Stillness in the StormsA podcast with Steven Webb Join Weekly Calm

Episode 61 · 6 June 2021 · 16:05

I Know What You Are Searching For... Am I Right?

What are you actually searching for? I joined the clubs, the forums and the groups, and none of it delivered.

Subject: Inner Peace Foundations

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Stillness in the Storms · Episode 61

What are you actually searching for? I joined the clubs, the forums and the groups, and none of it delivered.

I was looking to reduce my suffering. That much I knew. What I did not see was that I was also looking for permission to be a lump on a chair who does not have to do anything. Comfort is not somewhere you retreat to. It is somewhere you grow into. You were already in it as a child and you left. And you have to lose something before you know what it was. Think how many people you only understood once they had gone.

One thing to try: Sit for one minute with nothing to do and nothing to fix. Notice how hard that is.

In this episode

  • (1:22) Do not take my journey as yours
  • (2:34) What I was looking for was less suffering
  • (4:05) Clubs, forums, groups, and the letdown
  • (5:40) Masculine, feminine, and a broken neck
  • (7:49) Nobody was asking me to be that. I believed it anyway
  • (9:18) Just a lump sat here who has to do nothing
  • (10:04) Comfort is somewhere you grow into
  • (11:30) You have to lose something to know what it was

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Thank you for listening.

Steven

The story behind this one

There are no notes for this one and I ask permission at the start for it to ramble. It does. I was working something out while recording it.

The question is what I have actually been searching for, and I thought I knew. Reducing my suffering. That is the answer I have given for years and it is true as far as it goes.

Look at where the searching took me though. Careers. Trying to earn money. Into politics, out of politics, back into politics. Arguments and opinionated debates. Clubs, forums, online groups. All of it, and none of it delivered for long, and I always assumed the next one would.

The honest part, and it was not comfortable to say out loud. Some of what I have carried is about not feeling like a masculine male. I love the caring, tearful, deep feeling part of me, and those are the traits usually filed under the other heading. Breaking my neck did not help that. There are aspects of it, in the bedroom and elsewhere, that I will leave you to think about for a second.

What changed recently was not an achievement, though becoming Mayor of Truro has blown me away. It was sitting next to somebody and being allowed to be myself with nothing added.

That is what I was looking for. Not out there. Just permission to put down the coats and the hats.

What it taught me

Comfort is not somewhere you retreat into. It is somewhere you grow into.

You were in it already, as a child, and you left. Then you spend decades building roles and jobs and things in order to get back to a place you were already standing in.

I think leaving it is the right journey. You have to lose something to know what it was, which is Richard Rohr's line and one I keep going back to. Think how many people you only properly understood once they were gone. It works on smaller things too. Nobody is grateful for the car for two years. Everybody is grateful for it the day after it breaks down.

The proof came in my mayor's speech. I had planned the sensible version, the history and a sentence in Cornish. I threw it out and said instead that my family had been homeless, that we moved to Truro in a caravan, that I live in a council house, that I am paralysed and single and barely cover the bills.

And if that is not enough, tough. It turned out to be enough.

Questions people ask

Is this episode about finding your purpose?

Not really. It is about noticing that the thing you keep chasing may be permission to stop, rather than another achievement to put on the pile.

What do you mean by comfort?

Sitting somewhere with nothing to prove and nothing to fix. Not a sofa. The state of being able to be yourself with somebody without adjusting first.

Why does it get personal about masculinity?

Because it was the honest answer and I had only just seen it. I do not have that one worked out, and I said so rather than tidy it into a lesson.

Read along

The transcript

It follows the audio. Press any line to jump there.

spiritual-journey · purpose · acceptance · personal-story

Read the transcript

What is it that you're searching for?

What is it?

What is it that I'm searching for?

And what is it that everybody on this earth is searching for?

We enter a spiritual journey looking for something.

And I really, every now and again I think I found it.

And again now I think I found it.

And that's what I want to talk about on today's podcast.

I'm Stephen Webb, and this is Stillness in the Storms.

And it's a podcast that helps you to get through difficult times

in life.

And if there's one thing I can do is help you to think a little

bit differently.

And if you can go a little deeper and contemplate what it means

to be alive and things like that, then I've done my job.

I've got no show notes for today's show, and it might be a little

rambly, and I'm asking your permission for that to be okay.

But I just want an organic show that answers the question, what

are we looking for?

