Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott,
And this January I'm exploring nature's wisdom and listening in to what she's telling me about the world around me and about myself.
And today,
As I look around this January landscape,
It really strikes me how barren it actually is.
I'm on the hillside above my house and in the winter this is a stark environment,
An empty environment.
In the summer the ferns and the brackens,
They grow a thick green,
They're usually up to five,
Six foot high,
But in the winter they fall right back and they become straggly and orange and there's not much to see.
They've fallen right back to the earth like skeletons and are decaying.
And as I look at the very random,
Odd trees that are scattered and peppered across this open landscape,
I can see that they are bare branched and without leaves.
This is a landscape that might look very barren and it does look very barren.
It looks really open,
It looks as though life has fallen away and sometimes in January I wonder,
Will things actually remember to grow again?
It has that sense of lifelessness around it and yet there is something about this barren,
Stark,
Open landscape that has the potential that feels as though something can fill it.
This is about seeing a landscape that is going to be covered in the greens and the flowers and the growth and the life of spring.
And it reminds me of what we have in our world,
In our lives,
Where sometimes the landscape of my life feels barren and empty and it can feel as though that is a sadness within me,
That there is nothing growing,
That there is nothing to see.
And yet actually,
What would it be like to see that barren landscape as a blank canvas,
As an artist might see a canvas with no paint on it that is awaiting to be filled with colours and shapes and expressions in the world.
So today I'd like you to look within to that clarity,
That clearness within you to see that there is potential within you,
To see that even though things might not seem to be growing and life might seem slow or sad or empty,
That that emptiness is not something to be frightened of.
That emptiness is actually the potential of what is yet to come.
And you don't have to think or work out or try and make up what is yet to come in your world or life.
That's not on you.
The little you,
The little self can't work that out.
Instead,
Allow your busy mind to settle and listen to that wisdom within and see what that wisdom is asking you to bring into the world,
To express in the world,
To articulate in the world.
What are your gifts that are being asked to be brought into this world?
They'll be unique to you and this is your expression in the world.
And ask yourself,
What am I being asked to bring into the empty landscape of my life?
What is it that I can bring?
Just know that there are no wrong answers to what you might create.
Just allow yourself to create.
See what you're being called to express in the world and paint that on your landscape of life.
