conversation Woven Into Everything I am inclined to believe in a form of intelligence within the universe, as I hold that consciousness or ‘intelligence’  exists throughout everything, that it goes all the way down to the fundamental atomic matter of things. This force, woven into everything - both living and non-living - is inherently good. If we choose, we could call this force God. I view this power as a kind of cosmic disposition that grows, understands, and empathises with us - suffers with us, you might say - and that humans are ‘fractal', as Cormac so beautifully puts it, exemplars or metaphors of the melancholic nature of this God-soaked universe. I believe that evil exists not only within the human heart but also as an external energy separate from us, moving through the world - a nullifying, destructive potency - 'going to and fro in the earth and walking up and down in it’. We can see it, if we choose, all around us. Yet, we can act as the remedy to this existential predicament by directing our efforts towards the world’s flourishing and away from its destruction, in whatever way we can. It is our duty to attend to the sorrow of the universe - the sorrow of God. Nick Cave from The Red Hand Files Issue # 342 Photo by NASA on Unsplash --- Join Us Live in 2026 Foundations of Coaching, Feb 9-10 2026, Online Our two day introduction to the deep and wonderful way of working with people that we call 'Integral Development Coaching'. www.wearethirdspace.org/foundations-of-coaching Turning Towards Life Live Season 2, from March 2026 Our Turning Towards Life live programme of community, learning and reflection runs in six month seasons, in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can find out more and join us here: www.turningtowards.life/live ---- About Turning Towards Life Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Amazon Music and Spotify. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife