Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

52: Telling Ourselves the Truth

Truthfulness with ourselves. A conversation about honesty and welcome, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. In this episode we take up the topic of truthfulness with ourselves. We talk about how our efforts to turn away from what’s true about our experience can be a kind of violence to ourselves. And how easily that becomes a way we suppress the truth of others’ experience. Along the way we consider how the life-giving and dignity-bestowing act of honesty with ourselves can open...

50: Returning to the Path

Tantrums - and what we do when life falls short of our expectations. A conversation about intimacy with the truth of our lives, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Our source for this week is from Alan Lew’s ‘This is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared‘. In our conversation we talk about tantrums, what we do when life falls short of our expectations, the simplicity and difficulty of returning to intimacy with the truth of our lives, and how we can only really do this in the c...

49: The Blue is the Light That Got Lost

The beauty and possibility of our incompleteness. A conversation about the mistake we make when we try to be perfect. With Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Our conversation opens with an exploration of the blue of the sky and of the sea, from Rebecca Solnit’s ‘Field Guide to Getting Lost’. We consider together how it’s the very incompleteness of a human being that gives us our particular kind of beauty and possibility, and the mistake we make when we try too hard to compare oursel...

47: The Silent Work of Loving

Loving what we're in the midst of. A conversation about bringing lightness to our endeavours, with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise from Thirdspace. In this conversation we consider together how the act of loving what we’re in the midst of, and who is around us, can be the first step to a more expansive and inclusive orientation to life. And that this itself has the possibility of relieving difficulty and bringing a necessary lightness to our endeavours. Along the way we consider the gifts of fr...

48: Learning to Nourish Ourselves

Reclaiming our aliveness and the grip of our addictions. A conversation about paying attention to our lives and the felt-sensation of our bodies. With Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. Our conversation opens with an excerpt from Christine Caldwell’s book ‘Getting Our Bodies Back‘. We consider together how the culture most of us live in actually encourages us to take up addictive behaviour as a way of distancing ourselves from our experience (and we include in our definition of addi...

46: I Place My Trust Only in You

Developing a faith in life that can sustain us through the inevitable difficulties we face. A conversation with Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace. This conversation begins with Norman Fischer’s Zen-inspired translation of an ancient Hebrew poem, most commonly known in our culture as ‘Psalm 16’. Norman has done amazing work on bringing out the simplicity and beauty of words, revealing the deep possibilities of these poems so often obscured by flowery and complex translations, and in ...

45: Wake Up Lovers!

The perils of seeing ourselves as separate. A conversation inspired by a Rumi poem, with Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace. In this conversation we consider together the perils of seeing ourselves as separate – from one another and from life – and how our mistaken sense of separateness leads so easily to fear and isolation from the deep sources of relationship, love and courage that are available to us all. Along the way we consider what it is to be in a long-term relationship or ma...

43: On Friendship

44: Until it Flowers From Within

41: Never Not Broken

42: The Gift of Not Knowing

40: Through the Wall of Flame

39: In Safe Hands

38: Practicing Radical Self-Responsibility

37: On Feeling Fraudulent

36: Don't Be Ashamed to Be Human

35: And For No Reason

34: Practice, Not Events

33: The Journey of the Wildflower

31: Transforming Our Wounds

32: Hey! I’m Talking to You!

29: Soul Food – The Power of the Way

30: Even The Word ‘Obstacle’ is an Obstacle

28: The Paradox of Change

26: This is Your Assignment: Focus

25: Giving Up What No Longer Works

27: Identity and Integrity

24: A Ritual to Read to Each Other

23: The Clearing

22: Beyond What Goes Wrong

In this episode Lizzie and Justin 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 to), 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. ...

20: Because I Was Scared

Here’s episode 20 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this episode Lizzie and Justin talk about being afraid – how it paralyses us and turns us away from ourselves and others, and what comes from owning up to being scared and knowing others as afraid also. The source is from our friend Jo...

21: Welcoming Ourselves and Others

Here’s episode 21 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this episode Lizzie and Justin 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 loo...

17: What to Do When You’re Stuck

Here’s episode 17 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this episode Lizzie and Justin talk together about stuckness - what it is, how our efforts to deny it or overcome it can end up being unhelpful, and the deep quality of welcome that's required for stuckness to flower into whatever it i...

