If this were my last podcast, what would I want to leave you with? Let everything happen to you. No feeling is final.

That is Rilke, and it is where this one started. No script, just a cup of coffee. You cannot change the present moment. You cannot grow your hair, lose weight, get younger or stop the rain in this second, and yet we spend enormous energy arguing with what has already arrived. Imagine a rainbow with only two colours in it. That is a life lived in a narrow band of feeling. Watching the film Albatross and hearing the ending changed how I think about all of it.

One thing to try: Ask one question today. What small colour can I let into my life?

In this episode

• (2:53) You cannot change the present moment
• (4:06) Arguing with what has already arrived
• (5:17) The hero on the uncomfortable cushion
• (6:44) The good times need nothing from you
• (7:39) Born, pain, desire, joy, rain, shine. All of it
• (9:12) Not every voice is healthy, but all of them carry weight
• (10:37) Rilke, and go to the limits of your longing
• (12:44) A rainbow with only two colours
• (15:28) What would love be without loss
• (18:06) What small colour can I let in

With gratitude to

Senga, Jess, Anita, Sue, Evelyn and Glenn

Support the podcast and join the Weekly Calm: stevenwebb.uk

Thank you for listening.

Steven

Links to Steven Webb's podcast and how you can support his work.

• Donate paypal.me/stevenwebb or Coffee stevenwebb.uk
• Steven's courses, podcasts and links: stevenwebb.uk

Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling

is final.

I'm just sat here with a cup of coffee next to no script, and I just want to record a

podcast based

on partly what I've just read, a poem by Rainer Rilke. And that

line literally stopped me in my tracks and blew my socks off. I will return to that line and that

quote at the end of the podcast, and I will read the poem to you.

But if this was my last podcast, which I sincerely hope it is not,

what would be the one or two bits of advice at this stage in my life that I would leave

you with, that I think would be most beneficial?

And I think it'd be a couple of things.

Hi, I'm Steven Webb, and welcome to Stillness in the Storms, the podcast that helps you to suffer a little

bit less.

So today is about living. Today is about a little bit of wisdom and advice. It's about acceptance, and it's

about not becoming stuck. It's about getting on with life, no matter what your situation you're

in. But just before I move on to the podcast itself, I've got to thank some dear

friends and dear friends of the podcast and the meditations. Without them, you'd be listening to adverts now,

and Christ knows what they would be about. So I want to thank Sangha, Jesse, Anita, Sue, Evelyn,

and Glenn. Glenn, huge donation. Thank you so much. You

guys keep the adverts away from all my podcasts. I've always said I'll never put adverts in them, but there's

so many downloads now that there's no way I could do it without you guys. So thank you so much.

If you wanted to support or you wanted to hear about the Inner Peace meditations or join my weekly calm,

just head over to StevenWebb.uk or step One thing that I've learned more than anything else, being paralysed,

being bankrupt, being cheated on, being in severe pain, bleeding, and

having the most horrendous days ending up in a hospital and in the most dire situations, is

accept the moment wholeheartedly for what it is. Because guess what? You cannot change it. There's nothing you can do

to change the present moment. You cannot grow your hair longer. You cannot lose weight in this moment. You cannot

get younger. You cannot change the weather. You cannot change the colour of your house

there's just nothing you can do once the moment has arrived. You cannot even change your thoughts.

I talk about this quite often about people

always say, and I used to preach this all the time, just change your negative thoughts into positive thoughts. Just

think positively. Well, it just doesn't work like that because when you have a thought, and what's deemed negative is

very often actually positive thought because it's protecting you or, like, alerting you to something, and we have a

bad judgement of it. We're like, that's bad. We don't want those thoughts when really we do need those thoughts

sometimes.

So you cannot change, even change a thought. So when it's arrived. It's there already.

You can change what you do with it, the same as the present moment.

So as soon as the present moment is already here, we spend so much of our strength and so much

of our mind power and our energy arguing with was already here.

I wish it wasn't this way. I wish it wasn't raining.

Just, grab the umbrella.

It's used so much that I don't know if I even like the phrase anymore. It's like learn to dance

in the rain, but it's true. There's so much depth to that brilliant quote.

It's learn to get comfortable on the cushion you're on, but not too comfortable.

