On the tensions between our inner worlds and the external identities we often adopt to fit in. How societal expectations and personal fears can lead us to suppress what’s most true about us, and the importance of reconnecting with the "wild energies" within our souls.

This week we explore how creative practices, changes in routine, and mindful engagement with everyday tasks can help us wake up to our innate aliveness. We reflect on the balance between necessary social conventions and the gifts of discovering our own unique expression, and propose that we each find a way to honour "wonder of their own presence" and bring our unique life force into service to the world around us.

Hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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Turning Towards Life, a week-by-week conversation inviting us deeply into our lives, is a live 30 minute conversation hosted by Justin Wise and Lizzie Winn of Thirdspace.  Find us on FaceBook to watch live and join in the lively conversation on this episode. You can find videos of every episode, and more about the project on the Turning Towards Life website, and you can also watch and listen on Instagram, YouTube, and as a podcast on Apple, Google, Amazon Music and Spotify.

Here’s our source for this week:

The Wildness In Our Hearts

Every human person is inevitably involved with two worlds: the world they carry within them and the world that is out there. All thinking, all writing, all action, all creation and all destruction is about that bridge between the two worlds...

Each one of us is the custodian of an inner world that we carry around with us. Now, other people can glimpse it from [its outer expressions]. But no one but you knows what your inner world is actually like, and no one can force you to reveal it until you actually tell them about it. That’s the whole mystery of writing and language and expression — that when you do say it, what others hear and what you intend and know are often totally different kinds of things.

One of the sad things today is that so many people are frightened by the wonder of their own presence. They are dying to tie themselves into a system, a role, or to an image, or to a predetermined identity that other people have actually settled on for them. This identity may be totally at variance with the wild energies that are rising inside in their souls. Many of us get very afraid and we eventually compromise. We settle for something that is safe, rather than engaging the danger and the wildness that is in our own hearts.

from an interview with John O'Donohue

Photo by Linda Xu on Unsplash