Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

What if our attempts to 'manage time' and to somehow escape the constraints (and possibilities) of time always, in the end, disappoint us because in some way we 'are time'? Saying that we are time begins to turn our experience of time inside out and upside down. It offers us the profound possibility that the inevitable passage of time is more an 'unfolding' than a 'passing', or maybe even a 'spira...

Underneath our inner chatter, fear, and attempts to have life go our way, there's a profound and welcoming silence - a silence that is a kind of recognition, a kind of acceptance, and a kind of refuge for the parts of us that clamour and fear... and which can be a refuge also for one another. We could even say that the silence is a kind of ground for who we each are, and in that way we long for it...

The story that 'my life is about me' that has become central to our culture ignores that we are, without our say-so, always part of a life and a universe that is much bigger than us. While it's understandable that we try to control and dominate life, before long we find out that life is having its way with us too. It may well be truer to say that 'I am about life'. So what would happen if instead...

Being able to live with multiplicity - the ability to accept multiple realities at once - is critical to healthy relationships, and it's critical to our own flourishing too. Because once we see that there are many parts within us - that there we are each a kind of unfolding process of inner community - we can come to see that when two or more people are together there are already many parallel int...

Why it matters to build a life of awareness, wondering, curiosity, truthfulness and facing things as they are. Finding a way to notice when we are letting life itself flow through us, and when we are standing in its way. Paying attention to all inside us that we have exiled or abandoned and doing the courageous, loving, painstaking work of welcoming it back and undoing our inner separation. Attend...

What does it take to be faithful enough in the unfolding of our lives that we let go of our tight grip, our hurry, our trying to control... and fall into letting ourselves be the kind of person we long to be? How might we learn that life will always surprise us, and instead of trying to remove the surprise let ourselves be brought to life by it? And what might it be to lessen the grip of 'hurry' -...

A friend once pointed out to us that conversations sometimes - often even - 'die in the middle' without anyone paying any attention to it happening. And sometimes conversations are robbed of their aliveness by our very wish that they go well, and our trying to fall back on a method in order to bring that about. So that has us wondering together who we each have to be in order that our conversation...

Somewhere along the way we easily lose contact with the mystery and wonder of a life we're thrown into, a life that comes to us infused with presence and possibility. Perhaps because there are no directions, and perhaps because we're thrown into life without our say-so, and perhaps because there are always pressing practical issues of survival and care to attend to, it's easy for us to find oursel...

There are so many ways we've learned to 'perform' - in work, as parents and friends and loved ones. And for any of us who do anything to help others - coaching or therapy or other helping roles - it's tempting to try to perform as the 'skilful helper' too. But what is most often called for is not any kind of 'performing' but a way of being present with one another, with all of our creativity, wisd...

Can we embrace both the acceptable and unacceptable parts of ourselves? Can we act and let go of trying to control the result? Can we hold onto both sides of each of life's great polarities, and in doing so grow in wisdom and in the possibility to contribute? And what might it take, if we did want to become like this, to faithfully practice our way in to cultivating our own goodness and capacity a...

We're beginning our 6th year of Turning Towards Life today, and in recognition of this we're having a conversation about 'Soulful Repetition' - those practices we can take up in life that return us to ourselves, and to one another, and to meaning and belonging. How do we take up new practices that can help us remember who we are, where we belong, and what is sacred... and which respond to the dept...

At the end of our first 5 years of 'Turning Towards Life' we ask - how do we do the difficult work of reconciliation, of making peace with ourselves and with those with whom we share this one life, without abandoning ourselves or one another? How do we make peace together in a world where there are rarely easy answers, and where the right path is often shrouded in complexity? And can we commit our...

How do we hold together two truths - that there is so much to be deeply concerned about, and that we have within us many gifts with which we can respond - without collapsing into pessimism or naive optimism? And how do we find something in our lives and in one another that puts us in contact with those very gifts so that - even if the outcome is far from certain, or even far from what we want - we...

Being together in a way that makes ourselves available to one another is what we're made for, and is among the most simple and most difficult things we'll ever do. So how do we create the safety and openness in our own way of being that allows us to be deeply connected to and available for others? What does it take to create the kind of relationship with our own bodies that can be a ground of safe...

Could we live inside definitions of 'success' and 'intelligence' that are wildly more life-giving, generous, and generative than the ones we've been handed? And what if we found a way to cultivate ourselves so that we become the ones who stand - in our lives, in our ways of observing life, and in our practices - who choose to cultivate virtues that have us, and the people around us, step into the...

It can be hard to return to ourselves and one another when we find ourselves caught 'in a thing' that's not life-giving - a tightness, stubbornness, grumpiness, an anger or rage or sourness or grudge, or indeed any way we're holding on to a feeling or idea long beyond its usefulness or appropriateness. The return is often hard because returning means facing ourselves and all the parts of us that m...

In a culture that values 'keeping it all together', it is no small thing to trust ourselves - to welcome the parts of ourselves that are scared, or confused, or unravelling. When we remember that there's always something of ourselves that we can trust, perhaps we can turn towards those parts of us - that we might otherwise try to push away - and hold them in just the ways in which they long to be...

Whenever we speak, there's a something from which speech arises which is not itself yet, quite, words. And when we make art, there's a something from which the art arises that is itself not yet, quite, art. And it's in this vast unspoken background of before and between, of body and world and story and imagination, that so much of who we are and who we can be is found. Can we learn to see and hear...

We've often internalised a particularly destructive story about what it is to be human - that we're inherently selfish, grasping, and inevitably violent to one another. And that because of that we ought to live very warily indeed. But, as the writer David Graeber reminds us, the 'common-sense' story of what it is to be human is just one story out of many. And we are filled with many different kind...

In the choices about what to pay attention to, the wider culture many of us inhabit tells us - be afraid, be in a hurry, get things done, be productive, panic about the future, distrust your own senses, distract yourself. So much of the media that comes our way reinforces all of those messages. But what if we turned towards the beauty and wonder that is, alongside all there is for us to worry abou...

So many of us have been taught to flatten our imaginations, and in the space that is left we so easily feel as if we somehow have to magnify our experiences of life, always striving for something more intense or more meaningful or more vibrant. And, while there are times for that, we wonder what would happen if we allowed ourselves to kindle our radical amazement (itself an imaginative act) with w...

There are moments when we suddenly find out that we're not separate from one another or from life... and in those moments we discover that what we're here to do is to love. Isn't that a possibility we all long for, and sometimes find so difficult to entertain - the opportunity to give love, to receive love, to have love flow through us into our work, into our relationships, into our friendships, i...

We can change - that much is certain. But change doesn't come by magic, and rarely does it come alone from a moment of inspiration, but instead by the steady, faithful application of practice - the walking of a path, step by step. The magic is that even practices that turn us by just a degree or two can, when held with dedication and consistency, make a huge difference in our lives and in the live...

What we long for, what we most need, is the simple kindness of others. But the world teaches us otherwise - that what we need most is away from one another. What a tragedy unfolds for all of us when we live in forgetfulness of our deepest longing. We think the world can be different - and this conversation is about just that. This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and...

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...