And I'm going to tell you how I've been feeling the last couple

of weeks and my journey to where I've got to.

But I don't want you to listen to this show on the basis of my journey

and what I've experienced.

If you can think about your life during the show.

And this podcast is about you, not me.

I just, I'm just a conduit and I'm using my angst to hopefully for

you to have a little bit of liberation in your life.

And I want you to take my words and do what you will with them

and hopefully they unblock and help you to see your life in a deeper

sense, in a more complete sense, more whole sense.

So what have I been searching for?

Well, it's a good question in itself, and I don't know, it's funny.

We're.

We set on a spiritual journey at the age of 40.

That was when my spiritual journey started.

Well, my awareness of the spiritual journey started probably

started way before that.

I just wasn't aware of it.

And what was I looking for?

Well, I was looking to reduce my suffering.

You've heard me say that so many times, and that's why I do what

I do, because I want to reduce your suffering.

But what does it mean to be living a life without suffering?

What does that feel like?

And some things have happened over the last few years, couple of

weeks and a few days to me inside.

And I think I finally realized what I'm looking for.

And it's nothing that I ever thought I was looking for.

And I don't know if I have the words for it, so forgive me if it

ends up a podcast that doesn't give you the answer you're looking

for.

And of course I can't answer that question for you anyway.

All my life I've just been looking for this moment of quietness,

this comfort and joy, this fitting in, where do I fit in?

Where, at what point am I enough?

And that journey has took me on so many detours from what I'm

trying to do, to setting up careers, to trying to earn money,

to helping others into politics, out of politics, into politics,

in arguments, in really opinionated debates.

I've joined clubs, I've joined forums, online groups, everything,

just looking for something.

And then I felt not let down.

But I've often felt that it didn't deliver.

It was great for a moment, then it didn't deliver.

And I think it's because my expectations were always so high

on what it should be.

You know, if I go to a concert, I'm expecting a wonderful

evening.

I'm expecting a real experience, a real feeling of a high.

And that's right, we're paying money to go to a concert.

It's one of our favorite bands.

Why shouldn't we want that?

So I get that and because I think that's understandable, but

that's not very nourishing.

It doesn't last very long.

And I think I've come to the conclusion that I just wanted to

fit in.

And one of the things that I found very difficult and I didn't

see it until recently, and that's my real difficulty with my

inability to be a masculine male.

Yeah, that's a bombshell, isn't it?

Yeah, just I don't feel masculine enough yet.

I love my caring, loving, cheerful, deep feeling self.

Normally the traits that are associated with the femininity.

But I found it difficult to embrace my masculine self and then

breaking my neck, that makes it a whole lot worse.

You just take the bedroom, for instance, you know, been paralyzed

in the bedroom.

Imagine that for a male.

Yeah, the male dominance.

I'll just let you think about that for a second.

Or not.

Please don't.

Please, please don't.

But you know what I mean.

Where do I show up as a real man?

What does it mean to be a man?

And if you ask the question, what does it mean to be a female?

If you are, what does it mean to show up?

Are we showing up as enough?

And I think the past two weeks, and I know it's easy to say

for me on my journey in what I'm doing now, becoming mayor of

Truro, that is.

That's just blown me away.

And not only that, what I'm doing with it is just I'm so proud

of myself right now and hopefully some of the things that

we're working on are going to really make a difference in tro.

But putting that aside, the feeling that I've done something,

it's really good.

But there's something else that's happened this week that has

really made me realize what I've been looking for.

And it's nothing out there.

It's just the comfort of just being able to be me and be who I

am and myself.

And I got tears in my eyes right now because it just feels so

joyous to be able to let down all of those, those bullshit coats

and hats we wear just to be me, you know, just to sit next to

someone and be who I am.

How awesome is that?

That's what we're looking for.

Not someone, not for society or someone to try to make us into

something we're not.

And don't get me wrong, nobody in society has expected me to do

that.

I've believed that society and others expect me to be that.

Everybody's just asking me to be myself.

But then we don't feel it, do we?

Everybody says, I just want you to be yourself, but that's not

how it feels, you know, especially in relationships with

friends and, you know, especially partners.

It doesn't feel like we can be ourselves, albeit, that's the words

we say.

Just want you to be yourself.

I don't want anything more from you, but it doesn't feel like

that.

But then every now and again you come across someone in life that

enables you to be yourself.

