Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
Oh it's lovely here out on Dartmoor.
I'm right beside a stone wall.
It's covered in a green moss and at several little points along it there are wonderful purpley pink foxglove flowers standing up straight coming out of the crevices and cracks in the wall.
I've just seen a bee find its way into one of these flowers.
I'm get lost in a tangle of thoughts and feelings.
That's part of the human experience.
I've learned that it's no good trying to fight those feelings or resist them.
It's actually much more helpful just to allow those feelings to arise and to pass through.
So it's really helpful.
This is all part of the inside out understanding of the three principles.
It's all a consequence of understanding how thought works.
You realize thoughts roll in,
They like the rain shower,
They rain and then they move on.
They like the weather.
They come and they go.
But when I get lost in a tangle of thoughts,
It can feel a bit uncomfortable.
Those thoughts sometimes can be because I'm projecting about the future.
So I'm imagining a fearful future and I'm lost in that thought and feeling of this future.
You know,
Wondering what I'm going to do.
Am I no good at my business?
What will happen with my elderly mum,
All of these sort of rumbling thoughts.
And then I might look back in the past and remember things from my past and feel a sense of guilt or regret or sadness.
And so I might be in the most beautiful place in the world,
But not seeing that beauty because my mind has taken me to either the future,
Which is frightening,
Or the past,
Which I'm regretful for,
And I'm having an experience of that.
So this question,
Am I okay now,
Is hugely powerful,
Because what I find is it brings me right back,
Away from those thoughts,
Back into the present moment,
To who I truly am.
And when I look at am I okay now,
In this moment,
In this present moment,
I fall back into the now,
The presence.
And there is,
For me,
Extraordinary peace as I do that.
I remember once I was walking a neighbor's dog on Dartmoor and it was a beautiful day and I was actually lost in quite a lot of thought and thinking about my life and was I doing the right thing and it was my regular thought loop where I kind of beat myself up,
Think I should be doing better,
All of that stuff.
And I remember sitting on this boulder,
This beautiful black Labrador beside me.
My face was in the sun.
Overlooking a hillside,
A little stream valley that were horses grazing around me.
And I asked myself this question,
Am I okay now?
And I realized as I fell out of all of that thought and thinking about what I should be and how it wasn't good enough,
And I fell back into the present moment.
I saw the landscape.
I felt the sunshine.
I saw the dog.
And I realized that I wouldn't want to be in any other place than I was in that moment.
It was so beautiful.
But can you see my thoughts and thinking,
They're taking me away from it.
They're distracting me away from it.
And yet,
As I ask the question,
Am I okay now?
I realized I was in a place of beauty,
But I wasn't seeing it.
It's the same when I find myself not necessarily in a beautiful location,
But I'm lost in those unhelpful thoughts and feelings.
When I ask myself the question,
Am I okay now?
I fall out of those thoughts and feelings and I come back to a spacious place of presence.
Doesn't mean the thoughts and feelings go or disappear.
It just means that I'm back in touch with something that feels more true,
Grounded and stronger.
So my request is that you ask yourself that question.
Am I okay now?
And let me know what comes up for you.
It's always so good to hear from you.
Am I okay now?
Don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another 5 minutes in nature.
