Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
This is a perfect evening.
The sun is slowly sinking,
There's a slight haze in the moorland air.
It's this time of year now I can see tiny little flies glinting in the sunshine.
Spring is certainly waking up.
All around me there is birdsong and I'm pausing on my walk because what I want to share with you today is a quote from someone called Ram Dass.
Ram Dass.
And the quote was something I read recently and it just landed for me.
It's one of those quotes that has stayed with me over the last few days and I keep returning to it.
I've actually written it on my calendar so I can keep looking at it and reminding myself of it.
And the quote is this,
The quieter you become the more you hear.
The quieter you become the more you hear.
Now the temptation can be to think that this is purely a quote about listening quietly to what other people are saying and it certainly would work in that situation.
The quieter you become the more you hear.
And you see when you quieten your mind and your mind is quiet and someone is speaking you hear beyond the words that they are saying.
You hear to the truth,
To the soul,
To the essence of the person.
I remember once I was demonstrating well-being listening on a,
It was an online meeting and I was teaching well-being listening and if you're interested there is a course on Insight Timer,
A simple guide to well-being listening you can listen to.
And I was demonstrating well-being listening in action and I was listening to this lady who was quite troubled,
She had quite a lot going on.
And as I looked at her on my computer screen I saw behind her some beautiful cared-for houseplants.
And it occurred to me and it didn't occur to me from a place of logic or rationality but my mind being settled and I was listening something arose within me and I asked her about her houseplants.
And in that moment she switched from being troubled and anxious to falling out of that worry and into a place of calm and clarity.
I had a quiet mind and the quieter I became the more I could hear not of the content of what she was saying but to something else.
It's almost like the field of consciousness that we both exist in helped me see what would be useful for her and I didn't understand why but I just said it out loud and it was helpful for her.
The quieter you become the more you hear.
Last year when I was walking the pilgrimage I had day after day,
48 days of walking and there were times when my mind quietened so still.
Maybe it was the rhythm of the walking and a kind of reverie or meditation that I found myself in.
There were times when I deeply heard beyond my body and beyond my own emotions to something else.
I remember on one occasion I was walking past a little copse of trees and the only way I can describe it is I could hear the trees sing.
Obviously I couldn't hear with my ears and obviously they weren't singing but there was a joyousness,
A movement of something that was being communicated that from my quiet mind I could feel and from that place I could hear them sing.
That's the best way I can describe it.
So today is a reflection for yourself on this particular quote.
The quieter you become the more that you hear.
The quieter you become the more you can hear.
Let me know your reflections on that quote and don't forget I'll be back tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
Remember the quote,
The quieter you become the more you can hear.
