Turning Towards Life - a Thirdspace podcast

Lizzie and Justin are partners in Thirdspace, an organisation which supports people to recognise their goodness and capacity, helping them bring their whole selves to the world.  In this special episode Lizzie and Justin talk about the Thirdspace Professional Coaching Course, a certification programme in integral development coaching which is at the heart of Thirdspace's work and a project of great joy and love for both of us. Our next cohort is open for applications now, and begins in July 2023.

Over the course of our conversation you'll hear what makes this special programme unique, how it changes participants and what it makes possible, the distinction between 'developmental' and other kinds of coaching, and more about the details and structure of the programme.

You can read more about the course (the 'PCC') right here. 

The world is calling out for change, and still we need to take care of one another. How can we remember to meet each person ‘as if they are a whole world’, whatever scale we’re working on? 

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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:

I’ve noticed something about people who make a difference in the world: They hold the unshakable conviction that individuals are extremely important, that every life matters. They get excited over one smile. They are willing to feed one stomach, educate one mind, and treat one wound. They aren’t determined to revolutionize the world all at once; they’re satisfied with small changes. Over time, though, the small changes add up. Sometimes they even transform cities and nations, and yes, the world.

Beth Clark

Photo by nina lindgren on Unsplash

We can be invitations to one another, showing one another ways of being courageous, or ways of being loving, or ways of relating to others that we’d never imagined before. What might it be for us to stay open to one another in this way? To learn from one another in everything, and to see one another as living beacons of what might be possible - on the scale of the everyday (how we wash the dishes; how we get ready to leave the house), and on the biggest scale (how we move through transitions; discovering what’s worth committing to)?

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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 Appointment

What if, on the first sunny day,
on your way to work, a colorful bird
sweeps in front of you down a
street you’ve never heard of.

You might pause and smile,
a sweet beginning to your day.

Or you might step into that street
and realize there are many ways to work.

You might sense the bird knows some-
thing you don’t and wander after.

You might hesitate when the bird
turns down an alley. For now
there is a tension: Is what the
bird knows worth being late?

You might go another block or two,
thinking you can have it both ways.
But soon you arrive at the edge
of all your plans.

The bird circles back for you
and you must decide which
appointment you were
born to keep.

Mark Nepo

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

How can we learn to bring enthusiasm and aliveness to what's happening, without turning away? How do we welcome in ourselves that which we've exiled - and that very same something in others - and do so with joy and gladness? How do we hold together our wildness and our seriousness, our wide-eyed wonder and our practicality, our delight and our shame? How do we orient to life so that everything that is alive in us has a chance to belong?

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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:

Promise to Stay Wild With Me

Promise to stay wild 
with me.

We’ll seek and return 
and stay and find beauty 
and the extraordinary 
in all the spaces we can 
claim. 

We’ll know how to live. 
How to breathe magic 
into the mundane.

We can be in love with 
one thousand views 
and skylines and souls 
and minds at once. 

Don't apologize for 
your burn, your passion, 
or your enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm propels the 
world.

by Victoria Erickson

Photo by Matt Houghton on Unsplash

'There are only two directions,' writes Quinn Bailey, 'towards and away'. Towards our lives or away from them. Towards life itself, or away from it. But is it always a choice? And when it is a choice, how do we go about even noticing which we are choosing? And what is it to act in harmony with life's longing for us, what with all the complex shaping forces within us and around us that can sometimes be so hard to comprehend, let alone work with?

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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 Only Two Directions

This world has only two true directions:
Towards and away.
The big fear, in the end, is to awake and find that
You chose away.
That the hand
Which held you down
Was none other
Than your own.
Remember
The pursuit
Of that which is not truly us
Renders even the most
Powerful vision useless
Recognize
When the boulder in front of the cave begins to shift
When that first illuminating shaft
Pierces the dark
Do not hesitate long
Do not waste time
Anticipating the griefs
Yet to come
They cannot be helped and perhaps are necessary
On that long
And awkward walk
Towards yourself

by Quinn Bailey

Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

We can live our whole lives caught up in ideas of ourselves that were handed to us from others - our family, our culture, or structures that work to constrain us. But in the midst of all of that, sometimes, if we look out of the corner of our eye or listen to the quiet voice inside us, we discover that something truer to us is calling.