And it's incredible.

You have permission to be just who you are.

And I think that's what I've been searching for.

I've been searching for me.

And not Stephen, not, not Stephen in the way that the ego,

self, that is somebody, it's just me in just beyond the thoughts

and opinions and beliefs, just me, I don't know, collection of atoms

and molecules and all that.

Just a lump sat here that doesn't have to do anything with

anything that can just, ah, let go.

How wonderful that is.

Just imagine that for a minute.

You sit there for a minute and just, just you don't have to do anything

in this moment to be anything.

And that's what it means to be human.

That's what it means to be accepted.

That's what it means to feel comfortable.

And that's what I've been searching for.

I've been searching for comfort.

The irony is comfort comes from getting out of your comfort

zone.

That is so counterintuitive.

Comfort is this place where you don't retreat into.

It's somewhere you go, it's somewhere you grow into, yet you

were in it already as a child.

And we leave that place.

We go.

It's like almost.

We've got this comfort zone as a child, and we leave that place

while searching for that place.

Does that make any sense to you whatsoever?

And then we become so many different things.

We become roles in life.

We get jobs, we find partners.

We try to relive our youth through our children.

We do all these different things.

We write books, we do blogs.

Okay, I'm talking about me now again.

But a.

It's my podcast.

I'm allowed to do that.

But we're doing all of these things, just trying to go back to

that, ah, I'm okay.

I can be myself.

I think it's the right journey.

We have to leave that place.

We have to leave that place of comfort in order to recognize that

place.

And it goes with what Richard Rohr says, one of my real favorite

Franciscan priests, and he says that you have to lose something

to gain it.

Oh, boy, that's true.

You have to lose something to gain it.

And you think of how many times you've lost somebody and then

you realize what you lost.

Did you realize when you had them what you would lose?

We very often don't.

It's whether it's items even.

Like when your car breaks down for two years, your car drives out.

The drive every morning takes you to work.

Not a problem.

One day it breaks down and we lose it.

And then the next day, we are grateful for the car.

We weren't grateful for the last two years.

We were grateful the day after it broke down.

Now we're grateful to that brand new kettle because the other

one broke down.

Going slightly off track with the gratefulness now, but we have

to lose something to gain it.

And that's the reality.

So I think, as Rumi said, we are just a drop going over a waterfall.

And I think what he means by that is we're part of the water,

we're part of the river.

And then we go over the waterfall and we get separated and

we spend that time falling, trying to reconnect, trying to work

out who we are, trying to become a drop, trying to become an

important drop.

And then we drop into the ocean again.

Yeah.

That's what we are and that's what we're looking for.

How can we be just a drop?

Just be human, Just be yourself.

How can you show up and just be you?

That's what the whole world wants from us.

That's what the whole world wants from you.

They want you to just be you.

And, boy, do things change when you just be you.

My speech when I become mayor, there was a part of it when I said,

do you know what I was.

My family was homeless.

We moved into Trurona Caravan.

I live in a council house.

I'm paralyzed.

I don't have much.

I barely have enough money to pay the bills.

I'm single.

I come from a background with very little.

I don't think I said quite that much, but I said something like.

And I wasn't going to say that in my speech.

I was like, they don't want to hear that.

They want to hear what I'm going to do with the year.

What, you know, how much history of Trur do I know?

Do I know how to speak a sentence in Cornish?

And do you know what?

I threw all that out because I said I thought I'm just going to

be me.

And if that ain't enough, tough.

But I think that is enough.

I think if we just be who we are and show up with the open heart

that we are, because everyone's got an open heart.

It's our choice when we close it, when we show up caring with our

gut instinct and we focus on what we love, I reckon we'll do all

right.

Stop focusing on the way things should be.

Focus on what we love.

You know, there's a lesson for today in it, and when you work out

how to do it, please tell me, because I don't know.

I don't know.

I'm working on it.

But I tell you now, I feel more at home right now than I have

done in a long time.

So take care, guys.

That's my podcast for this week.

I'm Stephen Webb and this is Stillness in the Storms.

And if I made you think a little bit more about your life and

about what's important to you and giving you a little more confidence

to show up as who you are.

Let me know.

Leave a review on itunes or wherever.

No, just go to my website, StephenWebb.com drop me an email.

That'd be awesome.

I'd love to hear from you.

Take care, guys.

I love you and namaste sa.

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