Vast

There is a part of me that is tender, hurt, grieving and super-sensitive. He feels like something very young. Of all the parts that make up this mysterious something that I call ‘I’, he is among the smallest.Deeply loving, filled with emotion, he easily gets caught up in a story of abandonment. His fears are specific, and strongly predictive. ‘You’ll leave me’, he says. By ‘you’ he means just about anyone - friends, lovers, family, teachers - and bigger entities too - community, this country in which I live, life itself. And by ‘you’ he also means ‘me’ - the one of whom he is a part, the one who is his home.‘You will abandon me’, he says, ‘and I will not be able to tolerate the loss itself, nor my grief at the loss. And what’s more, I know when I get abandoned it will be my fault. I’ll cause it by my actions, or by my inaction. Or because I was not able to prevent it’.He’s onto something, of course. Loss is a given of any human life. He - as I, as you - will eventually lose everything and everyone that we love. And his grief and tenderness is real, and appropriate to the scale of the coming bereavement. But this part, so young and with such a small horizon, is scared to live in the world because the loss feels like it is now. The abandonment he fears, ever present.He has some quite sophisticated strategies to try to head off the losses that terrify him. He wants me to feel his fear, always, so that we won’t make a mis-step. He’ll do his best for me not to feel, nor let on to feeling, the grief that he holds, nor any feelings that might make me vulnerable. He holds on very tight, and sometimes as a result I hold on very tight too. And he’s a master at getting his abandonment in first, finding ways I can get resentful and abandon other people before they can abandon me. He’s done this many many times - I have done this many times in his name. In a way, he feels vindicated when people do actually leave, because it shows that his world view, and his deep fear, are justified.He wants us to live in a very narrow space of possibilities. He’s only open for being seen by others in a very particular way (only with love and appreciation, never with judgement) and if he doesn’t get seen this way he’s quickly wounded, withdrawn, sullen, quietly rageful or doing his best to manipulate others so that the world is back to the way he wants it.Because this part is in such difficulty, he grabs my attention frequently. And when he does I identify with him. I take him to be me, and me to be him. And this is the big mistake. When he is in the driver’s seat I forget that there are things to feel that are different to what he is feeling, ways of seeing that are different to what he’s seeing, and different ways to act. When I think I am him, I am at my smallest and most afraid.Over time I have come to see that my work is one of self-remembering. Remembering that I am vast. That I contain multitudes. That as well as this part, there are others. And that my work is not to turn away, not to run from this tiny scared part of me - it is so easy to push him away, to visit upon him the very abandonment that he fears - but to hold him close, to cradle him, to honour him and his gifts. It is my work to welcome him home. To say to him, “Yes, I see you. I have you. You are safe here. You cannot fall”.And my work too is to know that, just as I know he is held in the vast something called ‘I’, I too am held in and am part of something vast that has no given name but might best be called ‘life’. When I know myself this way, as one expression of a phenomenon which brings me into being and out of which I cannot fall, I am freed from being a prisoner of my fear and available. 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.

Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash

Don't be ashamed to be human, be proud

[embed]https://youtu.be/p79TM1wi8Bo[/embed]Here's episode 36 of 'Turning Towards Life', our weekly, live 30 minute deep dive into the bigger questions of human life, with Lizzie Winn.This week, "Don't Be Ashamed to be Human". So many of us figure that we have to go through life essentially alone, like super-heroes, hiding all our difficulties and failures and in the process finding ourselves far away from the joys of deep human contact and support. We wonder about what it takes to turn towards the life-giving support of others, and how coaching, community, friendship and family can be ways of entering into this with one another.We also talk about the extraordinary two-day introduction to Integral Development Coaching, 'Coaching to Excellence' which will be offered by thirdspace in London on 1st-2nd October 2018.Here's the source for this week's conversation:

Romanesque Arches

Tomas Tranströmer

Tourists have crowded into the half-dark of the enormous

Romanesque church.

Vault opening behind vault and no perspective.

A few candle flames flickered.

An angel with no face embraced me

and his whisper went all through my body:

"Don't be ashamed to be a human being, be proud!

