[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.
Behind all our attempts to manipulate and control the world so it's just as we'd like it (and behind the pain, frustration, sorrow and disappointment that our inevitable failure brings), we're just trying to find a way to feel safe and to feel at home.I think we'd be better off knowing this.Then we'd set aside our mission to control what can't be controlled. And we'd work on how to feel safe and at home in the world as it is - in this ever-changing, surprising, vast and mysterious life in which we find ourselves.
When you feel emptiness, what do you do?
Human beings are not infinitely extensible.We cannot keep on taking on more, saying yes to more, stretching our efforts into the late hours, getting up early, piling it on, squeezing it in, pushing ourselves harder and harder, without soon hitting limits.First, perhaps, we reach the outer limits of what our relationships can take. But we say to ourselves that it's not too bad, that it's just the way life is, and we push on.Later we encounter the limits that our bodies and minds can take, and we return home first ragged and exhausted, then increasingly unwell. We're adaptable though. It doesn't take us long to get used to be stretched as thin as we can go. And before long we carry with us lasting damage from the stress hormones coursing through our bodies.And even though this kind of yes-to-everything is endemic in our culture and in many organisations, it's largely there because we have not yet learned how powerful 'no' can be.'No' is a boundary-making move. It's a declaration that separates this-from-that. It's through 'no' that we distinguish the important from the unimportant, what matters from what does not, and what we care about from what's trivial.We can learn much about this from living systems. In cells, for example, it's the boundary-making properties of the membrane, that which distinguishes inner from outer, that makes the self-producing and life-generating processes of the cell possible.A cell without a cell wall is just a splurge of protoplasm and organelles.And just as there is no outside without inside, there is no proper, genuine, sincere 'yes' upon which we can act without the necessary, powerful boundary-making of 'no'.
Friday night. The start of shabbat, the Jewish sabbath.A time to put down everything - work, concerns about work, busyness - for a day of renewal, relationship, paying attention to the world through new eyes.And yet here, sitting in the synagogue with my family, my body and mind are filled with the long list of tasks left open, opportunities not taken, calls not returned, emails not answered. There's tension in my chest and stomach at all that is unfinished, all that is mine to do. My mind, barely attentive to what's going on around me, reaches out in a wide, scattered, urgent arc - as if thinking it through over and again will resolve my difficulty. As if this is a way to complete what is uncompleted.And then I remember that the day will come, and none of us knows how soon, when I will no longer be able to complete anything. And on that day too, the day that life is done, there will still be a long list of incomplete projects. Messages waiting. Conversations unfinished. Responsibilities unfulfilled.I come to see that project I've taken up with my racing mind and thumping heart, the project of having it all neatly done, can never and will never be concluded. I am reminded that to be human is to live, in one way or another, as yet unwritten.That it is time to let go.Yes, there's a time for urgently finishing whatever is at hand. And a time, a time we need, to set all that aside and to see the incompleteness of the world, and everyone, not as something that always needs fixing but as part of its strange, necessary and wonderful beauty.
Those of us who have any kind of privilege, who don't have to scrabble in the dirt to make a living or to find food, who don't have to run from bombs and missiles, who aren't being beaten down by oppressive systems of government or prejudice... we had better start taking seriously our duty to care for ourselves, as an act of dignity, as a responsibility, as an act of honour towards those whose circumstances prevent them from doing so, and just because we can.As Parker Palmer writes, 
Some resources for these days in which the world looks so uncertain.(1) How we can respond to the US election resultA fabulous, wise 30 minute talk by Norman Fischer at Everyday Zen, which is actually part 7 of a series called 'Training in Compassion' but stands alone beautifully. What Norman has to say is both a reminder of our capacity to respond and a call to hope in that capacity right when we're least sure what to do.
It has been hard to write these past two months. The familiar flow of words and ideas have slowed to a trickle. My body has not moved into the work with the grace and flow with which I have become familiar. It's as if some kind of gridlock has taken hold, with each part - mind, heart, body - pressing against the movement of the other.It has been tempting to try to force myself into action, to believe the inner judgements and slurs that whisper into the vacated spaces. You'll never be a writer this way. You've run out of anything to say. You're not brave enough, smart enough, honest enough to do this.But this time, I am not so convinced by all the inner chatter as I once might have been. This time, I've been waiting - patiently, quietly - to see what wants to write itself through me.We make production and consumption the highest measure of value in our culture. But we are part of nature, born of nature, and we are subject to its cycles just as much as a field, or a tree, or a river.I am remembering that fields must lie fallow in order to be fertile,spring must turn to summer and autumn to have any chance of returning,and human beings must rest and nurture themselves - often - in order to flourish.
Let yourself listen to what your body has to say.For it surely has something to say. Honour its wisdom, even if you can't yet tell what it is.Start with tiredness. The tiredness that suddenly sweeps over you in a meeting, in a conversation, on walking into a room, when an argument begins, when you're not getting your way.What kind of tiredness is this? Surely not the late-at-night tiredness, the not-enough-sleep tiredness.But maybe the tiredness of bending yourself out of shape, the tiredness of fear, the tiredness of goals that aren't sincere and commitments that aren't genuine, the tiredness of saying yes when you mean no, and no when you mean yes.And maybe the tiredness that your body brings you when it needs to point out that, despite what you're telling yourself, here is not where you genuinely want to be.