Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

What if we knew ourselves as made up of many parts, as opposed to being a single ‘I’? Could we find a new way to relate to the parts that are afraid, hurt, resentful or ashamed? A way that at once treated them with great respect while remembering that there are always other parts which might yet have a voice?. A conversation about the ways we exile aspects of ourselves, and the possibility of taking the wholeness of ourselves into account, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website. Here's our source for this week, which is written by Justin: Facing the losses, together There is a part of me that is tender, grieving and terrified of loss. ‘You’ll leave me’, he says, ‘all of you’ – friends, lovers, family, teachers, life itself. And he means me, too – the one of whom he is a part, the one who is his home. He has sophisticated strategies to try to head off the losses he fears. He wants me to feel afraid, always, so that we won’t make a mis-step which causes others to leave. He’d rather I punish myself if it will get people to stay. He holds on very tight, and sometimes as a result I hold on very tight too. He’s masterful at getting abandonment in first, finding ways for me to get resentful and abandon other people before they can abandon me. I have done this many times in his name. In a way, he feels satisfied when people do actually leave, because it shows that his world view, and his deep fear, are justified. Over time I have come to see that my work is first the work of self-remembering. Remembering that I am vast and multifold. That as well as this part, there are many others. That there are things to feel that are different to what he is feeling. That it is, secondly, to turn towards the inevitable losses that he so fears. Because none of his strategies will save us. And that it is mostly the work of not running from him, not visiting upon him the very abandonment that he fears – but holding him close, cradling him, honouring him. It is my work to welcome him home. To say, “Yes, I see you. I have you. You are safe here. You cannot fall. We can face life – life as it actually is – with all the losses we cannot escape, together”. It is in this welcome that I am freed: to love in the way I want to love, to create, speak out, be vulnerable and intimate and angry and truthful and real, and to risk the risks that are required to be fully alive, the very risks that he is too afraid for me to take. Justin Wise, from ‘On Living and Working‘ Photo by OC Gonzalez on Unsplash

What does it take to really understand one another, especially when what separates us can seem so great? What if it takes a bold act of unselfishness - setting aside our ordinary, rigid ways of listening and being prepared to encounter the unknown while simultaneously doing all we can to make it safe for the person speaking to speak? A conversation about a wild, courageous way to listen to friends, lovers, family, colleagues and those with whom we disagree most profoundly, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website. Here's our source for this week: The Art of Unselfish Understanding Drawing on his half-century practice as a therapist, Erich Fromm offers six  guidelines for mastering the art of unselfish understanding: 1. The basic rule for practicing this art is the complete concentration of the listener. 2. Nothing of importance must be on his mind, he must be optimally free from anxiety as well as from greed. 3. He must possess a freely-working imagination which is sufficiently concrete to be expressed in words. 4. He must be endowed with a capacity for empathy with another person and strong enough to feel the experience of the other as if it were his own. 5. The condition for such empathy is a crucial facet of the capacity for love. To understand another means to love him — not in the erotic sense but in the sense of reaching out to him and of overcoming the fear of losing oneself. 6. Understanding and loving are inseparable. If they are separate, it is a cerebral process and the door to essential understanding remains closed. Photo by Wiebrig Krakau on Unsplash

When we learn to relax our defensiveness, when we become less anxious to protect our borders – when we find ourselves surrendering to life – we become more loving, we regain our integrity and our dignity, and we have a much better chance of both receiving our lives and contributing to them. A conversation about the ways we separate ourselves from life and how we might return, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website. Our source for this week is here. Photo by pixpoetry on Unsplash

Receiving our lives – actually allowing ourselves to inhabit, touch and be affected by the one life we’re in the middle of living – can be difficult for many of us. We have so many ways of spinning off into fear, or numbness, or distraction. But there are ways we can bring ourselves back into the fierce loving presence of life. A conversation about opening to what’s here, allowing ourselves to be touched deeply by life, and wild swimming, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website. Our source for this week is here. Photo by Vincent van Zalinge on Unsplash

