Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast Thirdspace

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

Read the show-notes for a link to the details of the new Thirdspace Coaching For Development programme for people who work in organisations, which we talked about today.