Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

When the differences between us come into play - in a relationship, in a community, at work, in a friendship - it can seem tempting to search for some kind of false harmony, or to try to either ‘win over’ others or ‘lie down’ in the face of their will and wishes. But what if we started to see our differences, and our conflicts, as exactly the place where our freedom and our unique shape gets born? What if we could differ ‘for the sake of our becoming just who we need to be’? Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife 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 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, Amazon Music and Spotify. Here’s our source for this week: Here’s our source for this week: The Life in Our Resistances I have come to feel that we live in a universe of spirit, which materialises and de-materialises grandly; all things seem to me to live, and all acts to contain meaning deeper than matter-of-fact; and the things we do with deepest love and interest compel us by the spiritual forces which dwell in them. This seems to me to be a dialogue of the visible and the invisible to which our ears are attuned.  There is, first of all, something in the nature of the clay itself. You can do very many things with it, push it this and and pull that, squeeze and roll and attach and pinch and hollow and pile. But you can't do everything with it. You can go only so far, and then the clay resists.  We know ourselves by our resistances [...] You can do very many things with us: push us together and pull us apart and squeeze us and roll us flat, empty us out and fill us up. You can surround us with influences, but there comes a point when you can do no more. The person resists, in one way or another (if it is only by collapsing, like the clay). Their own will becomes active.  This is a wonderful moment, when one feels one's will become active, come as a force into the total assemblage and dynamic intercourse and interpenetration of will impulses. When one stands like a natural substance, plastic but with one's own character written into the formula, ah, then one feels oneself part of the world, taking one's shape with its help - but a shape only one's own freedom can create. from Centering, by the potter and writer MC Richards Photo by Grant Durr on Unsplash

It seems like it should be so simple - giving to one another, receiving from one another, loving one another, opening ourselves to the love of others. But it’s so often hard, and so often we make ourselves unavailable to what we most need and long for, and hold back from what we are most able to give (or give it, but without taking into account the impact of our way of giving). What can we do to understand the relational dynamics that shape our giving and receiving and our holding back our contribution from one another? And what kind of conversation and skilfulness can help us find our way through the maze of expectations, stories, culture, conditioning and habit so we can find one another in a more straightforward way?Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeTurning 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 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, Amazon Music and Spotify.Here’s our source for this week:The Gift of LovingGive the gift of loving you to others. Ask for their help. We seem to have learned that helping involves sacrifice. So we think that by asking for help, we’re asking people to make a sacrifice.So we don’t ask. We try and do it all alone. And we forget that people can just say no. So it’s OK to simply ask.Maybe life is about the giving and receiving of gifts…..It’s a true joy when someone feels loved and we have something to do with it. So what are we doing removing opportunities for people to love us, taking this away from them, this joy of loving us ?If we all knew what it meant to truly say no, and what a true yes means, what kind of love filled, supported world might we find ?Lizzie WinnPhoto by Brad Switzer on Unsplash

What if what is most called for in order to live our lives is remembering the mystery that we each are... the essential depth that we are, which is often buried beneath layers of habit, personality patterns, the strength of our feelings, our busy-ness, our worry? But we forget, and we take ourselves to be something much smaller than we are. One way that we might begin to remember is to pay attention to that moment between sleeping and waking, before we 'put ourselves back together' and become our familiar habitual selves, when we can catch a glimpse of our essentialness... a path to recover our depth and the depth of others.Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeTurning 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 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, Amazon Music and Spotify.Here's our source for this week:What to Remember When WakingIn that firsthardly noticedmomentin which you wake,coming backto this lifefrom the othermore secret,moveableand frighteninglyhonestworldwhere everythingbegan,there is a smallopeninginto the new daythat closesthe momentyou begin your plans.What you can planis too smallfor you to live.What you can livewholeheartedlywill make plansenoughfor the vitalityhidden in your sleep.To become humanis to become visiblewhile carryingwhat is hiddenas a gift to others.To rememberthe other worldin this worldis to live in yourtrue inheritance.You are nota troubled gueston this earth,you are notan accidentamidst other accidentsyou were invitedfrom another and greaternightthan the onefrom whichyou have just emerged.Now, looking throughthe slanting lightof the morningwindow towardthe mountainpresenceof everythingthat can be,what urgencycalls you to yourone love?What shape waitsin the seed of youto grow and spreadits branchesagainst a future sky?Is it waitingin the fertile sea?In the treesbeyond the house?In the lifeyou can imaginefor yourself?In the openand lovelywhite pageon the waiting desk?by David WhytePhoto by Jack B on Unsplash

In this episode, the hosts delve into the transformative power of deep listening in communication. They emphasize the importance of being fully present while listening, which can lead to profound changes in relationships and personal growth. By suspending disbelief and engaging authentically, listeners can discover hidden aspects of themselves and foster deep connections with others.