Don't get too comfortable dancing in the rain, you never want it to stop raining.

But while it's raining, dance. While it's uncomfortable, be uncomfortable.

You know, if you're deep in meditation, scratch the itch. I never want to be alone. Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about getting rid of some of your suffering, because trust me, pain will come along sooner or later.

You won't get rid of it all. But what we can do is just learn to accept that moment.

And very often, sometimes we become the hero of all that pain. I spoke about this quite a length

last week. That hero that suffers from the uncomfortable cushion, yeah, give

it some energy. Give it some, I

don't know, some empowerment, but don't give it too much because you won't be able to move on from it.

That hero also has to have the drive to not only accept the present moment, but also to have the

drive to change the present moment. And suffering either pulls us inward, and

we rest there, or it pushes us forward and allow for both to be true because both are true, and

both of them change simultaneously and change during the day, change during the hour. If you're anything like me or

every human I've ever come across, you know, your energy and your energy levels can change quicker than the weather

can change. I heard a great question the other day. It was a guy having a conversation with ChatGPT,

and he asked ChatGPT, why do I remember the tougher times when I'm embarrassed or when I'm in

shame or when I was feeling hurt over the times when I was happy?

And ChatGPT replied with, well, the times you were happy already did their job.

And boom, just like that. Absolutely.

When things are happy, when things are okay, there's nothing you need to do with that. It's already there. That's

it. It's okay But the times of hard, the times of pain, they, they stay

there until you learn the lesson. They stay there until you've either suffered enough and

you do something about it,

or at some point in your life, a similar pain will show up and you've got the muscles there, and

you go, I know what to do with this moment because that happened years and years ago And there's no

permanent end to the pain or wanting

it's Samsara is, samsara is like the map of the conscious life. It's just

the constant cycle of born, pain, suffering, desires, wanting,

happiness, sadness, the rain and shine. That's life. That's what's so beautiful about life.

It's all of it rolled into one.

It's that, the whole spectrum, the

whole rainbow, the whole emotions, from pure enlightenment to shame and guilt, and

everything in between So when I talk about life and sorry this podcast is going a bit here and there

and flipping to and throw but

you know, grab a pillow and experience it. Enjoy the ride, no matter if the ride is a bit uncomfortable

We're

partly in control. We're partly in control of what happens next So if you do grab a wonderful metaphor, actually,

just thinking about my head. Wonderful matter is grab a pillow, get a little comfortable, but keep your shoes nearby.

That's the whole point, and When we start embracing all of our voices and all of our emotions inside of

us, and I'm not saying give them all equal weight. I'm not saying every emotion is valid and every emotion

is equal, every truth is the same truth, and every truth is perfectly equal. No, they're

not. And every single voice is not equally, how can I say Healthy

But all of them do have some weight somewhere. And depending on where you're to and what you're doing, you

know, if you're climbing a mountain, that voice of hunger is probably not the most important one to have.

The voice of fear or anxiety, absolutely, that has a lot of weight in that moment. But if you're sat

and you've got nothing to do, and you're having to eat for four days, and things are relatively comfortable, that

voice of, hey, I'm hungry. What's in the cupboard That voice is valid and got weight in that moment.

So all voices and all of our emotions and everything that we experience

should be just experience it, enjoy it, embrace it, and

learn to treat every voice as a friend in some way.

Hey, what are you telling me? Why are you showing up now?

Thank you for being here for me.

And it's the same with emotions. If we exile half the emotions that we don't like,

we lose half of the information.

And it brings me back to Rainer Rilke. He was a Bohemian Austrian, and he was a poet

rather than a traditional spiritual teacher. But I think he'd done so much for the spiritual teaching, and

it comes from the poem, go to the Limits of Your Longing And

the poem appears in one of his books, and it was translated, so it may not be perfect words. As

far as I understand and what I read about him, because when that poem just blew my mind, I had

to go and find out a bit about him. And he had a lot to do with the Russian spiritual

teaching and the English translation by Joanna Macy and Anita Burrows, I think.

I'm trying to do it off the top of my head now.

But the line, let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror, just keep going. No

feeling is final. And I think living life means experiencing everything, being part of everything.

