Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

Holding on too tightly to expectations of just about anything can trap us in a cycle of frustration and despair. And often our expectations are really ways we're trying to be in control of a situation rather than surrendering ourselves to the unfolding moment. Of course, our ability to control many circumstances so they will be just the way we want them is often beyond us. And so perhaps we might cultivate a kind of openness to the way things actually are combined with a fierce kind of intention to bring ourselves to whatever is happening with as much of our essential goodness as we can, whether that be courage, tenderness, creativity, love, truthfulness or any other of the many virtues available to human beings. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about meeting the always unexpected happenings of life with grace and presence. 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 a couple of episodes ago. Here's our source for this week: Knee Sounds The older I get the more I notice knee sounds my own quiet desires dumb egos baby’s sharp intuition the return of the blackberries boneheaded binaries. Sometimes I long for an organized drawer or a morning without the realization that one went to school with unbrushed teeth but then I remember how short life is how wide my forgiveness mostly of others more and more myself. The noticing is mostly small. Sometimes it’s big. This life I walk through is not what I expected. How could I have imagined her first questions upon waking or his tender body? How could I have known I would birth my own much-needed teacher on solitude? Or care so much about those two red poppies? Aging is a long, drawn out experiment in being wrong about how you will live, who you will be, what you will love and see and love and see and love and see and that’s okay. It’s more than okay. Each day unpromised and fecund. I am worse than I thought and also better. Humanity, too. When the violence is too much I touch a lot of tree trunks eat some more bread. watch my kids sleep their sweaty sleep and try not to let any of it tragic or tender feel inevitable. Courtney Martin courtneyemartin.com/writing/ Photo by Harli Marten on Unsplash

It’s easy to try to resist the inevitable passage of time, as if our ignoring time would some how save us from its consequences. But what if we found an everyday way to make time sacred, by honouring its transitions rather than turning away? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the rituals we can create to mark life’s big changes and its more ordinary ones - sleep, waking, eating, the start and end of experiences, births, deaths, the moments when we arrive and the inevitable moments of moving. 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 a couple of episodes ago. Here's our source for this week: Every Day Is A Threshold At any time you can ask yourself: At which threshold am I now standing? At this time in my life, what am I leaving? Where am I about to enter? What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold? What gift would enable me to do it? A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms, and atmospheres. Indeed, it is a lovely testimony to the fullness and integrity of an experience or a stage of life that it intensifies toward the end into a real frontier that cannot be crossed without the heart being passionately engaged and woken up. At this threshold a great complexity of emotion comes alive: confusion, fear, excitement, sadness, hope. This is one of the reasons such vital crossings were always clothed in ritual. It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds: to take your time; to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there; to listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward. The time has come to cross. John O’Donohue Photo by Kairat Murataliev on Unsplash

The background culture that surrounds us very often makes the unspoken claim that what's most true about existence is cold, hard matter, and that anything else we encounter - meaning or love for example - is just something we humans invented. But what would happen if we trusted instead that there is an ancient light doing its best to shine forth through us and between us? And what would happen if we could treat the most difficult aspects of our experience, and the most challenging and painful parts of ourselves, as if they were right next to this source of light that could illuminate them? And if we treated ourselves and one another as if the light was the very surrounding in which we move and which wants to move within us? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what opens when we understand the context of our lives and our experience to be an ancient light that's trying to find us and shine through us. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here's our source for this week: How the light comes I cannot tell you how the light comes. What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining. That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us. That it loves searching out what is hidden, what is lost, what is forgotten or in peril or in pain. That it has a fondness for the body, for finding its way toward flesh, for tracing the edges of form, for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart. I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee. And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it. May we lift our faces to let it find us. May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes. May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light that comes. Jan Richardson Photo by Rene Böhmer on Unsplash

What happens when we give up trying to control each other, and instead allow ourselves be changed by our encounter with one another? Could we let the extraordinary beauty and mystery of others really reach us? What would happen if we did this in the roles where we have the most power over others - when we're teachers, parents, employers, or leaders? And what are the costs if we don't, if we stay closed off to the gifts we each have to bring one another? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the wisdom and possibility that can come from learning from all our encounters and all our relationships. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here's our source for this week: Let Me Become Orange They say people don’t change. But when you came along it was obvious that new territory beckoned. All the ways I had begun to take myself less seriously began to make sense. Like a hungry horse hearing the shaking bucket of carrots held by the little girl as she comes to visit. I come bounding towards you, galloping. Wanting to eat your carrots. And I soften so that the carrots can make me orange. If I’m not open to you changing me, how can I truly receive all you’ve come to give ? Lizzie Winn 9th June 2022 Photo by Ben Mater on Unsplash

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. Cassandra Moore and Norman Fischer Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe on Unsplash

