Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott.
I'm up on Dartmoor,
Right beside a stream.
You might be able to hear it trickling in the background behind me.
I've turned my back to a very pleasant breeze that is blowing across the moorland.
It's not as hot as it has been,
The temperature though is still warm,
And this is such a welcome breeze to cool me down.
And I'm pausing at,
We call it the stream crossing,
It's where the stream sort of broadens out pick your way across it using stones.
And this is often a place where the animals come down off the moor to drink.
And today's reflection is really looking at the key and simplicity of the message that I share.
And it brings it right back to who we truly are.
This sense of realization,
Awakening.
To realize that we are not the stories we tell ourselves we are.
We are something deeper than that,
Something more fundamental,
More ever-present.
We are the energy of life.
And I'm going to tell you this little story to kind of,
It landed for me and made me smile and I'm hoping it will make you smile too.
I heard it.
In the week and it was a story about a father and son and they decided they were going to construct a garden shed and they bought it flat packed so they had all the elements that they needed with the wood and they together they.
.
.
Put in the foundations,
They put in the footings,
They put up the walls and then they put on the roof of this shed and they worked together and it was a really special time they were having together,
Father and son working together.
And just as they finished the roof,
And they were looking around the shed thinking,
Done a good job.
They decided they'd go and have a look at it from the outside.
And here's where the problem started,
Because when they tried the door of the shed,
They realised that it was locked.
And they didn't have to kill them.
So they had built a whole shed around them.
And they couldn't get out of the door because the door was locked.
Now,
This just made me smile.
I can imagine myself in a similar situation thinking,
Oh,
I forgot something really important and basic,
And that's now going to hamper my whole project.
They saw that they only had one option,
And that was to dismantle the shed,
Get outside of it,
Unlock the door,
And then go through the whole process again.
But what struck me about this story was the imagery of this shed.
And it reminded me in a way of the way that you and I build up stories about ourselves.
We build them a bit like the shed.
We build up the walls of who we are,
The past that we've got,
Our characteristics and skills and strengths,
What we like,
Our future,
Our roles.
And it's a bit like we build up this shed all around us us of what we say we are in the world and in the end we put on the roof And it can feel absolutely that that is the sum of who we are,
All the thoughts and stories that we've created about ourselves.
But the difference in this story and in this analogy is that when you remember who you truly are,
And this is the point of today's reflection,
Is when you look inside and feel and touch that space,
That universal energy,
Love.
That sense of expansiveness,
Awareness,
That sense of being.
When you realize that that is who you truly are,
Well,
That is the equivalent of realizing you've got the key in your pocket and you can just unlock the door and leave that shed behind you.
You don't need to dismantle your shed.
You don't need to do a lot of heavy lifting about examining the past and understanding what was going on and your limiting beliefs and all of that.
All you need to do is to realise who you truly are,
And that is the key out of the stories that you have told about yourself.
There is freedom,
And the freedom is the realisation in who you truly are.
So today is just a reminder to keep looking within,
Keep looking to that spaciousness,
That awareness,
That sense of presence within you.
That is the place to look for the key to life,
Nowhere else.
I'd love to know your reflections on today's story.
Do let me know.
And of course,
Don't forget,
I'll be back again tomorrow with another five minutes in nature.