When life is dark or frightening, or when we feel stretched beyond our ordinary abilities, it's often our willingness to learn from others that can restore our capacity to respond. Other people, if we'll let them, can often give us the gift of another way of coming at life and, in particular, the gift of practices that can invite in us an entirely new orientation to the circumstances we find ourselves in. Can you imagine, for example, what it would be like to sing with people with whom we're in difficulty, before we tried to speak? A conversation about undoing our habits and finding ways of making light in the darkness together, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website. Here's our source for this week:  Agenda in a time of fear: Be not afraid. When things go wrong, do right. Set out by the half-light of the seeker. For the well-lit problem begins to heal. Learn tropism toward the difficult. We have not arrived to explain, but to sing. Young idealism ripens into an ethical life. Prune back regret to let faith grow. When you hit rock bottom, dig farther down. Grief is the seed of singing, shame the seed of song. Keep seeing what you are not saying. Plunder your reticence. Songbird guards a twig, its only weapon a song. by Kim Stafford Photo by Ray Hennessy on Unsplash

'Light' and 'Dark' are both names, ways in which we can observe and respond to what's happening within us and around us. Our refusal to name can feel protective but in the end it isolates ourselves from one another and from life. Learning to name well can be a living bridge between us - a way of entering into conversations, understanding and action that would be unavailable to us if we turned away. Naming things is not where it ends, but where our turning towards life begins. A conversation about the names that can help us enter into relationship and into life, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website. Here's our source for this week:  “We can name the darkness as darkness and the Light as light and this helps us learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us. If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything is beautiful attitude, we are going to be trapped by the darkness because we don’t see clearly enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. Conversely, if we can only see the darkness and forget the more foundational Light, we will be destroyed by our own negativity and fanaticism, or we will naively think we are completely apart and above the darkness. Instead, we must wait and work with hope inside of the darkness, even our own.” Richard Rohr 

Nachman of Bratslav, the precariousness of all of our lives, and the possibility that we might learn to give up amplifying our fear - indeed that we might find a way to walk through an inevitably risky life with joy. A conversation about faithfulness to our lives, practice, why joy isn't the same as happiness, and what becomes possible when we live as if we're all in this together, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. We have a choice. Will we make attempts to avoid our situation by avoiding our lives? Or could we learn, even when we feel afraid, not to feed our fear? Could we live a life in which we intentionally practice taking a step into the fierce uncertainty of life, and then another step and another step, trusting that each step will take us, who knows where, but somewhere? 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find the source text for this conversation, as well as more information about the Turning Towards Life project, on our website. Photo by Tim Trad on Unsplash

The culture we live in encourages us to live at a distance from ourselves. Many of us consequently live a life of frantic doing, as if the next project or achievement will be what saves us. Our living far from ourselves is often fuelled by intense self-criticism. But it's never too late to find out that underneath all our activity, life itself is always waiting to welcome us and that, in allowing ourselves to be welcomed, we can find ourselves deeply held. A conversation about returning, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find the source text for this conversation, as well as more information about the Turning Towards Life project, on our website. Photo by frank mckenna on Unsplash

Our lives can easily become an anxiety-fuelled rush of activity. But when we live this way - even when our packing every moment seems filled with excitement and promise - we easily smother our own creativity, learning, and the chance to be in meaningful contact with others. So how can we learn to live our lives in a way that gives more space for life itself to come through? A conversation about fear, love and allowing ourselves to be reached by what's beyond us, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find the source text for this conversation, as well as more information about the Turning Towards Life project, on our website. Photo by Spencer Russell on Unsplash

How might we approach life's inevitable interruptions and openings - the often unexpected events that change things, perhaps without our say-so? Can we find a way that opens us and changes us, rather than coming at life's inevitability with fear and resentment? A conversation about finding a way to keep faith with our changing lives, with 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. We’re also on YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google and Spotify. You can find the source text for this week on the Turning Towards Life website. Photo by Kenny Luo on Unsplash