What happens when we allow ourselves to truly feel the reality that we will grow old, become ill, and die? How might we practice treating our deepest fears not as enemies but as intimate companions? The recognition that these experiences unite us with every other human being who has ever lived offers a pathway from aloneness into a more genuine and heartfelt connection with others. And when we stop running from what we cannot escape, we might get in contact with a very strong feeling of the realness and aliveness of being alive.

This week’s conversation is hosted, as always, by Lizzie Winn and Justin Wise of Thirdspace.

Episode Overview
00:00 Introduction, Welcome, and Turning Towards Life Live
04:55 The Importance of Finding One's Voice
08:17 Engaging with Deep Questions
10:51 Confronting Fear and Acceptance
19:00 Self-Remembrance and Aliveness
25:08 The Shared Human Experience
35:07 Conclusion and Invitation to Community

Here’s our source for this week:

Facing Fear

I am of the nature to grow old. I cannot escape growing old. I am of the nature to have ill health. I cannot escape having ill health. I am of the nature to die. I cannot escape death. All that is dear to me, and everyone I love, are of the nature to change. There is no way to escape being separated from them…

Looking deeply at each remembrance and breathing in and out with our awareness of each one, we engage our fear in an empowered way…

Most of us don’t want to acknowledge it, so we live more or less in denial. Yet down deep in the recesses of our minds, we know it’s true. When we suppress our fearful thoughts, they continue to fester there in the dark. We are driven to consume in an attempt to forget and keep those thoughts from surfacing in our conscious mind. Running away from our fear ultimately makes us suffer and makes others suffer, and our fear only grows stronger…

Invite your fear into consciousness, and smile through it; every time you smile through your fear, it will lose some of its strength. If you try to run away from your pain, there is no way out...

We must invite these things up into our mind consciousness every day and tell them, “My dear, I’m not afraid of you. I’m not afraid of my fear. It is my nature to grow old; I cannot escape old age.” When fear manifests, we want to have the seed of mindfulness also manifest to embrace it. So we have two energies present—the first is the energy of fear, and the second is the energy of mindfulness. The fear receives a bath of mindfulness and becomes a little bit weaker before it drops back down to the depths of our consciousness in the form of a seed.

Thich Nhat Hanh, from ‘Fear: Essential Wisdom for Getting Through the Storm’

Photo by razi pouri on Unsplash

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Join Us Live in 2025

Turning Towards Life Live Season 1, from September 2025
We also have the launch of our Turning Towards Life live programme which is going to run in six month seasons from September. It's going to be in person on Zoom once a month. We're very excited about it. A chance to expand beyond the bounds of a podcast into forming a community of learning and practice. You can register your interest for Season 1 of Turning Towards Life Live here.

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About Turning Towards Life
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.

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Keywords:
growing old acceptance, death awareness, mindfulness practice, fear embracing, mortality contemplation, Buddhist remembrances, Thich Nhat Hanh wisdom, existential tenderness, human vulnerability, self-remembrance, control illusion, avoidance strategies, everyday mindfulness, shared humanity, ordinary sacredness, life force recognition, conscious ageing, intimate fears, tender ordinariness, universal mortality, presence practice, busyness distraction, consumption patterns, denial mechanisms, awakening practice

People Mentioned:
Thich Nhat Hanh - Vietnamese Buddhist teacher and author of "On Fear," whose text on the five remembrances forms the central source material
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel - Referenced for his teaching about being alive as a blessing
Joanna Macy - Mentioned as author of a previous source discussed in an earlier episode

405: Facing our Fear and Becoming Ordinary