Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott and I am feeling tingly with aliveness.
I've just been up on Dartmoor,
It's been a dry day,
The sun has been shining and there's been a very cold north easterly wind,
Bitterly cold,
As I've walked up onto the moorland.
It's blasted me,
So cold it made my face ache when I got gusts of wind into my face and I have been walking a neighbour's dog just as a favour.
She saw me as I was leaving to go for a walk and we had a chat and I realised that she was going to struggle to walk her dog today,
So I said well why don't I take her out,
I'm going for a walk anyway and I've had the most glorious companion,
A black Labrador.
She's as good as gold,
Trots to heel and always comes back when I call her.
Very different from my old dog who had a little bit more of an adventurous spirit and I had to keep on a lead all the time because he used to go off on his own little explorations,
So this has been lovely.
I do love walking a dog and I love getting out and I guess today is a real reflection on the gift it is to be alive,
That's exactly how I feel at the moment.
I feel this aliveness,
This buzz,
I feel joy,
There's a sense of calm and peace when I get out and I'm out on my own and I'm walking and just feeling my mind settle and experiencing the rhythm of my feet and also the strength of my legs and the fitness of my body and just that kind of oneness with the natural world around me.
It's been an absolute joy today to be alive and I know that this won't last in the same way that when I get lost in fearful insecure thinking and I get a little bit low or depressed I know that that won't last.
I also know that this won't last and I say it won't last because all that happens is that whilst my natural state is one of peace,
Joy,
Wisdom,
Love,
That is my natural state.
Thought comes in and clouds it over and that is the nature of what it is to be human.
There are many people who think that the whole role of being a human is to get through life feeling happy all the time.
I used to think that,
I used to believe that it was my job to be happy all the time and my job to help my clients be happy all the time and it was such a relief and a release and a sense of freedom when I began to see that it didn't work like that.
Life works differently.
I wanted life to work in a way,
In a particular way and it doesn't work like that and there's been a real sense of freedom to realize that the state of being human is that yes we are made of the energy of life.
We are made of peace,
Love,
Wisdom,
Joy.
All of that is who we truly are and we are humans.
We are the energy of life,
This God energy,
This spiritual energy taking form of the human being and in doing that the form it takes means that I,
You,
We all fall in and out of thoughts,
Stories,
Moods,
Different states of mind and it's not about getting rid of those states of mind that feel uncomfortable,
It's just about embracing them.
A bit like today,
I just stood in the wind and felt the force of it and knew that it was cold,
It was going to be difficult walking,
It was tough going at times but I just knew I could just brace myself against it and the wind was absolutely nothing to be frightened of and that's a little bit like being human for me is I have these intense emotions and thoughts and sometimes feel uncomfortable and sad and depressed but that's just being human.
I don't need to get rid of it.
It's about being with those moments and knowing that they will pass and today I've just had the most delicious experience of a sustained sense of this joy,
Wisdom and peace as it's accompanied me on the walk along with my wonderful Labrador companion.
So today is all about recognising what it is to be human.
Don't try and fight the negative stuff,
Don't try and get rid of it,
Just be with it,
Allow it to blow through and feel that joy beneath you.
Feel it,
Look towards it,
Bring your awareness towards it,
Bring your awareness towards the peace and then what happens is there will be times you have moments of peace in your life and you'll know that they will go because they'll get clouded over by thought but it's okay,
There's nothing to worry about.
It's called being human.
We are spiritual beings having a human experience or maybe it's more accurate to say we are a spiritual being having a multitude of human experiences and everything we feel is exactly the way it's meant to be.
