Hello and welcome to five minutes in nature with me Liz Scott.
It is a dry day.
It's a cool day.
Autumn is certainly here and I'm walking on my track up onto the moorland.
It's midday and the leaves are crunching under my feet,
Orangey brown.
There's a dampness on the lane itself.
The mud which in the summer was bone dry is now mushy and gets stuck on my feet.
I can see mushrooms and fungi appearing at the side and the edge of the lane and today's reflection is following on it.
Actually from what we were talking about yesterday.
Do you remember we were talking about finding the right path?
Well,
When I came back yesterday,
I read a quote and it just landed for me.
So I just thought I wanted to share it with you because it was still around the theme of the right path.
And it was a quote by Rumi.
And the quote goes like this.
And it kind of struck me actually because I was at the time sending out information about my book launch.
So if you've been following me for a while you'll know the trials and tribulations I've had in writing the book about my pilgrimage,
The pilgrimage I walked last year.
And at last it is being published,
Or it has been published,
And you can find out more on my profile if you're interested in that.
But I found myself in a real place of vulnerability as I started to share with people when I would be giving talks about the book.
And I felt a similar feeling to what I felt right at the beginning of my pilgrimage.
So if you imagine it,
I started the pilgrimage in March and I was set to walk for seven weeks.
And as I set out on that pilgrimage,
I felt this sense of being untouched.
Untethered.
It felt as though I were about to embark on something unknown.
Uncertainty rushed in.
All the planning that I'd been doing,
All the preparation I'd been doing,
Suddenly I was here walking the pilgrimage and the planning and preparation,
Which had been a bit of a comfort blanket to do,
Were no longer there.
It was just me and the path.
And it feels a little bit like that today as I.
.
.
Tell people about the book being published and I tell people about the talks I'm going to be given,
I feel untethered.
It's like all the book writing,
The book editing,
The book formatting,
The book publishing,
All of that was like a comfort blanket in a way.
And now there's something that has me feel quite vulnerable about me sharing this in the world.
And I'm noticing a rush of feelings emerge like,
What will people think?
What if no one turns up?
What if no one reads it?
What if it's seen as a failure?
I'm just noticing those rush of thoughts go by and then those feelings of insecurity that accompany those thoughts.
So the quote from Rumi,
As you start to walk on the way,
The way appears,
Feels really relevant because it was when I started walking the pilgrimage,
When I put one foot in front of the other,
When I got to the end of the first day,
And then the second day,
And then the first week,
And then the second week,
And so it went on.
Each time I put one foot in front of the other,
The path appeared.
It became clear what I was meant to be doing.
I was just meant to be walking a path,
Quite literally in this case,
Walking a path.
And it feels to me in my life at the moment that I'm at another beginning.
As though there is a new path for me to take.
So I have been recently in a real state of reflection,
Of looking inwards,
Of discovering the creative energy that wants to come through my expression as a woman elder in the world,
A wise woman,
Moving into my wisdom years.
There's a real sense that I'm on a new path.
And it's one of these paths that actually I'm not quite clear on the direction it's going to take or where I'm going to end up.
But I'm going to take from this quote today,
As you start to walk on the way,
The way appears.
I'm just wondering whether that resonates for you in your life at the moment,
Where you are on your path of life.
And what speaks to you about Rumi's quote,
As you start to walk on the way,
The way appears?
Let me know your reflections.
And of course,
Don't forget to join me again tomorrow five minutes in nature.
