Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott,
Joining me today on the 37th day of my pilgrimage as I walk across England following the energy currents of the Michael and Mary line.
And right at this moment I'm in a woodland in Hertfordshire called Wayne Wood,
W-A-I-N.
And I've paused,
The woodland is just coming into leaf,
It's resplendent in that fresh greenness of leaf and I'm quite near Luton Airport so you will hear the occasional aeroplane go overhead and bluebells are coming out.
The floor of the woodland is thick with a green shiny leaf and the first of the bluebells are coming through.
They're not at their peak yet but when they are this woodland floor will just be a haze of blue.
It's the most astonishing thing to see,
A woodland of bluebells.
And I'm stopping here because as I came into the woodland there was an information board and the man who wrote Pilgrim's Progress,
John Bunyan,
In the 1600s,
I mean that's a very,
Very well-known piece of English literature,
It might not be well-known across the world,
I get that,
But first of all he wrote Pilgrim's Progress and he used to come to this woodland,
Of course myself as a pilgrim,
My ears or eyes pricked up when I was reading this information.
And what I didn't know about John Bunyan in the 1600s,
Which is when he lived,
Is he was a Baptist preacher and what he preached was deemed as offensive to the Church of England at the time.
So he would come to this woodland,
And in fact he came to the spot where I'm actually standing now,
Which is a natural amphitheatre in the woodland,
It's sort of like a ditch in the ground,
And he would preach and people would come here to listen to him under the cover of darkness,
Because what he said was not being said in society at the time openly.
Now he wasn't preaching against Christianity,
He was preaching from his heart as he saw Christianity,
And it just so happened that it was against the cultural understanding of the time.
And I think for me,
Just as I stand here looking at this natural amphitheatre in Wayne Wood,
For me that message is really important,
Speak my truth,
Speak my truth authentically.
He did that,
He came here and spoke his truth as he saw it from his heart,
And for me it's about speaking my truth from my heart.
Now my truth is not the truth,
It's my interpretation of the world,
And yet I am pointing to an ultimate truth that is beyond words.
That's how I see what I'm about in the world,
Is there is an ultimate truth,
And the way that I see it might differ from the way other people see it,
But the ultimate truth as I see it is this oneness and connection in life.
We are all one.
And the temptation for me is to see that we are all individuals doing our own thing,
And that's just not the way it works.
As I see it,
We are all from the same energy,
The universal energy,
The God energy,
The spiritual energy,
From which we all are expressions and creations.
We are expressions and creations of that energy.
So speaking my truth in a world that doesn't want to hear it is,
Again at times feel quite vulnerable,
And I say people don't want to hear it,
I think the people listening to this will be open to it,
Because here on Insight Timer there is an openness and a willingness to listen,
But outside of this space,
That's when it's important for me to speak my truth.
Because for me,
As I have understood more deeply that I am not a separate individual trying to find my way in the world,
I am actually part of the universal energy of life,
And I am an expression of that energy in the world,
That has made all the difference to me.
All of the difference.
And I would love others to get a sense of that for themselves too.
So just standing here where John Bunyan stood and preached,
And knowing that he spoke his truth,
Is exactly the message I needed to hear today.
