Soul Food

[embed]https://youtu.be/76jzC21bySw[/embed]In this episode Lizzie and I read and talk about 'Soul Food', a chapter of the 'The Way and the Power of the Way' by Ursula Le Guin.Together we explore the ways in which certainty can make us rigid and closed to the world and to one another, how we try (unsuccessfully) to make the world and others into our own image (a huge part of the societal struggles we're in at this time in history), and how the simple act of learning to load the dishwasher together can be a path towards the kind of humility and openness that's life giving and makes for profound and responsive relationship. Along the way we come to a new understanding of what the name of our coaching company 'thirdspace' might mean, and how coaching can be a way of helping ourselves and others open ever more fully to life.Here's the source for our conversation:

Soul Food

Everybody on earth knowingthat beauty is beautifulmakes ugliness.

Everybody knowingthat goodness is goodmakes wickedness.

For being and non beingarise together;hard and easycomplete each other;long and short shape each other;high and lowdepend on each other;note and voicemake the music together;before and afterfollow each other.

That’s why the wise souldoes without doing,teaches without talking.

The things of this worldexist, they are;you can’t refuse them.

To bear and not to own;to act and not lay claim;to do the work and let it go;for just letting it gois what makes it stay.

Ursula LeGuin - from ‘Tao Te Ching: The Way and The Power of The Way’

We’re live every Sunday morning at 9am UK time. You can join our facebook group to watch live, view archives, and join in the growing community and conversation that’s happening around this project.

The Paradox of Change

[embed]https://youtu.be/DgPXNhYOM5I[/embed]On Sunday 15th March 2018 Lizzie and I talked about The Paradox of Change, inspired by a passage from Lawrence Kushner's book 'God Was in this Place and I,i Did Not Know'. It's a tricky and important subject we're taking on here - how it is that our very efforts to change so easily end up being what imprisons us; how it's the very effort to be a particular way that constricts and narrows the wider flow of creative life that we all, in the end, are; and how a kind of surrender is often called for if we're to step into life fully, a letting life through rather than a trying to get life into a particular shape.Here's the source for our conversation:The paradox of change

Not until we recognise our bondage can we begin to move toward freedom.

It is a paradox. Change begins not by trying to change. And what you imagine you must do in order to change yourself is often the very force that keeps you precisely the way you are. How else can you explain the years and decades of your own foiled plans for growth and broken resolutions. Consumed by an apparent passion to be "other" than who you are, you try to be who you are not, but in so doing succeed only in being a person who is trying to be other than who you are. Thus the goal [...] is self-discovery—the discovery not of another self but of one's true self. Beneath all the layers of wanting to be different, self-dissatisfaction, pretence, charade, and denial is a self. This self is a living dynamic force within everyone. And if you could remain still long enough here, now, in this very place, you would discover who you are. And by discovering who you are, you would at last be free to discover who you yet also might be.

You can be who you are, or you can pretend to be who you are not. If you choose the latter (as most of us have done since adolescence), an infinite variety of self-deceptions lie before you. You can pretend to be wise when you are ignorant, weak when you are strong, courageous when you are timid, confident when you are unsure. There is no end to the list. But remember this: none of these pretensions, no matter how noble, appropriate, or convincing, will fashion genuine change. They will instead require increasingly greater amounts of energy and enmesh you in increasingly complicated nets of deception. Or you can cease pretending to be someone you are not and discover at this moment who you are. Who am I writing these words? Who are you reading them?

Lawrence Kushner, from God Was in this Place and I,i Did Not Know

We’re live every Sunday morning at 9am UK time. You can join our facebook group to watch live, view archives, and join in the growing community and conversation that’s happening around this project.

This is your assignment. Focus.

On Sunday, 1st April 2018, Lizzie and Justin talked about making art, and about responding to the darkness and messiness of the world (and ourselves) with hope and transparency. Along the way we talk about fear, the way we keep ourselves stuck by trying to have it all together, and the importance of communities in which every part of us can feel welcomed. The entire episode is a call to the kind of hope expressed by Vaclav Havel - a hope that's not dependent upon things getting better, but which comes from knowing that, even if our efforts fail, we have the capacities and qualities we need to improve things.[embed]https://youtu.be/7OjkKkCypJE[/embed]The book Lizzie talks about in this episode is Parker Palmer's The Courage to Teach.The source for our conversation is from writer Courtney Martin and artist Wendy McNaughton. It's reproduced in full above in a wonderful image that can be ordered as a poster - a reminder to us all of the necessary, life-giving and transforming power that comes from making art. You can read more about the source over at Maria Popova's Brain Pickings.We’re live each Sunday morning at 9am UK time. You can join our facebook group to watch live, view archives, and join in the growing community and conversation that’s happening around this project.

Image Credit: Wendy MacNaughton and Courtney E. Martin

Beyond What Goes Wrong

[embed]https://youtu.be/e84SrLXo--I[/embed]In this episode from 4th March 2018 Lizzie and I talk about what's beyond 'what goes wrong'. We discuss how we might see, when we're in the midst of difficulty, that's it's really part of us that's caught up in the difficulty. And, even though we often know ourselves most readily as this part (which gives our lives familiarity, a role to play, something to do), to be human is also to be a kind of depth that's beyond the immediacy of our experience, however troubling or delightful that experience is to us.Along the way we encounter the possibility that one path to more fully inhabiting our lives comes from being with others who can know and welcome our depth and, in turn, learning the gift of recognising the depth in others as we find it in ourselves.The source is for our conversation is from the poet, philosopher and teacher Mark Nepo.

