217: Shameless
It's hard to be of genuine service to others from the part of us that worries about being liked. But there is something deeper in all of us that is not at all concerned about favour and is at once fiercely committed, gentle, loving and true enough to serve in an authentic, generous way. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might cultivate the shameless leadership th...
31m Nov 28, 2021
31m
216: The Grace of Hidden Beauty
What if beauty isn't something we add to the world, but an already-existing quality of everything that we can uncover through the way we learn to look, feel, sense and hear? What world would present itself to us if we practiced skilfully looking for beauty everywhere, including in those places (ourselves, others, our collective endeavours, the situation we find ourselves in) where we've already...
37m Nov 21, 2021
37m
215: Turn Mishaps Into the Path
We add difficulty to our difficulty if we imagine, as we often do, that difficulty should not happen, that it must be our fault to be living a life that is far from perfect, and that we have to blame one another when the world turns out to be full of problems. Mostly, we've been taught to respond to difficulty in this way by a culture that tells us that everything can be fixed and that if it's ...
35m Nov 14, 2021
35m
214: You Know When It's Time To Go
If we look patiently, we'll sometimes see that underneath the 'presenting surface' of our lives is something within us working away patiently, persistently, lovingly, courageously. That something - a kind of essential goodness - has often begun working with what we care most about even before we've consciously begun ourselves. What would it be to see and trust that essential goodness within us ...
36m Nov 07, 2021
36m
213: Knowing Now You'll Never Be a Clown
'Imagination is everything', we were once taught by a teacher of ours. And so in this episode we take up the imaginative possibilities of play and laughter, wondering together what possibilities can come from holding the 'darkness and vulnerability in the heart of everything' alongside the joyful, expansive possibilities of play. Along the way we laugh a lot, imagine what it would be to welcome...
34m Oct 31, 2021
34m
212: Always Be Vulnerable to All That You Are
When we learn to include more and more of ourselves, we also become more able to include more and more of one another. Being able to do this - to welcome that in us that's fearful, ashamed or lonely, as well as what's joyful, grateful and love-filled - is greatly helped by finding the bigger-something that we are... the something of us that's wide and deep, curious and compassionate and which i...
36m Oct 24, 2021
36m
211: Never One Thing
Whenever we come to ‘conclusions’ about ourselves or one another we run the risk of missing our marvellous multiplicity - the way we can be both gentle and wild, curious and assertive, narrow and wide, afraid and courageous. There’s an inclusiveness and dignity that comes quite naturally when we see one another’s complexity, and we see it in ourselves, and when we learn to trust our own capaci...
32m Oct 17, 2021
32m
210: Remembering Our Infinite Value
What would be if we could each help one another remember the ways in which we matter, the ways in which are are unarguably of value, the ways in which our mere presence is a gift? Perhaps it would help us find some respite from the strong cultural pressures to think of ourselves as incomplete, or faulty, or missing something. Perhaps it would help us give up equating our value with our looks, o...
33m Oct 10, 2021
33m
209: The Discomfort of What Matters
It’s easy to judge and berate ourselves for getting distracted, especially when we find ourselves on social media rather than attending to the things that matter most to us - the projects, conversations, commitments that we know are most meaningful in our lives. But when we see that our distraction is a result of something very tender - our attempts to not feel grief at how little control we ha...
34m Oct 03, 2021
34m
208: I Come to You With No Need to Be Fixed
We're conditioned to think of ourselves and other people as in need of fixing, and it makes it so difficult for us to open to one another's beauty and mystery. So what if we could cultivate eyes and hearts of wonder at the luminescent half-moon of one another's presence, and receive one another as rivers do as they give their power and beauty to one another? This week's Turning Towards Life is...
32m Sep 26, 2021
32m
207: The Brilliance We Are
Sometimes we catch a glimpse of ourselves that shows us that we are not as small as we think, and we start to see the shining beauty and brilliance that we are. Knowing ourselves this way can open us up to a deeper appreciation of the beauty of others, and offers us a vibrant, compassionate path towards the generosity and creativity that is available to every one of us. This week's Turning To...
36m Sep 19, 2021
36m
206: Through Our Speaking We Create Each Other
Language is a doorway through which we can step into new relationships with the world and with one another, and as such our ways of speaking and listening are a profound kind of power. We are changed by what we say and by what others say. So how do we find ways with language that honour its power, and that open up possibilities and understanding for one another? And how might we be ones who, by...