Stepping out onto that path - whether it's the call away to something new, or a deeper way into what we're already up to - will surely expose us to intense experiences and much uncertainty before it can become a home of its own. So how can we support one another in walking the path of vocation when it is no longer possible to ignore it?

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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:

“A true vocation requires shedding anything that would impede or obscure the call. A true pilgrimage requires letting go of the very things most people try to hold onto. In seeking after what the soul desires we become pilgrims with no home but the path the soul would have us follow. As the old proverb says, “Before you begin the journey, you own the journey. Once you have begun, the journey owns you.” After all, what good is a dream that doesn’t test the mettle of the dreamer? What good is a path that doesn’t carry us to the edge of our capacity and then beyond that place? A true calling involves a great exposure before it can become a genuine refuge."

Michael Meade, "Fate and Destiny"


Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

A 'contract' is a way of making sure our interests are met in our relationship with another person, a business, a career. But contracts are a shallow framework for what really matters in our lives - friendships, long-term partnerships, marriages, parenting, or dedication to a vocation. Before long, if we've lived a life of bargains and contracts, we may find our hearts in a deep longing for something with more depth and meaning. And, in this opening, perhaps we might start to consider what it is to live in a frame of 'promises made from love' or, said another way, a life of covenants and vows to something bigger than ourselves.

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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:

A commitment is a promise made from love

A commitment is a promise made from love. A commitment is making a promise to something without expecting a return - out of sheer lovingness. There may be a psychic return in a good marriage, or from a commitment to a cause, or from making music, but that is not why one makes it or why one does it ...

There is something that feels almost involuntary about a deep commitment... Somewhere along the way you realised, I'm a musician... I'm a scientist... I love her. I am his beloved...

In this way, a commitment is different from a contract. A person making a contract is weighing pros and cons. A person entering into a contract doesn't really change. She just finds some arrangement that will suit her current interests. A commitment, on the other hand, changes who you are... Rabbi Jonathan Sacks clarifies the difference: "A contract is a transaction. A covenant is a relationship. Or to put it slightly differently: a contract is about interests. A covenant is about identity. It is about you and me coming together to form an 'us'. That is why contracts benefit but convenants transform."

David Brooks, from 'The Second Mountain'


Photo by Emma Frances Logan on Unsplash

When a wild god arrives at our door... do we just shut it, or could we find a way to let the wildness in? What would it take to inhabit the 'wild' end of the wild-civilised polarity in a way that honours our lives, brings us to life, includes it - so that our wildness does not only live in the shadows but can live in our conversations, our creativity, the way we dance, and the way we respond to the vast mystery we're all in the middle of (but which we often hide away from)? And could it be that by including the wildness within us and between us, rather than pretending it isn't there, we give ourselves a chance to respond with courage and openness to the call of the world around us?

This week's Turning Towards Life conversation begins with an extraordinary poem by Tom Hirons and is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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:

Sometimes a Wild God
Tom Hirons
https://tomhirons.com/poetry/sometimes-a-wild-god

Sometimes a wild god comes to the table.
He is awkward and does not know the ways
Of porcelain, of fork and mustard and silver.
His voice makes vinegar from wine.

When the wild god arrives at the door,
You will probably fear him.
He reminds you of something dark
That you might have dreamt,
Or the secret you do not wish to be shared.

He will not ring the doorbell;
Instead he scrapes with his fingers
Leaving blood on the paintwork,
Though primroses grow
In circles round his feet.

You do not want to let him in.
You are very busy.
It is late, or early, and besides…
You cannot look at him straight
Because he makes you want to cry.

