Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
Oh it's a blowy old day today.
We really get the south westerlies off the Atlantic and Dartmoor because it's quite high up.
The moorland here is very exposed to to the wind.
So I'm up on Dartmoor but I've hunkered in between two hillsides or two hillocks was probably a better description and I am sheltered from that wind and from my vantage point I can look up to the beacon which now the hillside which was a fresh green in the summer,
Green with the ferns that cover it,
The bracken that covers it,
Is now going a tinge of orangy brown and the dark green of the ferns is starting to dissolve into the orange of autumn.
And today as I was walking up the lane and I was hearing the rush of the wind in the canopy of the beech trees it reminded me of listening to a train,
A train rushing through a train station and it's interesting because actually that's a metaphor that I'd love to share with you today.
I heard it in the week and I just found it really helpful.
I thought I really want to share that with you and it's a metaphor that will really help you understand the nature of thought and so if you remember having come across the inside out understanding and the three principles,
My focus as a teacher is not in trying to change thought or have different thinking or think positively.
What I want to help you understand is the nature of thought,
Is how thought and thinking actually works.
So imagine that you're in a train station and this is a central place all the trains go through and you have the option to jump on and off of trains.
Well imagine that those trains are actually thought trains.
So it quite literally isn't it we talk about a train of thought but these are thought trains so you can leap onto one of these thought trains and you will get carried off on this thought train.
And that's what tends to happen when we don't understand the nature of thought.
What tends to happen is we leap onto a train of thought,
It whizzes us away and we get completely lost in the story and imaginings of what that train of thought is telling us.
Let me give you an example,
I was sitting at my computer and I knew I needed to set up an email account on my computer and I had a train of thought that took me off feeling hard done by,
I don't like technology,
This is going to be difficult,
I don't know what to do,
I need help,
I hate doing this kind of stuff,
I hate all the technology.
I mean can you feel the feelings I probably would have had as I really was feeling a bit like I don't want to do this.
Now that's the equivalent of jumping on a thought train.
It's a train of thought,
I am getting lost in a world that doesn't exist.
I'm getting lost in a world of technology that I think is difficult even though I'm not actually embarking or experiencing that in the moment.
That is a train of thought and we do that all the time where we imagine things about what people are thinking about us or what we think people should do or we should do or whether we give ourselves a hard time or if we feel guilty.
For example,
If you feel guilty,
You've just hopped on the guilt train,
That's all and you've got lost on the guilt train and it's taking you further and further away from the station.
Now the beauty of what we're talking about here when it comes to thought is that unlike trains in reality which take you further and further away from the station,
The truth is you never leave the station and as soon as you realise that you have jumped onto a thought train,
The realisation,
The noticing and the looking within,
Looking towards your inner compass,
Looking in this case,
The metaphor will be looking in towards the train station itself,
That place of presence,
Immediately brings you back to the train station.
So you don't need to do anything if you find that you've got lost on a thought train,
You don't need to try and find a series of trains to get you back to the station,
It's much simpler than that.
As soon as you realise what's happening,
As soon as you realise you've got lost in thought and imagining and stories,
Bringing your awareness and attention back within,
Back within to that space of presence and stillness and clarity and love within you,
That will immediately take you off the thought train,
Bring you back to the present moment,
Bring you back to the train station.
So don't worry if you get lost or if you catch a thought train,
Just bring yourself back,
Look within and you once again will find yourself in a place of solidness,
Clarity,
Love and compassion.
