Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me,
Liz Scott,
And I'm walking along a lane so you might hear the occasional car go by.
Taking my lovely dog out for a walk in the evening sun.
It's a very slow walk,
He just likes to sniff a lot,
And we're just about to come to the entrance of the village,
And I'm going to go into our village and walk up beside a field that I was walking in yesterday,
My neighbor's field.
Now I love spring,
You know I love spring,
You know I love being outside,
And my neighbor was delighted yesterday to show me around her field.
She's just allowed it to become a wild meadow,
So each year she's noticing different flowers emerge as she just allows it to to grow wild.
As well as all the grasses,
The different types of grasses,
It's still quite early at the moment so they haven't fully grown with their seed heads on,
But as well as all the grasses she was taking me around and she showed me cow parsley,
Campions that were growing,
Pink campions,
Bluebells that were coming through,
Nettles,
There was stitchwort and the remains of some primroses,
There was speedwell which is like a little a little blue kind of haze of blue along the grass,
There were just a range of different flowers,
Sorrel and coming up in the hedgerows was elderflower and daisies coming through and plantain,
And there was just lots and lots of different plants that she was pointing out as we walked around the field.
And it just struck me that I love this whole idea of rewilding,
Of allowing nature to to just flourish in her own way and it just reminds me so much of what it's like to allow myself just to flourish in whatever way feels right.
There used to be a time when I would try so hard to be a better person,
I would read lots of things and go on different courses and try different things,
I did things like neurolinguistic programming and I tried to meditate every day and I did different courses on different things and I absolutely threw my heart and soul into doing all of this and there's nothing wrong with any of it and I'm glad and grateful I did each and everything that I did.
But what I've begun to realize more recently is that there's something about allowing what is natural to emerge and to come through.
As you allow what is natural and create a space for what is natural to come through,
Then you can be surprised at what emerges.
When I walked on my pilgrimage which was in March and April,
What I felt very much is that I was clearing a space,
Clearing a space for new growth but I didn't know what that growth was going to be and I still don't fully know what it's going to be.
It seemed to me as though I was,
I guess if you were to use this image of the wild flower meadow is that I was allowing whatever wanted to grow,
Whatever seeds were already in the ground,
Whatever plants were wanting to come through,
I was giving them space to emerge in their own good time and for me that's almost the most important thing I feel I can share with you and share with myself really.
Because there are so many times when we try hard to be something else,
To be different,
To be more successful,
To be a better person or whatever success or being better looks like for you and what we fail to do is we fail to give space to that unique part of us,
That unique creative energy that wants to take form through us.
We fail to give space to that.
So today's reflection is about creating a space within you,
Allowing whatever wants to naturally grow and flourish to come through.
That's what life is really about,
It's about celebrating who you truly are and then allowing an expression of who you truly are to come through and to be created in the world.
It's celebrating both being a spiritual entity,
Being part of this spiritual energy and also enjoying this spiritual energy taking form in the human world.
So today just reflect on it for yourself,
How might you allow what naturally wants to emerge to come through?
