Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Oh my goodness,
I am in my happy place.
I'm sheltering behind a dark,
More grey stone wall.
Down below me stretches the arable fields,
The green fields of the South Hams,
All the way down to the ocean.
If I look east,
I can see wafts of mist.
It almost looks like smoke rising off the land.
And above me there's blue sky.
And I'm out with my faithful little companion.
I take her walking out every week,
A black Labrador.
She's a beautiful dog to walk,
So biddable,
So keen to please.
And we have a bit of an arrangement that I'm allowed here to stop and have a chat with you,
And I give her plenty of opportunities to stop and have a sniff.
In fact,
She's sniffing away right as I speak,
Right at this minute.
And this is my happy place,
Up on Dartmoor,
Out in nature,
With an animal,
With a dog,
Walking,
Feeling my heartbeat raise,
Just being very present to the landscape.
And today is about intuition and wisdom.
This week I'm going to be giving a talk about my pilgrimage,
The pilgrimage I walked last year,
And it's quite nice.
People are inviting me into their living rooms,
And they invite some of their friends,
Maybe eight,
Ten people,
And I sit and talk about the pilgrimage and let them know what inspired me.
So as I've been walking today,
I've been reflecting on what I want to say,
And one of the things I want to talk about is about wisdom and intuition.
And for me,
They are related,
Albeit that they maybe have slightly different definitions for me,
And maybe it would be interesting to know what your definitions are.
When I planned the pilgrimage,
It made no sense at all.
Just as a reminder,
I walked 630 miles for seven weeks across England,
Following energy currents.
And as I had the idea,
And as that idea began to develop,
And I researched it and looked on maps and plotted routes,
There was always a part of me,
An intellectual part of me,
That was questioning,
Like,
What are you doing?
This makes no sense.
And yet I knew to trust something else.
That space of wisdom,
That space of intuition,
I knew to trust it.
It was nudging me along.
It wasn't dragging me,
It wasn't pulling me,
It wasn't berating me.
There was a sense of nudging me along to research,
To plot,
And then eventually to walk this pilgrimage route.
So one of the areas that I want to share when I speak to these people about my pilgrimage is about wisdom and intuition.
And really ask the question,
Which I'm going to ask of you,
Is that what does intuition and wisdom mean for you in your life?
Are they the same thing?
For me,
They come from the same source.
The best way I can describe them,
Or the way I describe them to myself,
Is that there is this formless energy,
This formless energy taking form,
And it is continually taking form.
It takes form through me,
It takes form as me,
Me,
Liz,
This human being that walks through the world,
And it comes through me.
It's like a creative energy.
And that creative energy comes with a feeling.
And that feeling nudges me in a direction of travel.
And you might call that intuition.
So I might come across a crossroads in my life,
And intuition nudges me as to the direction I might take.
And it might come to me in wisdom,
Where it nudges me to explore something,
Or to create something,
Or to engage in something.
For me,
They're almost interchangeable words,
But I'd love to know your take on them.
So today,
For example,
A really simple example,
Walking this beautiful dog up on the moors.
She's a shiny black young Labrador,
Under two years old.
I was walking up following the stream,
And usually I cross the stream and loop back.
And today,
My intuition,
My wisdom,
Whispered,
Walk on,
Walk on.
So I walked up to the head of the stream,
And it's marshy ground,
And there is no stream there,
Just marshy,
Reedy ground.
Walked around the head of the stream,
And came back on the other side,
And quite literally watched it form into a stream.
What was marshland became a ribbon of water,
And then started gushing over rocks,
And I can see it shining and glistening below me in the valley.
And that's what it is when that formless wisdom,
That formless energy,
Becomes created into form.
It's like the stream being created from the source into something tangible.
So today,
It's all about intuition and wisdom.
It's about the energy behind life being created into form.
I'd love to know what intuition and wisdom means to you.
