Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm sitting on a bench on the edge of a golf course at Dunbar overlooking the shoreline.
It's a rocky shoreline with rocks covered in seaweed,
Rock pools,
There are birds in and amongst them sort of feeding and the tide is slowly edging its way in just a gentle,
Gentle whoosh of the waves as they make their way over the rocks coming in and if I look to my left there's this really expansive yellow orangey beach and I can see the tides and the waves slowly and gently rippling up the edge of the beach and out on the rocks the birds are feeding.
I think I've identified,
I can see a swan,
I didn't know swans actually came out to the sea but I'm pretty sure I can see a swan.
I think I can see a heron which I didn't also associate with the sea and I've seen a little egret in a little estuary wading and I can see some oyster catches.
I don't know seabirds very well so I'm learning as I go and it's just a really wild natural feel to the outlook that I'm looking out onto and today is a real reflection on how little I know and my assertion is how little any of us know.
We live in a world where we're wrapped up in interpreting the world through our five senses,
What we see,
Touch,
Feel,
Taste and smell and because the world is interpreted in that manner we dismiss what we don't see and I came up quite close to this with a visit we took to a sea life centre just down the Scottish coast in North Berwick and in the sea life centre it was a rainy old day so we thought we'd go indoors.
There was a video playing which displayed the ecosystem of what happens beneath the waves so as I look out on the ocean it's a sort of bluey grey gentle rippling mass of water and what this video showed me is what goes on underneath and in this colourful world of squid and anemones and an octopus and crabs and all these fish and sea creatures that I don't even know the names of living and feeding and having a life underneath these waves it just stopped me in my tracks because here as I sit on this bench overlooking the ocean I have no sense of what goes on underneath the waves and yet having seen that video I know it's teeming with life and it just strikes me as I reflect more generally on how little I know about the spiritual world,
About the world beyond our senses.
We live in a culture and a land that really puts a spotlight on what we can see,
Feel and touch.
It puts a spotlight on the use of our intellect to work things out and yet it seems to me as if there is a vast swathe of this world that I know little about.
I know enough to look in that direction but ultimately I don't know that much about and for me in my life it's this other world,
This spiritual world,
This world of clarity,
Of love,
Of compassion,
This world of presence.
This is the world that I am curious about and even though I can't discern it using my senses I know to look with my awareness and explore it because that is going to show so many riches for me.
So today's five minutes in nature is just an encouragement for you is to look beyond and have the curiosity and courage to look beyond what your senses are telling you and to look within to a world that is dictated with the gentle intuitive feelings and the senses of something more vast,
Rich and nourishing than anything you can get in this material world.
So my encouragement to you today is as always look within and see if you can start to spy a world that offers such riches and nourishment that will keep you going day after day.
