Tuesday's Thought (S18E6)

Hey my darlings so here we are again on a Tuesday with some thoughts on the weekend's episode of the podcast and it was a really rich and deep episode. I was in conversation with Janet O'Tell and the title of the talk, the overarching message was Who are we being in our doing and if you've managed to have a listen to our conversation then you'll know that that phrase really struck me. You know, I think we're often very familiar with the concept of we're not human doings, we're human beings, you know, this sort of this the interplay between being and doing. But it just struck me that this profound, very simple, as so many simple things are very profound question from Janet of who are we being in our doing, yeah it really struck me, so you will have heard, if you've had a chance to listen that Janet is a musician, an author and, really for me kind of, threaded through everything that she does. She is a student of Buddhist teachings and in our conversation we touch on the thin places of life, what the Celts used to call these thin places, these geographic spaces where it felt like the distance between man and the gods was thinner.

And we also talked about the courage to continue, the practice of rest, and of course that beautiful line, who are we being in our doing. And after the episode went live, had a message from Janet, where she said I could literally feel the exchange in conversation that you and I shared as one that was perhaps, if I'm using the word correctly, a conversation from a thin place. And then she continued, maybe the word would be transcendent. I mean, that's pretty gorgeous. And it's been really lovely to listen back because I lost the conversation.

You know, I tend to sort of pride myself. There's a little bit of ego coming in there. I pride myself on being, you know, fairly technically savvy. And so to have lost something in the kind of digital meanderings of my online spaces, you know, felt really challenging and I'm going to come to that actually as one of my reflections from today. So my three key reflections on that episode My sense too is that Janet and I entered the thin place and for me this is the place where the deepest conversations and inner reflections reside, when these walls between ourselves and our outer world, and maybe between us and the gods, are thinner and we're able to see and hear and feel things more deeply and the walls between ourselves and our inner experience, know, our inner truths are thinner too and we're able to see and hear and feel things more acutely and my reflection on that is that being in the thin place can feel very vulnerable and it can also feel really tiring too and it can feel illuminating and empowering and for me I think this is really where discernment comes in discernment about how and where we use our energy and how and where we allow ourselves to come into the thin place.

You know, so just as I'm discerning about who I invite into this space of the podcast, We can be discerning about who we invite into these thin places within ourselves and maybe when we're first doing the deep work it's just ourselves and perhaps a therapist or a guide, someone like me. And sometimes we step into these thin places, you know, we recognise that we're in this sort of deepest form of flow and the conversation maybe can sort of dip and rise like in and out of these very thin places and you know my reflection is that that's a really beautiful thing, when and if it feels safe for us to allow ourselves to go there. My second observation, or reflection on the episode is I'm really curious about the timing of rediscovering this recording, you know, finding this recording. Janet shared that alongside the honour of having a forward in her books from the Dalai Lama, Jane Goodall also connected with her on these beautiful books and on the teachings that are threaded through these books. And of course Jane Goodall recently departed this physical plane that feels like a good way of describing, know, sort of what I sense Jane Goodall talked about when she talked about her own death.

She didn't see it as an ending, she saw it as possibly the greatest adventure was one of the quotes from her. And so I'm not sure there's anything more to read into it than you know how curious it should have been only now that I found the path to this recording that I'd feared was lost. And hearing Janet kind of reference Jane, because obviously it's a long time since Janet and I had the conversation, I'd completely forgotten everything that we talked about really, apart from the essence of it, the feeling of it. And just hearing Janet mention Jane just struck me as like, oh that's interesting. And then my third reflection is the power of perseverance and alongside that, this wisdom about not letting old patterns of shame intrude on the things we are drawn to attend to.

So this feels doubly present here, both Janet's commitment to keep writing and the guidance, from the Buddhist teachings that when you choose to begin to keep going. And though the path may change as you move along it and actually the destination that you're going towards may change, the teaching is to keep trusting your journey, know, keep persevering, to keep moving forward. And my second sort of reflection about this point of the power of perseverance and, you know, not letting these old patterns of shame because like we might be holding a shame story about I'm not good enough, why do I think I can do this thing, whatever this thing might be, you know, would be a reappearance of a shame story, is that for me, you know, I was embarrassed that I thought I'd lost this recording and a much easier route would have been simply to say it's gone and I'm sorry and let that be the end of it. Or an even easier route which truthfully would have been a lot easier would have been to have simply completely ghosted and hidden away. And you know and I think I sort of stepped in and out of that actually over the last few months you know thinking about like oh I can't find this message this like recording it was really beautiful and I felt ashamed, felt guilty that you know this lovely conversation with Janet wasn't going to get heard, that she'd spent this time having this conversation and it was just sort of lost in some digital ether And yet, by by holding space for myself, by holding space for those feelings and by allowing myself to stay open to believing that I would be able to find it again, I was able at last to see the path through and to navigate the technical challenges and here we are.

And so this, you know, as is so often the case with these episodes, this is a tiny everyday example of perseverance. You know, it's not life or death. It's not the really kind of big things and yet these examples of perseverance are really what help us build the muscle memory for persevering in the future, when maybe that ability becomes more useful. So today's invitation actually, just seeing we've tipped over the ten minute mark, today's invitation is how could you beautifully acknowledge a time when you've seen yourself persevere you know however big or small it might seem to you now how could you beautifully acknowledge that within yourself? Alright my darlings, I'm sending love and a hug and a wave.