You can read the whole of this wonderful poem at Tom’s website

Photo by Max Saeling on Unsplash

What we won't own in ourselves often finds its way out into the world anyway, but in distorted or destructive form - sometimes at great consequence to ourselves and to those around us. Or we'll project it onto others - seeing anger in them, for example, when it's really ours to work with. But there are other paths, one of which is to turn towards what is 'shadow' in us and find a way to integrate it so it can belong. When we do this, the shadow has a much better chance of making the life-giving contribution it's here to make. This is, perhaps understandably, a far from easy path to walk, but one with many riches - and much to offer in the way of creating cultures in which we're able to take care of others and ourselves with dignity and compassion.

Our conversation this week, hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace, draws on the work of Carl Jung as we wonder together about the courage, creativity, and openness it can take - and our willingness to allow ourselves to get messy and porous - in order to meet, with sufficient openness, that which we would otherwise turn away from.

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:

Meeting the Shadow

Letter from C. G. Jung to P. W. Martin, founder of the International Study Centre of Applied Psychology, Oxford, England, 20 August 1937

Dear Mr. Martin,
It is a very difficult and important question, what you call the technique of dealing with the shadow. There is, as a matter of fact, no technique at all, inasmuch as technique means that there is a known and perhaps even prescribable way to deal with a certain difficulty or task. It is rather a dealing comparable to diplomacy or statesmanship.

There is, for instance, no particular technique that would help us to reconcile two political parties opposing each other. It can be a question of good will, or diplomatic cunning or civil war or anything. If one can speak of a technique at all, it consists solely in an attitude. First of all one has to accept and to take seriously into account the existence of the shadow. Secondly, it is necessary to be informed about its qualities and intentions. Thirdly, long and difficult negotiations will be unavoidable.
Nobody can know what the final outcome of such negotiations will be. One only knows that through careful collaboration the problem itself becomes changed. Very often certain apparently impossible intentions of the shadow are mere threats due to an unwillingness on the part of the ego to enter upon a serious consideration of the shadow. Such threats diminish usually when one meets them seriously. Pairs of opposites have a natural tendency to meet on the middle line, but the middle line is never a compromise thought out by the intellect and forced upon the fighting parties. It is rather a result of the conflict one has to suffer.

Such conflicts are never solved by a clever trick or by an intelligent invention but by enduring them. As a matter of fact, you have to heat up such conflicts until they rage in full swing so that the opposites slowly melt together. It is a sort of alchemistic procedure rather than a rational choice and decision. The suffering is an indispensable part of it. Every real solution is only reached by intense suffering. The suffering shows the degree in which we are intolerable to ourselves. “Agree with thine enemy” outside and inside! That’s the problem! Such agreement should violate yourself as little as your enemy. I admit it is not easy to find the right formula, yet if you find it you have made a whole of yourself and this, I think, is the meaning of human life.

Sincerely yours,
C. G. Jung


Photo by Mohamed Nohassi on Unsplash

What happens when we find out that we are not, as we had thought, separate from the world, but are instead participants in a vast context that stretches back into deep time and that holds us and makes us, even as we make it?

From this vantage point perhaps we get to see that in being living, sentient, relational beings in such an inescapably relationship-rich context we are in some ways very small, and in other ways have the enormous power to shape what we pay attention to, and what we cultivate in response to the the world. And that it is exactly this capacity to choose that can make the difference between our making cultures of kindness, care and inclusion, or those that tear us apart. 

This week's Turning Towards Life is hosted as always by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

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:

WORKING TOGETHER

We shape our selves
to fit this world
and by the world
are shaped again.
The visible
and the invisible
working together
in common cause,
- to produce 
the miraculous.
I am thinking 
of the way
the intangible air
passed at speed
round 
a shaped wing
easily
holds our weight.
So may we, 
in this life
trust
to those elements
we have yet to see
or imagine,
and find the true
shape of our own self,
by forming it well
to the great 
intangibles about us.

David Whyte

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash