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Today, I want to dive into the big question: what are we really searching for in life? It's a journey we all seem to be on, and I've been thinking about it a lot lately. I’ve realized that what I’m after isn’t some grand achievement or external validation; it’s about finding comfort in just being myself. It’s about letting go of all the masks we wear and embracing who we truly are. I’ll share my thoughts and experiences, hoping they spark some reflection for you too. Let’s explore this together and maybe uncover a little more about what we’re all really looking for.

The spiritual journey feels more like a search than it does a journey. It’s only a journey when we look back on it. At any point in time when we look forward, we are looking for something. I think I know what you’re looking for, because I had a small glimpse.

I’m Steven Webb your host of stillness in the storms. I am also the Mayor of Truro 2021/2022. And this podcast is to help you reduce your suffering by changing your mindset I’m thinking differently.

Searching for meaning is something we all do, but what does that really mean? This podcast dives into the heart of that question, exploring not just the search itself but the deeper implications of what it means to be alive. I share my personal journey, my struggles, and how I've been navigating life’s ups and downs. What I realized is that the quest isn't just about finding answers but about understanding and embracing our true selves. The conversation flows, touching on the difficulties of fitting in and how societal expectations can weigh us down. Ultimately, it’s about the liberation that comes from being genuine, being yourself, and finding comfort in that authenticity. We reflect on what it means to be human, to experience joy and pain, and to seek connection in a world that often feels isolating. I invite listeners to think about their own lives and what it means for them to truly show up as themselves.

Takeaways:

• We're all on a spiritual journey, trying to find what truly fulfills us.
• The comfort we seek often comes from just being ourselves and letting go.
• Life can feel like a search for belonging, fitting in, and true acceptance.
• Sometimes, we need to lose ourselves to rediscover what really matters in life.
• Understanding that comfort comes from growth is a crucial lesson we all learn.
• Being genuine allows us to connect with others and find real joy in life.

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.