Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
I'm just sheltering behind one of the thorny gorse bushes up here on Dartmoor.
There's a southwesterly wind and as I walked up here in the evening light my shadow was so long and I was walking towards it the sun was on my back and I could see it stretch out in front of me and I've just turned around now.
I'm walking back home along the same route ahead of me as some Dartmoor ponies,
White and brown ponies,
Grazing on the hillside and I've seen a young girl calloping around on her pony which has been great to see.
She's obviously having an amazing time out cantering around this open access moorland and I'm also seeing that the sun is sinking at a different place now.
The sunset is taking longer to happen and the sun is not going behind the first hill but behind another hill as it sinks down to mark the end of the day and actually today's reflection is all about how when we see through stories,
When we see through stories we land in love and just seeing that young girl on the pony reminded me of my younger days when I used to love horse riding and used to love taking a pony out for a gallop and I was also reminded of a time when we were younger.
I was quite young and we used to have apple trees in our garden and I remember the day that we came home one day.
We drove home and we found some children in our garden picking the apples.
They were picking the apples off the ground but they were in our garden picking the apples and my mum was so angry and I remember being with her as she told off the children and said I'm going to take you back to your mum and you're going to have to explain yourself and she marched them up the road to where they lived and I was trotting on behind her and she knocked the door and she was bristling and the girls look crestfallen and their heads were low and she said your girls have been in my garden stealing our apples and the mum said oh I'm so sorry.
She said I asked them to go and knock the door to see if they could pick up some windfalls and she said girls and they sort of explained that they'd knocked on the door and there was no one home so they didn't think there was any harm just picking up apples off the ground and I could see my mum crumble from an angry fiery protector of her apple trees to just somebody who understood what was going on that these youngsters were doing absolutely no harm and she had overreacted and it went from being angry to oh I'm sorry please let them come they can have as many apples as they like.
So can you see how when you see through a story you go from seeing one thing but when the story dissolves all that's left is love and I see that not just with stories of children picking apples from a garden I see that with everything.
When we see through the separation story we see through what we see as what makes us separate then all that's left is love.
Everything I'm looking at now whether it's the golden bracken or the green clumps of gorse or the people walking their dogs or the cars in the car park below me or the clouds or the setting sun the trees everything I see is made of the same stuff it's made of consciousness we all are we're made of the same stuff we're made of love that's what we're made of and when we experience that we see through the stories they dissolve they crumble away and all that's left is love and for me this is the keyhole to peace in our world is seeing through the illusion of our separateness of seeing that we are all made of the same stuff we're made of love we're made of this conscious energy and it looks and feels as though we're separate a bit like when we're in a dream but we're not we're part of the same energy and when we see that we see it sometimes in moments in our day but when we see through it our stories collapse and we end back in love.
Today is just a reminder that beneath it all is love and when you see through your stories of separateness and when I do as well all that's left is love and a sense of connection.
Let me know your reflections on this today and I look forward to connecting with you tomorrow for another five minutes in nature.