Inside you one vault after another opens endlessly.

You'll never be complete, and that's as it should be."

Tears blinded me

as we were herded out into the fiercely sunlit piazza,

together with Mr. and Mrs. Jones, Herr Tanaka and Signora Sabatini;

within each of them vault after vault opened endlessly.

Waiting for Events to Save Us

[embed]https://youtu.be/kR-8rv2SexI[/embed]Here's episode 34 of 'Turning Towards Life' episode with Lizzie Winn: 'Practice, Not Events'. In this episode we talk about the events that can shape a life, and the mistake we make when we wait for events to save us. What comes instead, we wonder, when we hold on less tightly to what happens and dedicate ourselves to a life of dedicated practice? Along the way we talk about near-death experiences, weddings, and organisational change.In this weekly project from thirdspace coaching we dive deep in a live, inspiring, unscripted 30 minute conversation. Our aim - to learn as much as we teach, to discover as we go, and to give support to all of us in turning towards our lives with depth and creativity rather than turning away.Here's the source for this week's conversation, from an earlier post on this blog.

Practice, Not EventsBetween June 2011 and the following July I had three close encounters with death. Three life punctuating events brought about by sudden and unexpected changes within my body, each shocking and frightening, each a reminder of how fragile and unpredictable life can be.As I recovered from each episode I expected - hoped - that I would in some way be profoundly different. I wanted so much to find myself more grateful, more accepting, more joyful of life's many small blessings, less judgmental, less afraid, less irritated by small things, more kind, and more dedicated to being present and welcoming and loving with the people who matter to me.But it didn't work out so simply. I emerged from each experience blinking and shaken and grateful, and soon settled back into many of my familiar patterns.Over time I've found myself thinking about this differently. What happens if I allow these experiences to inform the way I live rather than expecting them to change me? How can I, having encountered the possibility of death so closely, use my experience to commit fully and wisely and generously to life?In taking on this question I'm finding out that the change I seek is a question of practice rather than of events. And that I am an ongoing process much more than I am a thing with enduring properties, an object that is a particular way. I live myself into being, day after day. I am always living myself into being by the very ways in which I live.How I move, how much I take care of myself, how I express curiosity and interest in the world, how I speak and listen, how I sleep, how I sing and laugh, how I play and create, how I bind myself up in community, how I practice compassion and stillness, how I love, how I work - all these shape the life I am living and who I become, far more than the punctuating events themselves.And this tells me so much about the mistaken ways in which I look for change in myself and in my relationships with others. When I mistake life for a thing I imagine an event of sufficient power will do it. An affecting conversation, a kiss, a show of force, a book with a revelatory idea in it, an illness, a windfall, a conference, an argument, the right gift, or a brush with death will fix things, in the same way that I might fix a dented metal bowl by attempting to knock it into shape. But when I know myself as a living, unfolding process, events take up their proper place as teachers rather than fixers, educating me about the ongoing practices by which I can take care of this one precious life.The more I imagine events alone will do it, the more I set myself up for the despair and frustration that comes from relying on something that cannot help.And the more I commit to the ongoing, long-term, diligent and patient practice of living in a way that brings life, the more genuine reason I have to hope.

We’re live this 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. 

Because Even the Word 'Obstacle' is an Obstacle

[embed]https://youtu.be/TKJduBIhhtc[/embed]In this episode of 'Turning Towards Life' Lizzie and I talk about how our stories about what's happening can get in the way of our bringing ourselves fully into life. We consider how the very way in which we make sense of ourselves as 'having to get somewhere' with obstacles in our path that need to be overcome can throw us into an interpretation of life that's riddled with fear, resentment, and comparison. We wonder together what it would be to 'swim past obstacles without grudges or memory' and to understand life as an unfolding story that changes itself in each moment and with each action - and what new possibilities for freedom and contribution that can bring.Our source is the poem 'Because Even the World Obstacle is and Obstacle' by Alison Luterman, reproduced with permission from the author. You can find out more about Alison at www.alisonluterman.net

