Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Here I am in Scotland looking up at the Orkill Hills which are stunning.
They are illuminated in the soft light of the morning and they rise up steeply from the valley where we're staying in our camper van,
Rise up steeply into the air almost like a wave rising up to crash on the shore.
Sun on them and the sort of slight haze in the air gives them an ethereal quality.
It almost looks like they're part of a painting rather than the real landscape that I'm looking at.
It doesn't look quite real.
And today is actually all about beauty and just to give you a warning I'm on a cycle path and walkway so you might hear cyclists and walkers go by.
But today is all about beauty and the question I want to ask you is have there been something in your world where you've seen beauty,
Something beautiful,
And it's just been like a trapdoor into your true nature.
And the way that I see it is I see something beautiful and it's like my thinking stops and I fall into that space of unconditional love.
Often I get deeply moved,
I feel teary with the beauty of something.
That's what I'm talking about.
It's in nature,
But.
.
.
I have had an experience recently here in Scotland where I saw something man-made that I absolutely fell into that place of love and joy and gratitude and feeling blessed.
And I want to tell you about two contrasting examples.
So yesterday we went to Stirling Castle and I've always wanted to go to Stirling Castle.
You can see it for miles and miles around.
It's an imposing building built on a rocky outcrop and it's been the seat of power in Scotland for the Scottish kings for hundreds and hundreds of years.
I've always longed to go there.
I love history and I just love immersing myself in the world of people that have lived before.
So we went to Stirling,
We cycled from our campsite to Stirling,
Went to the castle and looked around and I got my history fix,
Which I absolutely love.
And it was interesting to learn that the King,
King James V,
Who'd given the castle a bit of a refurbishment,
Had gone out of his way to show the world how cultured he was and to show off the castle and his status.
And he'd gone to great efforts with the interior to make it look amazing but also on the outside of the castle he'd put up statues on the walls and originally they would have been painted bright colours.
And so we could see what it would have been like through all the digital imagery that recreated what it would have looked like now.
Weather had beaten the painting and the statues down and they looked pretty impressive but it was all grey and austere on the outside of the walls.
And I went there and I looked at the castle and I loved the history and I enjoyed learning about it,
But I wasn't moved.
And I just want to contrast that with an experience we had in Scotland when we came across the Kelpies.
Now the Kelpies are two metal horse heads that are 100 feet tall.
You can see them from the road.
They are utterly captivating.
And they represent,
The Kelpies represent the mythology of Scotland,
Which is that the water spirit,
Which are called Kelpies,
Shape-shifting spirits that often assume the shape of horses.
So if you imagine these 100-foot horse heads were on the ground,
And I guess the illusion was that the ground was like the surface of a lake of water,
And these were the heads coming out of the water.
And as we walked up to them,
I just looked up at these things of beauty,
And my whole mind stilled.
I felt a sense of connection.
I felt the tears wanting to rise.
They were beautiful.
There was something that had been captured by these metal sculptures that touched me deeply.
And that for me is an example of beauty stilling my mind and me being in the place of who I truly am.
So I'd love your reflections and whether that's happened to you.
Let me know whether you've had experiences of beauty like that.
And don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