Beyond What Goes Wrong

With each passing [and passage], there is a further wearing away of the layers or coverings that obscure our essential selves. And so, as we say “goodbye” again and again, we feel thinner, narrower more naked, more transparent, more vulnerable in a palpable, holy way.-- Elesa Commerse

When in the middle of difficulty, it's easy to paint the whole world as difficult. When in pain, it’s easy to construct a worldview of pain. When lonely, it’s easy to subscribe to an alienating philosophy of existence. Then we spend hours and even years seeking to confirm the difficult existence we know. Or we rebound the other way, insisting on a much lighter, giving world, if we could only transcend the difficulties that surround us. Life has taught me that neither extreme is helpful, though I’ve spent many good hours lingering in each. Instead, I think we're asked to face what we’re given, no matter how difficult, and to accept that life is always more than the moment we find ourselves in. In every instance, there’s the truth of what we’re going through and the resource of a larger, more enduring truth that’s always present beyond what goes wrong.

Ultimately, it’s the enduring truth that helps us through.

-- Mark Nepo, from Things That Join The Sea and The Sky

We’re live every Sunday morning at 9am UK time. You can find all our previous conversations at turningtowards.life and  join our facebook group to watch live, view archives, and join in the growing community and conversation that’s happening around this project.

Photo Credit: Quick Shot Photos Flickr via Compfight cc

Welcoming Ourselves and Others

[embed]https://youtu.be/dehBZzUlQk8[/embed]In this episode Lizzie and I talk about the radical possibility of welcoming ourselves, and others, just as we are.To those of us with a more action-oriented stance or a commitment to improving things, welcoming in this way can look like an act of irresponsibility. After all, doesn't making things better in some way entail rejecting how things are?We explore this tension together, looking at how our surrounding culture of keeping up and comparison with others turns us away from ourselves. We consider the possibility of both welcoming and working to repair the world. And in the midst of things Lizzie's niece joins us for a surprise visit.The source is written by our friend and colleague Steve March:

Letting Be - A Poem to Welcome a Fellow Journeyer

Dear journeyer, you are welcome here exactly as you are.No one here will try to change you according to their ideas or ideals.No one here wants you to be otherwise.We will let you be, just as you are.Only then can we celebrate your perfect uniqueness.

Letting be is a gift of love that we give to you.Love of your Truth.Love of your Beauty.Love of your Goodness.Only then can we relish your luminous brilliance.

Letting be is a gift of love that you can give yourself too.Letting be, your heart will melt, your mind will open, your body will release.Letting be, your creativity will rocket forth.Letting be, your innate resourcefulness will amaze you.Only then can you behold your true magnificence.

The sun beams just for you.The mountain salutes your majesty.The river of life guides you within its currents.The universe is your playground.Welcome home, dear journeyer.

We’re live every Sunday morning at 9am UK time. You can join our facebook group to watch live, view archives, and join in the growing community and conversation that’s happening around this project.

The Wild Edge of Sorrow

Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise were live again on Sunday 26th November.This week the source for our conversation is Francis Weller's book "The Wild Edge of Sorrow". We begin with two poems - Denise Levertov's "To Speak of Sorrow" and Robert Bly's "What is Sorrow For?". We talk about the connection between feeling our sorrow, shared rituals and spaces for grieving, and aliveness. Along the way we touch on how restraining sorrow keeps the myth that we are separate going, and how our collective numbing to the losses of our own lives and the world is a way we keep perpetuating the more destructive aspects of our current culture. We end with the hopeful thought that finding ways to grieve together is a way to help us turn more fully and courageously towards life and all that is called for from us.You can find both poems, which we recommend you read before watching, here.And you can join our FaceBook group, now more than 400 strong, to watch live or later and participate in the lively conversation that's going on in the comments.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bu6hQNCrZYk[/embed]

Personal Guidelines for the Great Turning

Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise were live again on Sunday 19th November.The source for this week's conversation was Joanna Macy's "Personal Guidelines for the Great Turning". We talk about what can support us in responding courageously and truthfully in the midst of the enormous changes - political, social, environmental - which may only just be beginning and which could change everything. Along the way we touch on the life-giving necessity of beauty, how to know ourselves in a way that can give us the courage we need to step forward, and how important it is to realise that none of us is alone.You can find Joanna Macy's 'Personal Guidelines', which we recommend you read before watching, here.And you can join our FaceBook group, now more than 400 strong, to watch live or later and participate in the lively conversation that's going on in the comments.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKxQxYJEUxk[/embed]

Photo Credit: $owmya Flickr via Compfight cc

I am an emotional creature

In our conversation on Sunday 12th November, Lizzie and Justin began with Eve Ensler's poem 'I am an Emotional Creature'. We talk about being male and female, how society pushes us towards gendered roles and orientations to the world, and what gets left out when we gravitate to either one of the poles of emotion or intellect without the other.You can find the poem, which we recommend you read before watching, here:http://bit.ly/2zxcglq[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dctCWMVK4fE[/embed]

Photo Credit: Darkrevette Flickr via Compfight cc

Wild Geese

Lizzie and I were live again this morning, The source for this week's conversation was Mary Oliver's powerful poem 'Wild Geese'.We talk about the constraining effects of inner criticism and the limits of our over-effort to be good or strong or loving or clever. And along the way we stumble into some realisations about what's possible when we learn to trust something other than our own self-judgement, and reach out to others for help.And if you’d like to join in with the growing community that’s forming around this project, and the lively conversation that’s taking part in the comments, you can do so here.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zru6Ze_rfRw[/embed]