I and Thou
Martin Buber wrote that there are two modes of engaging with others. The predominant mode places I over the objectified other (It). This is the mode that modern humanity almost exclusively uses.
Read the introduction →A 30-day writing journey
Embodying Buber
Explorations into awareness, sensitivity, being in the world, and the world being in us.
The philosophical backdrop is Martin Buber's I and Thou.
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All Essays
- day 1
I and Thou
Summary Austrian-born philospher Martin Buber wrote that there are two modes of engaging with others. The predominant mode places I over the objectified other (It). This is the mode that modern...
Read essay → - day 2
The Body of I and Thou
Summary The structural habits of our body filter our experience of the world around us and reduce the incoming data that contributes to our thought and behavioural patterns. If we want to try...
Read essay → - day 3
An interlude: walking into walls
Stand in front of a wall, at least two metres away from it. Close your eyes. Walk forwards until you touch the wall. Repeat Sometimes the best exercises are those that seem to have absolutely no...
Read essay → - day 4
Lift me up
Summary Breathe a long, slow inhale up the length of your back, feeling it encourage your head higher Once you can feel your verticality being moved by your breath, begin to attend to it while...
Read essay → - day 5
Don't bring me down
Summary Breathe a long, slow inhale up the length of your back, feeling it encourage your head higher. Allow a long, slow exhale to stroke down your front, releasing your ribcage, and encouraging a...
Read essay → - day 6
Aloha!
This fascinating exercise comes my study at Frankie Briers' Wise Fool School. Each week of the course, he invited us to take on a practice and see what emerged from it. This particular week's exercise...
Read essay → - day 7
Aloha revisited
Enter the room, aloha. Leave the room, aloha. I usually have a quiet hour each day before anyone else gets up, if you ignore the fogginess of getting out of bed that walks with me as I fumble my way...
Read essay → - day 8
Welcome the world
Summary Breathe a long, slow inhale up the length of your back, feeling it encourage your head higher. Allow a long, slow exhale to stroke down your front, releasing your ribcage, and encouraging a...
Read essay → - day 9
Gather yourself
Summary Breathe a long, slow inhale up the length of your back, feeling it encourage your head higher. Allow a long, slow exhale to stroke down your front, releasing your ribcage, and encouraging a...
Read essay → - day 10
Standing in the polarity of Yes and No
This is another Wise Fool School production by Frankie Briers. He invited us to stand in the polarity of Yes and No. This has a very particular practice as a standing meditation. He explains: The...
Read essay → - day 11
Thank you
Dear body I have so much to be grateful for that this letter is unlikely to capture all the years. This morning you walked me along the beach, sang to me the hissing of the waves, hummed to me the...
Read essay → - day 12
Encountering real magic
I'm trying to find a way back to Buber, not because I've left him behind, but because I haven't made the connection explicit for a while. My intention is to cultivate the conditions that make an...
Read essay → - day 13
It's all in the anticipation
Breathe a long, slow inhale up the length of your back, feeling it encourage your head higher. Allow a long, slow exhale to stroke down your front, releasing your ribcage, and encouraging a soft...
Read essay → - day 14
Taking my own medicine
There's a wee power struggle going on at the moment. Our youngest daughter, who is a brilliant story-teller, has been given the task of writing a short story. She doesn't do short. We've been trying...
Read essay → - day 15
The first conversation
We had recently moved out of London in order to bring up very young children. I still had a two-hour commute to work each day. I was constantly at the behest of the clock and permanently exhausted. My...
Read essay → - day 16
Fancy a cuppa?
Before you read this, make yourself a cup of tea (or coffee). Seriously. Now, pick it up and then put it down again. Listen carefully. Pick it up. D'you hear it? A slight sound as you lift it? Put it...
Read essay → - day 17
Look at your hands
Look at your hands awhile. Turn them over and study them, their curves and lines, maybe stretch the fingers open a few times as if receiving a gift and then release them. Look now at one hand, thumb...
Read essay → - day 18
The quality of your desire
Summary We do or we don't want things (actual things, or relationships, or ideas). We desire them, or we avoid them or we fear them. Any which way, we are in a relationship with the thing as we see...
Read essay → - day 19
The ideas room
I'm tired. My list of writing ideas has been emptied out. So I sit at my desk, awaiting inspiration. It's an interesting process – it feels as if possibilities are getting edited out just before they...
Read essay → - day 20
Different voices of head, heart & hara
Summary The whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Even so, it helps to locate and listen to the different voices within. Our different parts are intelligent in different ways and, by...
Read essay → - day 21
In the beginning was the Word ...
Summary Learn to speak from the whole of you by talking to each part in turn. Take one word Play along. Take a single word – yes or no . Go stand in front of a wall, say it out loud. In order to...
Read essay → - day 22
Writing the three centres ...
Summary Another way into hearing your whole self speak is to write from each part in turn. I wanted to write about writing from your whole self today, but something's come up. My eldest daughter...
Read essay → - day 23
Practising to show up
The first step in speaking your truth is just showing up. And that - when dealing with swirling thoughts in your head - can be a whole challenge of its own. I’ve lost count of the number of times that...
Read essay → - day 24
Spinning the ropes
I've a new hobby, though it's strange to call it that. It's just something I do most days. I spin a rope. It's about the thickness of my thumb, with a couple of knots I've tied at the ends as handles,...
Read essay → - day 25
Writing as transmission
If you stop to think about it, writing is a torturous path for passing on knowledge. I have an experience. I reduce it down to a few distinct thoughts about that experience. I write it down,...
Read essay → - day 26
Grokking the world
There's a universe between what you can see and you can't see; there's a multitude of noises between what you can hear and can't hear. What's just out of sight? What's just beyond your...
Read essay → - day 27
The nature of meaning
That turns out to be a better title than I had intended - meaning is something we humans create to connect things not obviously connected, therefore it is a human construct. But I'm interested in...
Read essay → - day 28
Silencing
Last week, a meteorite smashed down on a driveway in rural England. The homeowner thought that someone had thrown a lump of coal on their tarmac. Thankfully, the news that day was full of scientists...
Read essay → - day 29
A new start
When I was 15, I was part of our school's Combined Cadet Force (CCF). It was that kind of boys' school – play rugby and other team sports, study Latin and Ancient History, and prepare yourself to join...
Read essay → - day 30
I don't exist
I am formed and brought to life by relationship with others (incuding non-animate and non-human others). Philosopher Martin Buber wrote that there are two ways of being in the world. The most common...
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