“Because Even the Word Obstacle is an Obstacle” by Alison Luterman

Try to love everything that gets in your way:The Chinese women in flowered bathing capsmurmuring together in Mandarin doing leg exercises in your lanewhile you execute thirty-six furious laps,one for every item on your to-do list.The heavy-bellied man who goes thrashing through the waterlike a horse with a harpoon stuck in its side andwhose breathless tsunamis rock you from your course.Teachers all. Learn to be smalland swim past obstacles like a minnow,without grudges or memory. Darttoward your goal, sperm to egg. Thinking, Obstacle,is another obstacle. Try to love the teenage girllounging against the ladder, showing off her new tattoo:Cette vie est la mienne, This life is mine,in thick blue-black letters on her ivory instep.Be glad she’ll have that to look at the rest of her life, andkeep going. Swim by an unclein the lane next to yours who is teaching his nephewhow to hold his breath underwater,even though kids aren’t supposedto be in the pool at this hour. Someday,years from now, this boywho is kicking and flailing in the exact placeyou want to touch and turnmay be a young man at a wedding on a boat,raising his champagne glass in a toastwhen a huge wave hits, washing everyone overboard.He’ll come up coughing and spitting like he is now,but he’ll come up like a cork,alive. So your momentof impatience must bow in service to the larger story,because if something is in your way, it isgoing your way, the wayof all beings: toward darkness, toward light.

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Looking good

Could it be that it's time for you to give up looking good so you can be real instead?I'm not saying this lightly.Five summers ago, I found myself rendered momentarily speechless, mid-conversation, as a dear friend and I walked together for lunch. A few minutes later, flat on my back on the pavement, heart pounding, short of breath, mind racing.I knew for certain only after a few days - but had an inkling as it happened - that an undiagnosed blood clot that had been forming in my leg for some time had at that moment broken loose from its moorings.Terror, love, longing, hope, confusion.I called home while we waited for the paramedics to arrive."I'm fine," I said. "There's nothing to be worried about".Not, "I'm scared.". Not, "Please help me". Not, "I don't know if I'm going to be ok"."I'm fine".It was a hot June afternoon, blue skies, but there must have been clouds as I remember watching a seagull wheel high overhead against a background of grey-white."I'm fine".Just when I most needed help and connection I played my most familiar, habitual 'looking good' hand - making sure others around me had nothing to be worried about. A hand I've played repeatedly since I was a child.Even in the most obviously life-threatening situation I had yet experienced: "I'm fine". Too afraid to be seen for real, to be seen as something other than my carefully nurtured image of myself.It was there, on the pavement, that I started to understand in a new way the cost of holding myself back from those I most care about; the power and necessity of vulnerability and sincerity; that my humanity, with all its cracks, complexity and fragility, is a gift to others, not a burden.I began to see that the realness I treasured in the people who love me the most was my responsibility too - a necessary duty of loving in return.I'm still learning, slowly, how to fully show myself.One step at a time.And I'm learning, too, that sometimes we'll carry on trying to look good, even if it has the potential to ruin our lives as we do so.

Photo Credit: Pimthida 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.

We have to find a way to love our brokenness

We have to find a way to love our brokennessNo, not loving ourselves in spite of our failingsBut loving the brokenness itselfWe have to love all the ways we're lateAnd all the ways we missed the pointWe have to love that we were scaredAnd that we were ashamed to say itWe have to love that we didn't get it all doneAnd love that we imagined it was doable in the first placeWe have to love that we're such a glorious messAnd how we struggle to meet our own standardsWe have to learn to love, in short,all the ways we fall shortBecause our grace, courage and capacity to standOur care of what's broken in the world around usIs strongest when we're carriedby that which we've learned to cherishAnd not when we're miredin that which we've chosen to hate.

Photo Credit: Wayne Stadler Photography Flickr via Compfight cc

Misunderstanding feedback

'Giving feedback' has become so much a part of what is considered good management that we rarely ask ourselves whether it's effective or question the premise upon which it's based. I think it’s time we did.