35m Sep 12, 2021
35m
205: Falling
Can we learn to live with the certainty that we'll lose the ones we love, and they will lose us, without tuning out, avoiding, denying or imagining that it's some form of punishment? Can we learn how to bring together the fullness of the joys of loving as well as the sorrows? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might find ways to help one another enter into the fier...
32m Sep 05, 2021
32m
204: Attention is the Beginning of Devotion
We easily forget that we are quite literally born of the Earth, which is itself the cradle and origin of the life we call our own and the life of everything around us. And in our forgetfulness, we easily forget ourselves and the wonder and mystery of a life we were born into without our say-so and without any instruction manual. Sometimes, it's necessary to shift our attention so we can rekindl...
33m Aug 29, 2021
33m
203: Preparing the Way
One of the gifts of being human is that we have the capacity to transcend ourselves - to grow beyond narrow conceptions of ourselves, to imagine and live into new possibilities, to unfold creatively into ways of living and knowing that gives us a chance to bring our own gifts to others. A lot of our pain and suffering comes when we try to resist this happening, or when we try to walk the path o...
32m Aug 22, 2021
32m
202: Watching Ourselves
Genuine communication is a kind of intimacy in which we let ourselves be changed and affected by the gifts brought by the other person we're communicating with. In this way it's different from other forms of speaking (convincing, making a point, offloading). And it requires of us a certain kind of receptivity not just to the other, but to what's going on with ourselves as we speak and listen. ...
34m Aug 15, 2021
34m
201: Feelings are Beings
Are feelings like objects, like forces, like waves, like eruptions? The metaphors we use for what we feel profoundly shape how we'll respond to them. Should we let them pass, push them away, be overwhelmed by them? Or, as we consider in this conversation, perhaps we could treat them as beings in their own right, with their own kind of intelligence, sensitivity, commitments, and ways of relating...
34m Aug 08, 2021
34m
200: Fast Forward
Many of us have grown up immersed in a culture that teaches us to be anywhere but 'here'... to feel an emptiness we imagine we must fill from outside ourselves, to pursue what takes us far from our most genuine needs, to hide from one another the effect that doing so has on us. Turning back towards our own lives isn't easy, but it always begins with a choice not to continue to abandon ourselves...
35m Aug 01, 2021
35m
199: In Between
We're mostly told that our job is to be in control of life - that's the whole narrative of 'self-improvement' and 'progress' and 'optimisation' that permeates much of contemporary culture. But it's an interpretation of life that barely meets life's real conditions - that we're always in the middle of things, and that many things keep on falling apart and coming together quite without our say-so...
33m Jul 25, 2021
33m
198: If You Sit Long Enough
If you sit long enough, and still, the world might reveal itself in ways you had not, yet, imagined. If you'll dance with the people and things of your life, you might find they come forward and dance with you in return. Because the world is always offering us to our imagination... and our capacity to be in the world 'as if' is one that we don't always remember to draw upon. This week's Turnin...
29m Jul 18, 2021
29m
197: Growing Downward
We're taught by our culture to think in polarities - something is either good, or bad; worthwhile, or a waste of time; valuable, or worthless. And because of this we often judge ourselves and our lives in polarised terms too - we're broken, or whole; empty, or full - which in turn leads us into efforting to 'get' the side of the polarity we judge as the right one. Where does this polarised thin...
31m Jul 11, 2021
31m
196: Here's to Wildness
We've all selected parts of us that we present to the world, while other perhaps wilder parts of us have been pushed to the margins, as a strategy we chose earlier in our lives so we could belong, or be safe. In our adulthood, though, there's an opportunity for those precious exiled parts - with their many gifts - to be returned to our lives. They can do this with our own help, when we discover...
33m Jul 04, 2021
33m
195: One Source of Bad Information
What would happen if we could see that the many 'young parts' of ourselves, with their fears and worries, with their plans and advice, are doing their best to take care of us - even if the information they have is partial and, sometimes, applies only to a much earlier time in our lives. Could we come at them with kindness, appreciation and welcome instead of trying to dominate and suppress them...
33m Jun 27, 2021
33m
194: May We See Beyond Those Stories
We go around our lives hiding much of ourselves from view, 'setting out a stall' that we've learned to set out through all that's happened for us so far. There are gifts behind the face we present to the world, gifts that could be brought for the benefit of many. But often we run from the very truthfulness about the what's waiting in our messy, beautiful selves, because we've assumed that what...
40m Jun 20, 2021
40m
193: I Believe In All That Has Never Yet Been Spoken
It's natural that the process of our growing into adulthood results in our leaving a whole lot of ourselves behind - as we navigate what it takes to belong, to not be shamed, to stay safe, to build a life with some measure of predicability in it. But alongside all of that, what gifts and wonders, what song and words, what works of the creativity that is uniquely human might we bring to the worl...
