Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott up on Dartmoor in an evening where it's quite muggy warm there's an easterly wind which I'm sheltering from behind a deep dark gorse bush which is a thorn bush and the clouds are low and there's a real sense that there might be rain in the air there are sheep grazing on the hillside the ferns and bracken which has been a dark green all summer He's now got little patches of yellow and orange showing through and the hillside is starting to change colour as the seasons shift and change.
And yesterday do you remember we were talking about listening?
And yesterday we were talking about that sense of what happens when you're heard and when you're not heard.
So the words I came up with when I'm heard are things like I feel free and connected and confident and when I'm not heard I feel restricted and separate and confused.
So this has all come about from a deep listening retreat I've been on and I want to take it a step further today.
Yesterday we were just reflecting on what would it be like if I could walk through life feeling those feelings that are attributed to being listened to,
That sense of connection,
That sense of lightness and of freedom,
What would that be like?
Well,
Today we're taking it a step further and I want to share with you what deep listening refers to.
And for me,
Deep listening is not about listening to another person.
So when I'm talking about deep listening today,
I'm talking about listening beyond that person,
Beyond the words of what that person is saying.
And what tends to happen is when you or I talk about listening,
We're often thinking about what it is to listen to the words and meaning that another person is telling you.
But this is different.
Deep listening is different.
And I want to know your reflections on it.
You see,
I'm not talking about the listening of meaning of words.
I'm talking about listening to a wisdom and intelligence that is behind life.
It's ever-present.
It is the connecting force and field of all things.
It's that essence which is in me and is in you and is in everything.
I'm talking about listening to that.
Listening to that wisdom.
You might call it intuition.
It's a field of intelligence that is way more powerful and deep than the shallow choppiness of our individual minds.
And most of the time what happens is we are listening to our individual separate minds.
We're listening to advice.
We're listening to give solutions.
We're listening to our beliefs.
We're listening to our judgments.
We're examining things against the past or imagining a future.
We are listening to a lot of noise.
Now,
If you take that noise away,
If you allow that noise to clear,
Then you have this space of love and intelligence that you can tune into and it provides you with answers to questions that maybe you didn't even know you had.
And it can provide others to those answers too.
And if you listen into that space,
It's like it resonates with other people.
You are deeply present to the world.
The now and as you walk through the world in the now,
Present and deeply listening to that intelligence behind life.
Then you are able to connect at such a level that is impossible in our day-to-day lives.
And when you're listening to another person,
But you're listening from that deep level,
Will that space provide answers for you and to others?
You do not have to even put words into the space.
It's like the space is alive with possibility.
So I'm really curious what you make of that explanation of deep listening.
You're not listening to the words of another person.
You're listening beyond it.
You're listening to a deep intelligence that is the essence behind life.
And what I'm finding as I listen into that,
And it was since doing this listening retreat that I'm sharing this with you,
Since I've been listening into that space,
I feel a deep peace that is profound and beyond anything that I've held or sustained before in my life.
A real sense that everything shall be well,
All shall be well,
And that is one of the most nourishing and powerful realizations I've ever experienced.
Let me know your reflections on deep listening as I'm sharing it with you today.
And of course,
Don't forget to join me again tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
