Lead or ahead

Our brains.....like run away trains.  They run out ahead of here all the time.  Planning, practicing, diagnosing, weighing options, endless streams of thoughts shooting out from our minds.  How often do we reside just here, not being pushed or pulled or analyzing or run around busy?  How often do we get to just sit, walk, be?

I find when I recognize my mind has just analyzed the options ahead without having arrived there yet and picked out a path, I have robbed myself of the moment.  The moments I spent thinking of the path ahead instead of being where I am as well as the moment I arrive and have to turn left or right and the voice of guidance that can only show up with a clear choice once all the information is in.  If I have already decided to turn right and once I arrive there is an amazing field of wildflowers heading down the left I either throw out the previous decision and all the time put into it or I stick with the plan no matter what.  I'm obviously using a simple example and there is a time and place for thinking ahead but often we have become so addicted to the thinking ahead we forget to be where we are.  We have over compensated in thinking ahead at the expense of now.  Even the word "ahead" leaves out the rest of the body.  Is that really where we want to be?

If I'm so busy thinking ahead can I listen now?  Can I hear the sounds in the distance, the wind, the hummingbird diving after his long steep climb heavenwards?  I think it's in the birds song and the wind, the practice of listening around us, in this moment, that we begin to hear our true thoughts.  The ones that make life easier because  you heard them first time.  The ones that take your hand and lead you, revealing the deeper rhythms of ourselves and surroundings.

Mary