18: Stand Still. The Forest Knows Where You Are

Here’s episode 18 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this episode Lizzie and Justin talk together about being lost – a phenomenon that touches most of our lives at some point or another, even when we pretend it’s not so. The source for our conversation is a beautiful poem by David Wagone...

19: Trusting Your Unique Shape

Here’s episode 19 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this episode, Lizzie and Justin talk about Rainer Maria Rilke's poem 'The Swan'. In particular we take up the question of faith in ourselves - what does it take to trust in the particular shape in which we're made, even though it bring...

16: The Right Time to Hope

Here’s episode 16 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this episode, Lizzie and Justin talk about 'The Right Time to Hope', a piece written by Justin for his blog and reproduced below. Along the way we talk about the importance of playful experimentation in finding a wider space to stand i...

14: Advice from the Dying to the Living

Here’s episode 14 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this conversation we began with this piece from the Long Now Foundation, about what the living can learn from the dying. We consider the importance of welcoming everything, even what we can’t change – and that while not everything can ...

12: The Cradling by Joanna Macy

Here’s episode 12 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life ‘The Cradling’, begins with a beautiful and powerful meditation from the work of Joanna Macy reproduced below. We ask ourselves what possibilities there are when we remember the extraordinary and unlikely evolutionary background from whic...

10: The Invisible Tug Between You and Everything

Here’s episode 10 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life It’s so easy to feel our separateness from everything. For a start, we always experience ourselves at the centre of our lives, right where our body is, while people and things come and go around us. We can easily conclude that we are the...

11: Oh Beautiful Sky That We Cannot Change

Here’s episode 11 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In Oh Beautiful Sky we begin with a poem written by Lizzie’s husband Matthew for his daughter. Our conversation turned into the topic of power – how we try to have power over others and over the world, and the difficulty this brings. And ...

13: How to Know When You’re Wounded

Here’s episode 13 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this episode, Lizzie and Justin talk about 'How to Know When You're Wounded', a piece written by Lizzie about how our inevitable hurts can have us turn away from life, in an attempt to manage our own experience, or can be - as the poet...

15: Turning Our Lives into a Celebration

Here’s episode 15 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life This week Justin & Lizzie began with the poem “Sunflowers’ by Mary Oliver. Among other topics we talk about the long and necessary work of turning our lives into a celebration and of undoing our sense of aloneness, if we’re going to find ...

9: For the Sake of Heaven

Here’s episode 9 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life This week we begin with Jennifer Wellwood’s poem “Unconditional“. We talk together about how difficult it can be to really accept our experience, how easy to run from it, and the consequences. Along the way we consider why it is that human...

2: The Longing for Realness

Turning Towards Life is a project of ThirdSpace, presented weekly by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn. Each conversation is presented live on FaceBook on a Sunday morning. This week we take up a conversation about realness and the openness to others that it requires, and what it is to allow ourselves the vulnerability that realness inevitably entails. You can find all the sources and details of our FaceBook group at turningtowards.life Photo by Angello Lopez on Unsplash

8: The Wild Edge of Sorrow

Here’s episode 8 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life This week the source for our conversation was 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 fe...

6: I Am an Emotional Creature

Here’s episode 6 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life In this episode 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....

3: The Hidden Cost of Hiding

Here's ‘The Hidden Cost of Hiding', Episode 3 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by thirdspace coaching in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can join in the growing online community around this work here: http://turningtowards.life  This week we take up the topic of hiding – and in particular ways in which our working lives can be an opportunity for us to hold back from the world and keep ourselves safe, or ...

7: Personal Guidelines for the Great Turning

Here’s episode 7 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life 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, en...

4: Fuel for Your Fire

Here’s episode 4 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life This week the source for our conversation is John Neméth’s song ‘Fuel for Your Fire’. We talk about how the inevitable difficulties of life can be drawn upon to support our courage, action and contribution – how difficulties can be part of...

5: Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

Here’s episode 5 of Turning Towards Life, a weekly live 30 minute conversation hosted by Thirdspace in which Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn dive deep into big questions of human living. You can find all our sources and more information at turningtowards.life Our source this week is 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 re...