the present moment is the railway switching yard
On my way to work in the mornings, I am often stopped for long periods at a freight railway switching area. This one is not big enough to call it a yard, but still… With nothing to do but wait and watch, I have observed the back and forth of trains as they drop and add cars, and switch tracks. Trains will sometimes move north a bit before a man comes out and actually moves a section of track by hand to guide the train on to a different track. This downtime gives me plenty of time to ponder how our lives relate to train tracks.
If we live without intention regarding direction, our lives completely bypass the present moment. We are motivated by our past and projecting into the future. Without dropping into the Now, we are stuck on a straight track and nothing really changes. If you don’t like the direction your life is going, you will have to find a way to get on a different track. That’s really hard to do for a couple of reasons.
- One, life goes by fast and it’s difficult to change “on the fly.”
- Two, the real place to change direction is in the Now—the switching yard. And that’s not easy to reach.
If we keep whizzing along the track, past-future, past-future, we’re not even likely to see the Present. We are conditioned in such a way to make it a challenge to find the Now.
I try to get there with meditation, but as soon as I think I’ve found it, it’s not the present any more. Slippery thing, the Now.
The past is made up of judgments. Completely. Every object you remember is a judgment (interpretation) of what it means. What its function is, what your experience with it was, whether you liked it or not, etc. Therefore, any time you think you are looking at an object, you are actually looking at your judgement of the past. And as you look toward the future, you are projecting what you judge from the past into your expectations of the future. The present is out of the loop.
In order to find the Now, you need to drop your judgments. It requires a willingness to let go of the meaning we give everything. Establish a mindset of “I don’t know.” Everything we could want or need is in the Present Moment. It’s a good time to get off the train and take a break for a while. You can think about what you really want, and you can try it on for size.
Taking a new direction means getting into a new frequency. It also comes along with different baggage. Just as the trains at the switching yard drop of some of their cars that are going to the old destination and then pick up some that go to the new destination, we need to take a good look at what we could leave behind and what new things we need to take on the new direction. I’m talking about things like attitude, willingness, skills, friends, family, etc. And if the new direction is a big stretch, you might need an extra engine (e.g. help). It’s all there in the present moment and once you have decided what you want, the frequency is your ticket.
Bon Voyage!