No feeling needs to be banished. No feeling needs to get the run of the whole house either. I think

that's really important. You know, it's like a rainbow. Just imagine if

Now, I don't know what the afterlife is, and I don't really take much time in thinking about it.

I think my version of what the afterlife is is completely irrelevant because we've got to think about we're living

here now. And, but you imagine if you did have an afterlife and there was 30 seconds or

the elevator pitch, as some people might say, and you had that opportunity and someone had that opportunity to say

to you, and imagine if they looked up and said to you, oh, by the way, why did you only

choose to see half the rainbow

Why did you only play the first two albums of your favourite band?

That's what it would be like not living your life to the full, just living in the low

spectrum of emotions or living in the high spectrum of emotions. Do you imagine spending your whole time just walking

through forests and loving life and loving everybody and never experiencing the despair and the pain?

That wouldn't be much joy either, because it'd become normal.

And I think the more we realise that we have this whole spectrum of emotions. So you take

evolution. For several million years, if not more than that, humans didn't have these

complex emotions. You know, dogs and cats have a few emotions, but they don't have many. They don't laugh and

smile. They don't play, tell jokes. They're not scheming and plotting. Well, maybe cats are, but I don't think dogs

are. You know, they have a feel good or they have a feel fear, but they don't have all the

complex emotions that humans have. So we're living in a most amazing time where humans are

now experiencing the biggest range of emotions that any evolved living thing on

the planet has ever experienced, and you are at the cutting edge of that. You are literally at the most

forefront of all of these emotions. You can see more colours. You can see in more details

but You can literally look across the room and see in such details anything you

look at with your eyes. How incredible is that? With your ears, you can hear music and different notes. You

can feel emotions. We

spend too much time trying to narrowed down how we're living life because we want to narrow it down to

just being happy or just being comfortable or the paints that we like and the

colours that we like. We have a favourite colour then I have a favourite colour, earthy tones. You know, green

and say to my favourite colours. They happen to be in now, which is brilliant because I think all decorating

has suddenly caught up with me, or they're my favourite at the moment. I don't know. But I think we

just narrow down what we like, and we stay there.

I would love to try different things. It Doesn't mean to say I'm going to like them. It doesn't mean

to say I love feelings of depression or feelings of sadness and shame and guilt.

But what would life be if you did not experience them?

What would love be if you did not experience pain and loss? And when I watched the film

Elbatross and the narrator at the end talking about the birds on Midway Island not able to leave because of

the plastic pollution, when

he looked up and said, for the first time, I understood what

grieving meant

Grieving and love is the same thing. It's a strong emotion, just

the opposite ends. It's

the same stick. It's the same

experience We don't want to chop the stick down to just the end we want because how

will we know the difference? I think I'm going to leave the podcast there because my daughter's just turned up,

and it's great to see her, and we're going to head up to her family barbecue. Seems like I'm always

having barbecues at the moment, but it's summer. That's what we do. I love the burnt barbecue food. Um, drop

me an email, drop me a comment on any of these in the review. And in the review, just tell

me your favourite barbecue food. Look, just if this was my last podcast, it would

be learn to be comfortable with the present moment because you cannot change the present moment,

and try to experience everything. Put on a new album. Pick

up a different type of paint if you're an artist. You

know, experience different feelings. Ask the uncomfortable question. Read a book by an artist that you've never even thought about.

Say to someone, what's your favourite book And just read it, even if you don't think it'll fit you You

might be surprised Other wisdom I could offer? And just some simple, like little things. Meet people where they

are. Stop expecting them to meet us exactly where we are. Try to understand rather than

overstand Remember there's multiple truths. Remember all voices are valid, but they're not all got the same weight.

And if I was to leave you with a small practice this week, it would be, just ask, what needs

accepting right now? What needs accepting right now?

Is there a feeling? Is there a voice?

What am I refusing to see or hear? What small colour can I let into my life? So there you

go. That's my podcast, and hopefully it's not going be my last. But that's my thoughts. You know, accept this

moment completely and wholeheartedly

and expand your range. Just start to enjoy everything. Stay awake, enjoy life,

see the little leaf on the tree, see all the colours.

Ah, yeah. And just thank you to everybody that donates and supports and the emails.

Thank you to everybody on my weekly calm, and Look, take care. I'll speak to you soon, and

I love you.