Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with Melis Scott.
I'm really conscious that over the last few days when I speak to you it always seems to be raining and today is no exception.
I don't think I'm doing a very good tourist job for the southwest of England.
It has been exceptionally wet over the past four weeks and as I stand here on a very muddy mucky track on Dartmoor sheltering a little bit behind a tree and a stone wall I'm looking westwards hoping that maybe there'll be a break in this rain cloud.
This is where the the weather comes in from the southwest and I can't really see anything so I think I'm just going to go ahead and talk to you and as always if you hear the little drips of water on my coat and on the microphone please do excuse me and we're continuing this theme of living from love and not fear and there's a great example for me anyway to share with you today of how that turned up for me.
If you remember we've been experimenting with living from love and not fear over the past few days.
There's a course on insight timer which you can tune into if you'd like to explore this further for yourself but this is just an experiment of seeing what does it feel like what does it look like and today my husband who's had an operation he had an operation a few weeks ago which means he's not able to drive for a few weeks and we live in the countryside so to actually get anywhere you do need to get in a car and it's really been different for me noticing the rhythm of my husband who's very independent and usually likes just to get out and do things and be with people and carry on with his hobbies he's been at home a lot and I've realized as the days have gone by that for him that's really tough and for me it means offering to take him to go out and see people or do things where usually we just do our own thing during the day.
Now one of the things you've got to know about me and you probably know this because I enjoy coming out and being on walks on my own and reflecting is that I'm really happy with my own company.
I love being on my own and for me a day of resting is a day of writing in my office I just get completely lost.
I light a candle and I get lost in that as an activity but for my husband he's much more active he likes to get out he likes to see people.
So today it occurred to me as I was relishing the idea of a day of writing in my office that actually my husband actually needed to get out I needed to offer to take him out he he's really good he doesn't moan he he would ask me if he really wanted to go out but I kind of knew that if I didn't take him out it would be yet another day of him being in on his own and for me I want to just explain how it turns up for me love and fear because it's not fear as in scared when I talk about fear I'm talking about unsettled thoughts so the unsettled thoughts that kind of were stirred up when I realized I wanted to take him out I had an array of unsettled thoughts all around oh but I wanted to do a bit of writing oh this will put me back oh I'm going to run out of time in my day this is about me putting myself out yet again all those sort of uncomfortable unsettling thoughts reared up and because we're running this experiment and because I'm really tuned in I know when to ignore thoughts and this was a prime example for me when my thoughts and thinking sound like a disgruntled child having a bit of a tantrum I know to ignore them and instead I tuned in and just checked out and realized that yes it was for me to take him out so we went to see a family member and drove off and I kept bringing my awareness back to love kept bringing my awareness back to connection the childish tantrumy thoughts kept pulling at my sleeves and pulling at me wanting attention and I just didn't give them attention I brought myself back to love so today listening to love had me take my husband out on an outing I know it doesn't sound much but for me it's a great illustration of what we what it means to live from love rather than fear it just means to tune in not to the feeling of guilt it wasn't a feeling of guilt or I have to or I should it was a kind of an awareness and knowing that I wanted to take him out and I also had those uncomfortable feelings trying to persuade me to stay in but for me listening to love meant listening in to those loving thoughts and we went out how's it going for you with this experiment of listening from love rather than fear I'm going to return tomorrow with another five minutes in and more reflections on living from love and not fear