What if we were able to really deeply honour and welcome our incompleteness and imperfection, and honour our own and one another's unique ways of being in the world? Maybe then - if we gave up our harsh self-criticism and our demands for perfection - we'd ever more be able to be 'home' for one another, and participate generously, lovingly and compassionately in the reshaping of ourselves that life is always asking of us. Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife 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 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, Amazon Music and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: Symmathesy (the poem) Each one of us is a crooked tree, Reaching for water and light, Bending ourselves around obstacles, Scary thoughts, hurtful moments, darkness & thirst, Finding a way to breathe in the sun and hold the soil, Our branches are kinked and twisted, Because that is what it took to be here, The ways of learning to be in our worlds, Have shaped responses, Our many experiences are speaking through every gesture. Our loves, and broken paths, a tenderness, a criticism, Learning always, Yearning always, In crooked beauty... To be a home for those who may find comfort In the asymmetry of our belonging, A nest cradling new life, Tucked into an old log teeming with creatures, learning to be in each other's reshaping. Nora Bateson Photo by Brandon Green on Unsplash

We're born as wide-open hearts, but very quickly discover that the world around us is not ready or able to welcome us in our fulness. So early on we learn strategies to put large parts of ourselves away - to belong by unbelonging many aspects of ourselves. It's necessary, unavoidable even, but comes at a huge cost. So can we learn as we traverse our years of adulthood to bring ourselves out into the open where it is, in the end, possible to be most fully loved? And can we be the ones who love our friends, partners, children and colleagues 'out into the open' by being an affordance for those around us to bring themselves forward ever more fully?Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribeSupport Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslifeTurning 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 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, Amazon Music and Spotify.Here's our source for this week:In The OpenNo matter the strength of shynessNo matter how tempting it is to keep myself a secretOh how comfort’s infestation spreadsWhile it urges me to do nothingThere is no room to hideIn a world I am made forOut in the openThere is no room to hideI am supposed to be lovedOut in the openMorgan LahmPhoto by bady abbas on Unsplash

Because we are imaginative beings, we can imagine and call into being all kinds of better possibilities for ourselves and those around us. At the same time, our imaginations can have us pretend to ourselves about the reality of our lives and experience. It’s completely understandable that we do this - distracting ourselves with what Rainer Maria Rilke calls ‘empty freedoms’ is surely one way to try to avoid experiences and feelings we don’t want to have.  But those distractions, those ‘empty freedoms’ do little to help us plant deep roots, or to learn how to fly when called for. So how might we turn with courage and whole hearts towards the reality of what is, as a way of opening ourselves to the possibility of acting to bring about a better future? Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife 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 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, Amazon Music and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: How Surely Gravity's Law  How surely gravity’s law  Strong as an ocean current,  Takes hold of even the strongest thing  And pulls it toward the heart of the world.  Each thing – each stone, blossom, child – is held in place. Only we, in our arrogance,  Push out beyond what we belong to  For some empty freedom. If we surrendered to Earth’s intelligence  We could rise up, rooted, like trees … This is what the things can teach us: to fall,  Patiently to trust our heaviness.  Even a bird has to do that  Before he can fly.  Rainer Maria Rilke Translated by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy Photo by Cindy Tang on Unsplash

Explore the notion of safety and acceptance in human relationships, finding solace in 'Safe Space' poem. Reflect on navigating uncertainty and anxiety, learning to feel safe within ourselves as a source of welcome for others. Dive into the importance of practice and persistence in ongoing conversations, emphasizing depth and growth through continual engagement.

In this podcast, the hosts discuss embracing opposites within ourselves and in relationships for personal growth and understanding. They explore the transformative power of balance, commitment, and self-exploration, highlighting the beauty of integrating contrasting qualities like strength and weakness.

We bring ourselves into life in a dance we learned right from our earliest days… in which we’re often carefully managing what we can show to one another of ourselves. And others learn to dance with us in this way too, finding out from being around us what is ok to talk about, and what to avoid. Pretty soon we’re all dancing around that which, if we pay attention, was in plain view all along. Oftentimes the dance feels necessary. Sometimes it is necessary. But keeping on the surface of things is hardly a way towards the intimacy, connection, contact and realness we long for. So who could we be for ourselves and for one another, so that we can bring ourselves - and all our rich complexity - into the light for the benefit of everyone around us? Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Join Our Weekly Mailing: www.turningtowards.life/subscribe Support Us: www.buymeacoffee.com/turningtowardslife 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 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, Amazon Music and Spotify. Here's our source for this week: What if we could just tell each other? Parts of us lie in quiet, sly shadows.  Publicly undiscernible, or so we believe.  The truth is they are experienced by others,  Despite our internal dance to conceal them. When we commit to something,  And our actions “say” otherwise,  They betray the façade we  Made to manage others’ views of us. If we knew, and accepted that we were visible,  We’d know there would be no point in trying to hide.  How people feel around us reveals so much of us.  What if we could just tell each other? Instead of hiding in plain sight, we’d be open to anything anyone brought our way. Here I am, ready and willing to learn. By Lizzie Winn Photo by Alexis Brown on Unsplash