Hello and welcome to 5 minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
Well I'm down in our little wildflower meadow here in our village and it's a little bit of a transition time because it's starting to be scythed and what that means is the long grasses are slowly starting to be cut back and this is a transition time of year for the meadow where we're moving from the height of summer and we're starting to move into the sort of slower autumnal period.
The idea of this is that the long grasses are cut down,
The seeds of the flowers and the grasses are distributed on the ground and it means that next year we can start again and hopefully see more flowers,
More seeds,
More things growing and more diversity here in the meadow.
And of course,
If you've listened to me on Insight Timer,
You'll know that these long grasses here in our meadow are seen as very,
Well,
They're seen very differently by different people in our village.
I,
For one,
Think they look beautiful,
Swaying golden grasses in the breeze,
Often covered in,
In the height of the season,
In butterflies and birds.
Other people see them,
Just see this as scruffy.
They like a nice manicured lawn.
They don't like to see the ground like this looking so wild.
And today's reflection is all about separate realities and this is such a great starting point really because people have separate realities about what they see in the meadow.
But I want to take it just another step further so you really understand what I mean when I talk about separate realities.
Because I'm not just meaning that we kind of see the same thing,
But we have a different view on it.
What I want you to become curious about is that we actually all are not just seeing something slightly differently,
We are creating something completely different.
All of us,
Every single person in the world,
We might all look at the same thing,
But our reality is being created through thought in the moment.
And that thought,
The thought-created reality that's brought into existence,
Is different for everybody.
And there was a great example of this on our walk yesterday.
I went on a walk with my sister.
We're following the River Urn.
It's about 20 miles,
And we've walked the length of it,
Finishing yesterday at Urn Head,
Which was on Dartmoor.
And yesterday,
As we were walking across Dartmoor,
The moorland is grazed by sheep and Dartmoor ponies and cattle.
And they're semi-wild.
They're all farmed,
But it's a semi-wild,
And they're not penned in.
They're not in fields.
They just sort of roam around.
Moorland and we had to go through three different herds of cows as we were walking across the moorland and after we'd been through one of them my sister turned to me and she said do you know what you're really brave you're really courageous and I said really why and she said because of the way you go through those cows And I was like,
Well,
I don't feel brave or courageous because I don't actually feel frightened.
They don't bother me in the slightest.
I'm respectful of the cows.
I understand that if they got young,
I'd give them a wide berth.
I'm always very cautious about approaching them,
Very responsible around them,
But I'm not scared of them.
Not scared at all.
Whereas in her world,
She is scared of the cows.
And I know other people are as well,
Who will go quite a long way out of their way to avoid going through a herd of cows.
And it's not to say one person is right or wrong,
But it's a great illustration of two people looking at the same thing,
But having a completely different experience.
Not just a slightly different experience,
But a completely different experience.
One,
For example,
Might be filled with fear and trepidation,
And the other isn't.
And we are all,
In our own way,
Creating our own separate realities.
We don't all see the same world.
It's just not the way it works.
The principle of thought,
This building block of thought that has us be human,
Is actually creating our reality moment to moment.
And the reality that we all experience is different.
We are having completely different experiences of the world that we look out on.
So today's reflection is just a reminder of separate realities.
It explains a lot.
When we have different opinions or different viewpoints,
It can be explained by the very fact we are experiencing a completely different version of the world from moment to moment.
And it really helps to know that because when you know that,
It means you can make allowances for other people.
You can understand other people when they see something things so differently from you.
You don't have to condone it but I'm saying you can understand it.
So let me know your reflections on separate realities.
What do you make of that?
Don't forget to write me a comment.
And of course,
Join me again tomorrow,
Because I'll be back again then with another five minutes in nature.