33m Jun 13, 2021
33m
192: Homecoming
Many of us avoid ever really saying what we think is true because we're afraid it will rupture the relationships that matter to us. But it's our truthfulness with one another - especially about our experiences, our values, our promises and commitments - that's so often called for if we're going to step forward into the unknown future together. So what about learning to be the ones who, in the f...
38m Jun 07, 2021
38m
191: Undoing Overwork
Even if we're doing work we really care about, many of us are steeped in a narrative that our work should always be 'busy' and that it is only 'work' if it profoundly depletes us. But in exhausting ourselves, in living in the 'heroic' narrative of always more and always faster, can we really say that we get to bring our width, and depth, and wisdom as a gift to others? And what is the cost to t...
36m May 30, 2021
36m
190: Set the Tigers Free
What does it take to let go so that something new that is calling has a chance to be freed up in our lives? And what does it take to be the ones who can support others - especially those we love and want to cling to - to let go when it's called for? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about hope, grief, leaving, and letting ourselves be changed, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn a...
35m May 23, 2021
35m
189: The Songs We Could Be Singing
As Maya Stein writes in her beautiful poem this week, our lives aren't 'a stage rehearsal where you skip the high notes to save your voice'. So this week we wonder together about what it is that has us hold back, and hold others back, from bringing ourselves fully into our lives... 'the songs we could be singing while the light takes its own sweet time to change'. This week's Turning Towards L...
35m May 16, 2021
35m
188: We are Brought Forth by the Universe
It can seem so difficult to connect to one another and listen to one another, but when we soften and open and quieten down it's not beyond us to know others and their worlds with enormous depth and sensitivity. As Lizzie says in this episode, we're made for connection, because we were never really as separate as we feel to begin with. This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about o...
35m May 09, 2021
35m
187: The Relational Power of Parenting
We return this week to our exploration of relational power and ask what would happen if we gave up using our power to control people (and in doing so our attempts to get what we want) and instead used our power to liberate the creativity and contribution of others? And how would this shape our parenting, our leadership, and our friendships? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation ab...
31m May 03, 2021
31m
186: Relational Power as Love
It's easy to use whatever power we have in the world as a way to make ourselves feel safe and in control. But what if we used our power not to reinforce being in a position of 'power-over-others' but instead to cultivate the conditions in which mutuality, emergence, and reciprocity between us could be born - in our organisations, with our life-partners and romantic partners, in friendships, as ...
39m Apr 25, 2021
39m
185: How to Apologise
It can be so hard, and so painful, to apologise sometimes. But what would happen if we saw that rupture and repair were an inevitable part of every relationship? If we knew that it is the very act of repair that knits us together into something more real, more durable, more connected? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about a loving, mutually respectful, dignified path we can ...
33m Apr 18, 2021
33m
184: Questions to Ask When Waking
What would we do if we found different questions to ask, bigger ones, than the habitual questions we're asking of life without even knowing we're asking? This week's Turning Towards Life is a conversation about what we might do if we stopped contracting away from life, if we undid our own everyday self-diminishment, if we trusted that we had gifts to bring and that we, and others, could be b...
33m Apr 11, 2021
33m
183: When We Meet
The predominant narrative in our wider culture is that human beings were made for conflict, for dominating one another, for 'getting ahead' of one another. But that's only one story. What if human beings were made for meeting one another, for welcome, for mutual wonder and mutual seeing, for cooperation, for the intertwining of our many gifts? For giving, even when we ourselves have not receive...
31m Apr 04, 2021
31m
182: Vulnerable
How finite everything is, including the time we will get to spend with any of our great loves. And how much we want to turn away from this, avoiding feeling too much of our love in an attempt to try and avoid the inevitable grief that will come with our losses. But to feel it all is one of the great gifts given to us as human beings. So how can we find a way to stay open, ready, and receptive i...
35m Mar 28, 2021
35m
181: A Higher Standard than Effectiveness
We're not machines, but we often treat ourselves as if we are. Many of us in our lives become 'busyness machines' or 'target-hitting machines'. But we feel, too, how small this is as a way to live a life. This week we are guided by Parker Palmer's luminous writing into a bigger question - 'What is it to be faithful to something bigger than ourselves?' It's a life-giving alternative that calls u...
