The Western Trail of Now
Television came to my hometown when I was eight years old. At first the local TV station did not have regular programming, so it played old black and white movies. I fell in love with the true-blue westerns where the good guys dressed in white and the bad guys always got their just desserts.
After I went to bed, my darkened room became the stage for my latest western scenario. One night I would be an Annie Oakley type—fighting the bad guys all by myself. Another night, I nestled in the arms of a western hero as he carried me away from danger. Sometimes I pretended that I’d vaguely but conveniently lost my parents so Roy Rogers and Dale Evans could adopt me.
Later on, still in the heyday of my western dreams, I read a Life magazine article on the historic old west. My eyes devoured those black and white photos of deteriorating buildings. One picture spoke the loudest to me. It was a two-page spread of a prairie scene with half a wagon wheel planted in the foreground and an aura of bright light on the horizon. Peering at the horizon I found myself believing the old west still existed. Somehow I felt that the trail to the real old west was in this present world, and it was possible I might find it one day.
The innocence of that child’s imagination is still with me, but its focus of magic has changed from discovering the old west to discovering who I am and what life is all about. Eckhart Tolle has given me a regular banquet of wisdom regarding that. He talks about the Now as being all there really is. There is no past or future except in our thoughts. In his book Stillness Speaks I finally found a definition of the Now I could understand. “Most people confuse the Now with what happens in the Now, but that’s not what it is. The Now is deeper than what happens in it. It is the space in which it happens. So do not confuse the content of this moment with the Now. The Now is deeper than any content that arises in it.” At last, with this wisdom I could stop trying to catch the Now by watching the content of my life whizzing by like a speeding train.
]Eckhart uses the word Now and the word consciousness, sometimes with a capital C. He’s careful not to use the word God because it has negative connotations to many spiritual seekers. Still, for me, I like trying out the word God or even Brahman or Shiva and Shakti in the place of Now. These give me a broader picture of what the Now can be.
It’s such a delightful mystery to me. It tantalizes me, beckons to me, dances with light in my heart. Just think, right where I am there is a magic kingdom of pure beauty and wonder. All the love and peace and joy I could ever want is where I am. It’s here right now, not somewhere removed to a distant heaven, a future enlightenment or a past civilization buried in the sands. I don’t have to go on a long journey, visit a guru, attend the perfect spiritual retreat, or read the right book. Right where I am there it is. Just like I figured when I was a kid, that trail to the real old west is here in this world. It begins and ends with me. Little ol’ me. All I need to do is wake up from my dreams of past and future, my scenarios of good and bad, my identification with this physical body and see what is here, what has always been here and always will be. God hiding in plain sight.