Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott up on Dartmoor underneath my favourite hawthorn tree which is thick with red berries.
It's actually a dry evening,
It's a bit dimpsy,
The light is a little bit grey and low because we've had rain and mist and winds throughout the day and it's cleared up and I along with many people in the village have decided that now is a good time to get out and stretch my legs and to get a bit of fresh air.
And over the past two days I've been reflecting on the power of thought and thinking and I'm going to continue with that today.
If you remember yesterday I shared with you the story of the little Labrador puppy Reggie who becomes over excited the more excited that I that I become or anybody becomes and when I settle down he settles down.
It's the same with thought,
When you don't give it attention it settles down on its own.
That is the nature of thought and for me understanding the nature of thought and experimenting with it is the most important thing I can share with you and my request is you experiment for yourself and I'm going to share a story that illustrates how seeing and understanding thought and thinking can be really helpful when it comes to just navigating life's challenges.
It's a simple story about some lost car keys and the other day I came back home and I was just sorting myself out in the car.
I'd driven my husband home,
I gave him my set of keys which includes my car keys and the house keys so he could get back in the house.
I was finishing up by the car,
He went in the house,
I came in the house and we just got on with our evening.
The next day he goes out and I need to go out and I start to look for the car keys and I can't find them anywhere.
My mind goes back to the previous evening,
I realise that he let himself in with my keys,
He's the one that's probably now put those keys in his pocket,
He's now outside of the house gone out and he's the one that's probably got those keys.
I spend time looking around the house,
Looking in all the different places I think the keys might be,
I can't find them and the more that I can't find them the more that my thinking revs up and I become annoyed that he is the one that has taken the car keys and he's not been respectful and he's not put them back and my mind goes into a little bit of overdrive and I feel the agitation,
I really feel the agitation.
The thing is I know and understand deeply the nature of thought,
I know my feelings are not telling me about the car keys,
They're not telling me about my husband,
They're letting me know I am in agitated thinking,
That's all my feelings are telling me and that is so useful and when I realise that I bring my attention back to my wisdom,
My intuition and from that space I am no longer lost in the story,
It's still there,
The thinking is still there but from my intuitive wisdom it occurs to me to give my husband a call,
Like just why don't I just see if he has got the car keys and I phone him up from a settled space of mind and I say to him just want to check,
I can't find my car keys,
You haven't picked them up by mistake have you?
As soon as I say that I realise with a start that my car keys are in exactly the place they should be,
They must have been there all the time and I just didn't see them and he tries to remember as he's trying to remember if he,
What he did with them the night before I'm like oh forget that,
I've seen my car keys,
Please just forget I called,
I've got them,
I'm on my way.
So can you see the potential of what might have happened if I had got lost in that thought and thinking and I had phoned him up and accused him and been angry and frustrated and he probably would have got angry and frustrated and we would have just been in this agitated mess of thinking and thought,
Whereas I knew deeply not to trust that angry unsettled thought,
I brought my attention back to my wisdom and from that place I communicated.
For me the most useful thing is understanding thought,
Understanding the nature of thought,
Understanding that whatever the storm of my thinking there is a settled space of intuitive wisdom waiting to be heard.
So today I want you to be reminded of the car keys and when your mind goes spinning and you start accusing other people in your mind of doing this,
That or the other,
Use that feeling of agitation as a reminder to look back within to your intuitive wisdom and once you look back to your intuitive wisdom see what actions or what is being required of you to do,
But do it from a place of love.