31m Mar 21, 2021
31m
180: The Self is a Gift That Can Be Given
What can happen when we share our 'selves' with each other, making our gifts, qualities and experiences available. How we grow through this, how we long for it, and how much we try to defend against it. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation of discovery: that our selves are not something we made on our own, but gifts given to us by the sharing of others. Hosted as always by ...
34m Mar 14, 2021
34m
179: What is it in Ourselves That We Should Prize?
The education most of us have had taught us how to know the answer, how to be right, and how to move quickly to solve problems. But, by and large, it didn't tell us much about how to be true to the one life we have, nor what kinds of practices of creativity, inquiry and attention might support us in that project. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about how we might start ...
33m Mar 07, 2021
33m
178: Saying Yes
What does it take to not just say 'yes' to our lives and to one another, but to bring our beauty, dignity, creativity and imagination in response? It's a different path to take from 'turning away', and equally different from 'passive acceptance'. Being a human affords us this possibility - that when we encounter fear, shame, wonder, injustice, confusion, or hope, we have the chance to muster a ...
32m Feb 28, 2021
32m
177: Learning to See
When we discover that we're not really separate from one another - that in a very ordinary way we are always deeply shaping and affecting one another - we also open to new ways that we might be of help to one another and care for one another. And we can also find that we can be profound teachers to one another - that we learn to see, feel, and hear in new ways by the very act of being present t...
31m Feb 21, 2021
31m
176: This Morning I Said No
The possibilities of saying a 'bright shining no' where previously we've been in the habit of saying 'yes'. Or a 'bright shining yes' where we've been in the habit of saying 'no'. And on the possibility of newness, creativity and discovery when we greet other people's new ways with wonder and welcome. This episode of Turning Towards Life is a conversation about letting our genuineness into the ...
33m Feb 14, 2021
33m
175: Where Conflict Goes
When we're faced with difference or conflict it's often easiest to turn away, to give up on ourselves and our own values, or to try to force others to agree with us. But what if we were to learn to trust the creative possibilities that arise precisely because we are different to one another? What if we found a way to enter together into the promise that our encounter with the difference of othe...
34m Feb 07, 2021
34m
174: When I Ask for What I Need
Asking for what we need is difficult for so many of us, because by genuinely asking we open ourselves up to the possibility that another person might respond in a way we're not expecting. Said another way, making genuine requests shows us that we're not - actually - in control of how other people show up in our lives. But at the same time, it's our capacity to request that opens up worlds - of ...
35m Jan 31, 2021
35m
173: All the Way Ourselves Again
A conversation about the essential goodness of people, how it gets misdirected by our misunderstanding ourselves, and the gifts of people who see our goodness, support our stopping our usual defensive ways, and who gladly welcome our remaking… and the possibility of being that way for others… hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.
34m Jan 24, 2021
34m
172: Who I Become in Disappointing
Perhaps one of the most difficult steps in each of our development, in our becoming more ourselves, is the push-back we get from the people around us - often the people who are closest-in to our lives. We find ourselves caught between the life that is longing to unfold into the world, and the parts of us that want to keep us safe from shame and disapproval. And at the same time, even as we long...
34m Jan 18, 2021
34m
171: Necessary Boundaries, Enabling Constraints
"Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out" writes Richard Rohr, and at the same time we need to be able to fight and engage with boundaries before we discover what we really need or want. So what does it take to be one who makes 'enabling constraints' for ourselves so that the full possibility of our lives c...
32m Jan 10, 2021
32m
170: Our Learning is a Craft
To be human is to learn... but very often our learning is made much more difficult by narratives of shame, or our demands for perfection, or our worries about not being welcomed by others in our unfinishedness. Learning is both what we are made for, and among the most difficult endeavours of our lives, particularly the learning about ourselves that requires ongoing patience, generous kindness,...
35m Jan 03, 2021
35m
169: Coming Apart and Together at the Same Time
In between our certainty that we’re too small, or too inadequate to meet life, and our fantasies (perhaps even expectations) of perfection, mastery of life, and personal power, there is a middle place. And the middle, if we’ll meet ourselves and one another there, is far from a place of mediocrity. Instead it’s a way in which we can be real with one another, truthful about our messiness and our...
34m Dec 27, 2020
34m
168: When the Unexpected Comes
When something difficult or unwelcome happens, there are many reasons for us to contract away from our lives in an attempt to control what we're feeling. It's a kind of self-protection, yes, but can also be a kind of violence to ourselves. And it often cuts us off from what could most support us, open us, and hold us. So how about learning to connect to the memory of our vastness, and our inti...
34m Dec 20, 2020
34m