When we take a moment to look, we'll probably find that we're listening more to ourselves than to one another. But how can we create things together, coordinate together, learn together, trust one another if we're not listening? And what does it take to listen - in our organisational life, in our families, in our friendships, in our communities? It's both simpler, and harder, than it seems. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the courage, practice and support it takes to listen in a way that opens up possibility. 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 today. Listen It’s when we actually listen to another human being that they get to be human too. Listening allows a shift from I-It relating in which the other is essentially an object to us (an irritation, a way to get what I want, a way to feel good about myself) to I-You relating, in which the other gets to be a person. As Martin Buber points out, I-It relating is essentially a form of It-It relating, since it’s impossible for us to show up as full human beings, even to ourselves, when we are in the midst of making another, or a group of others, into a thing. To relate to another in an I-You way, to listen to them in their fullness, bestows dignity on everyone and opens wide horizons for understanding, compassion, truthfulness, and relationship. Listening ought to be the easiest thing to do. After all, it requires no complex framework, no technique, no technology. And yet it can be so, so hard. Most of us have a lot of practicing to do in order to drop our need to be right, to be ‘the one’, to be liked, and to hear only what we want to hear. In order to listen we have to relax our defensiveness, be skilful with the inner attacks of our own inner critic (which is ready to judge us even when there’s no judgement coming from the speaker), get over our wish to control everything, and be willing to welcome whatever we experience. We have to be able to question our own stories and accounts, be open to seeing things in a whole new way, and quiet our inner world sufficiently that what is being said can reach us. And we have to learn how to be in contact with ourselves, a fundamental prerequisite for being in contact with others. Perhaps all of this is why real listening is so absent in our fearful, impatient culture. And why we could all benefit from doing some inner work if we want to do the vital outer work of listening well to the people around us. from Justin Wise's 'On Living and Working' Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

When love depends upon a feeling, it comes and goes as the feeling comes and goes. And when love depends upon the way someone else is - beautiful, or kind, or successful - it’s vulnerable to the inevitable changes in a human life.  But what if love could depend upon something deeper - not something inside me, nor something inside you, and maybe not even something between you and me? What if we came to know love as the very ground we could stand upon, or a wellspring we could draw upon that flows into actions and responses? Then love could include and infuse many experiences, including joy and grief, clarity and confusion, and all those times we feel let down or surprised or changed. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about a grown up love we might cultivate over time, a path to walk, that is deeper and more inclusive. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in a previous episode and which is is coming up soon. And our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022. This week we're bringing a (characteristically concise) source from 'Pirkei Avot', an ancient Jewish wisdom text ('The Wisdom of the Elders'). Any love that depends upon a some-thing, when that something disappears, the love disappears. But when love does not depend upon a thing, it never disappears. Pirkei Avot, 5:19 Photo by Adam Hornyak on Unsplash

There's something inherently artistic about living a human life, in all the ways we're called to respond creatively, sensitively, boldly to the conditions and relationships in the midst of which we find ourselves. But, for many of us, the 'artist in us' got suppressed by being unsupported, or unwelcome. So what would it be to reclaim our artistry and direct it towards the unfolding of life-giving possibilities in the world? And what would it be to be ones who can sincerely welcome the artistry in others, even when it (especially when it) challenges a way of understanding ourselves in the world that we my have clung onto for a long time? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about generosity, welcome, creativity, and owning our lives in an expressive way. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022 Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. 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 Art Spirit, (Written in 1923, the pronouns reflect the period) “When the artist is alive in any person, whatever his work may be, he becomes an inventive, searching, daring, self-expressing creature. He disturbs, upsets, enlightens, and opens the way for a better understanding. Where those who are not artists are trying to close the book, he opens it, shows there are still more pages possible.” by Robert Henri Photo by Danny Howe on Unsplash

So often our lives are ruled by 'clock time' - we're counting off how long there is to get something done, or we're aiming for a time-bound goal, or we're measuring time wasted or time used productively. But although this is the dominant way of understanding time for many of us, it is only one way of relating to the flow of things. What if, instead of filling time with work or play, we turned things around and allowed time to flow into our activity? And what if instead of trying to secure ourselves against an unpredictable future, we took up a playfulness with the unfolding of time itself? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about living into our lives as an infinite unfolding, rather than a finite game. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022 Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. 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 Is Time? There are two kinds of games. One could be called finite, the other infinite. A finite game is played for the purpose of winning, an infinite game for the purpose of continuing the play… For an infinite player there is no such thing as an hour of time. There can be an hour of love, or a day of grieving, or a season of learning, or a period of labour. An infinite player does not begin working for the purpose of filling up a period of time with work, but for the purpose of filling work with time. Work is not a way of passing time but engendering possibility. Work is not a way of arriving at a desired present and securing it against an unpredictable future but of moving towards a future that itself has a future. [So] infinite players cannot say how much they have completed in their work or love or quarrelling, but only that much remains incomplete in it. They are not concerned to determine when it is over, but only what comes from it… A finite player puts play into time. An infinite player puts time into play. James Carse, from ‘Finite and Infinite Games’ Photo by Joe Pregadio on Unsplash

Our amazing capacity to separate parts of ourselves from ourselves - to keep the inner experiences of grief, or joy, or longing away and out of view. How this serves us. And how it can also lead us away from ourselves and all that we have to bring to the world. The letting go, falling in, opening that's available to us that can play its part in reuniting ourselves with what would otherwise be lost. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about the possibility of letting ourselves tumble into our own hearts - something that many of us have been taught never to do. It's hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Here's a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Leading from Essential Self programme which we talked about in the previous episode and which is is coming up soon, and to our year-long Professional Coaching Course which begins in June 2022 Turning Towards Life is hosted by Thirdspace. 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: Falling Down We try so hard to stay up To keep from falling down Yet there is a falling into ourselves, That is of the essence. There is a tumbling Into the heart That means we must open To our beauty and our pain. Without a willingness to surrender To a flow of feelings, Receive them with compassion, We may never come to know That sweet sense of oneness With ourselves, That simple bliss in being Beneath all our distress. We try so hard to stay up Yet there is a falling down, That is of the essence. — Nanna Aida Svendsen Photo by Angga Indratama on Unsplash