The very idea of 'feedback' as a central management practice is drawn from cybernetics. The simplest kind of single-loop cybernetic system is a home thermostat. The thermostat responds to feedback from the room (by measuring the ambient temperature) and turns on heating when required so to warm the air to a comfortable level. When the target is reached, the thermostat turns the heating off. It's a 'single-loop' system because the thermostat can only respond to temperature.

In a double-loop feedback system it's possible to adjust what's measured in order to better address the situation. If you're bringing about the conditions in your room to make it suitable for a dinner party you may need to pay attention to temperature, lighting, the arrangement of furniture, the colour of the table cloth, the number of place settings, the mood and culinary taste of your guests, and the quality of conversation. Single-loop systems such as thermostats can’t do this. But double-loop cybernetic systems allow us in principle to ask 'what is it that's important to measure?'. And, of course, human beings are far more suited to this kind of flexibility than thermostats are.

It’s from this way of looking that we get the contemporary idea that feedback - solicited or not - is what’s most helpful or appropriate for someone to learn to do the right thing. But it is based on something of a questionable premise. Thermostats, even very clever ones, and other cybernetic systems don’t have emotions, or cares, or worries. They do not love, or feel fulfilled or frustrated. They do not have available to them multiple ways to interpret what is said. They do not hurt, and they do not feel shame. They do not misunderstand or see things in a different way. They don’t have an internalised inner critic, nor do they have bodies that are conditioned over years by practice to respond and react in particular ways. They are not in relationship. They do not have to trust in order to be able to do what they do. And they do not have a world of commitments, intentions, relationships, hopes and goals into which the latest temperature data lands.

People have all of these.

When we simply assume that spoken or written feedback, even if carefully given, will correct someone’s actions or help them to learn, we assume they are more like a cybernetic system than they are like a person. Sometimes it can certainly be helpful - when the feedback is in a domain that both giver and receiver care about, given in language that makes sense, and when it meets the hopes and aspirations of the receiver with sensitivity and generosity. But many times we find that the very act of giving feedback wounds or confuses or deflates or misunderstands or treats the other person as if they don’t know what they’re doing. We find that the world of the giver is nothing like the world of the receiver. We find that our best effort to construct feedback according to the ‘rules’ mystifyingly doesn’t bring about what we’re intending. And then we get frustrated or disappointed, and try to give the feedback another way, imagining that if we can come up with a clever technique or way of saying it then our feedback will work.

Perhaps a place to start would be to stop thinking about people as if they were glorified thermostats. In order to do this we'd have to soften our ideas of truth in feedback - specifically the idea that the one who knows the truth gives feedback to the one who must be corrected. Secondly, we could start to think how many ways there are to learn how to do something well than being told how someone else sees it. And third, we could wonder how we can share the riches we do see in a way that gives dignity and maintains connection between both parties - starting by knowing when it’s time to request, demonstrate, reflect, inquire together, make new distinctions in language, show someone how to make good observations for themselves, or simply stay out of the way.

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That I would be good

Sometimes we need a simple reminder that behind all our judgements, our self-distrust, our striving to be different from who we are, our perfectionism, our living our lives as a giant and unending self-improvement project, is a basic goodness that we all share. A basic goodness that we quickly forget.This is a topic Alanis Morissette clearly knows about from the inside. Perhaps, today, this song might be just what you were longing to remember.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMZReI2QrlQ[/embed]

Being our home

A meditation for those days when we feel small, abandoned, or on the outside of our lives.Bless these feet that carry me by day and by night.Bless these hands that touch, sense, and bring the world towards me.Bless these lungs, transforming air into life on every breath,and bless this heart, for the continued heritage of all heartssince the first broke into the stillness.Bless this mouth, that can say what only I can say.Bless this body for love, joy, grief, rage, despair and hope.Bless this 'I' for incompleteness.Bless this mind that discerns, wonders, confusesand occasionally makes sense of the chaos.Bless the uncountable mistakes, accidents, chances and failuresthat keep life going and delivered me to this moment.I do not know, really, what is mine to do.But I do know that I am here,along with so many others.So bless the here-ness of me, and may it be my offering,My thanks, my home.

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