Hello and welcome to Five Minutes in Nature with me Liz Scott.
Still continuing my walk in the sunshine and I've just come through a moorgate.
It's called Peak Moorgate and I've come to the gate onto Dartmoor and I've decided to record just before I get right up onto the moors itself.
It's very exposed up on the moorland.
I'm just slightly sheltered here and there's a southwesterly gusty wind which I'll be walking into so I thought I'll do it whilst I'm somewhat sheltered and then brace myself for walking into the headwind and making my way back home.
Today is a reflection on something I experienced last night.
I went out to listen to a non-dual teacher and the teacher was speaking in the evening.
Roughly he does about an hour of meditation and then there's an hour of question and answers.
One of the things that I took from the conversation he had in the hour where questions are asked is the answer to a question which really really resonates with me and I want to share it with you now.
One of the members of the audience asked him about kind of like what's the point?
Like what's the point of us being here?
What's the point of life?
What's the point of being human?
The non-dual teaching as I understand it is pointing back to the awareness,
The truth of who we are,
The spiritual energy that takes form into everything that we see in the world around us.
When I listen to this particular non-dual teacher his message that he repeats time and time again in a very consistent way is to look within for awareness and the way he describes it which I find quite helpful so I'll share it with you now is he looks at attention,
Where we place our attention and he describes that we can move our attention.
It's like if you imagine an elastic band our attention is is moving to maybe observe something so where I stand now my attention is looking at the tree or my attention is listening to some water gushing behind me or my attention might be on what I might say next.
He describes attention as being on an elastic band that's stretching to experience thoughts,
Feelings and things that we hear,
See,
Feel,
Touch in the world.
That's what attention does and being present to awareness is like releasing the elastic band so that attention comes back to awareness,
It comes back home,
It rests in awareness.
When the question was asked about what's the point of being human he gave a really clear answer with two key areas I want to share with you and I'm gonna add one that makes sense to me as well.
The first part of his answer was the purpose of being human is to bring your attention back to awareness,
Is to be present to awareness.
That's your purpose,
That's the point is bring your attention back to that sense of peace,
Compassion,
Peace of mind,
Love,
Whatever the words are that we express it or call it,
Ultimately it's back to that place of knowing.
That place of knowing that is beyond the perceiving of what we can feel,
Touch and smell,
Beyond the perceiving of what we experience with our mental thoughts and mental activity,
It's a knowing,
A knowing of ultimately I am,
A knowing of being.
So that was the first thing is like one of the key purposes is bringing awareness,
Attention back to itself,
Back to awareness and being present.
And then the second part is from that place of being present with an awareness it's about seeing what wants to be expressed in the world and I love that.
So those are the two things he said the purpose is to bring your attention back to awareness,
Is to be present to awareness and then from that space of awareness to be free and creative in whatever way feels authentic in the world.
And the third area that I find helpful to realize is that the only thing that ever gets in the way of experiencing awareness and being present to awareness is our thoughts,
Our moods,
Our mood states,
The activity of our mind where our attention gets lost in that.
So I hope you like that it was something that really resonated with me and I'll just repeat it again in my language the purpose of life is to remember who you truly are.
It's from that place of who you truly are to be creative and expressive in the world and it's just to notice when thoughts,
Feelings,
Memories,
Stories cloud over that sense of awareness.
Notice that is happening and allow yourself to once again rest in the presence of awareness.
