Blissings Issue 2
The Fog, The Lights and The Train:
Messages Out of the Blue
By Miriam Evers
It was a dark and foggy evening. Char and I were
driving home along a country road when, a few meters ahead, the
bright red lights of a railway-crossing barrier started flashing.
The warning bells clanged and the barriers came
down and Char pulled her van to a stop. A fast moving train rushed
out of the darkness and roared passed, the railcars illuminated
by the flash of crossing lights. As if we had been pulled into another
world a sudden silence settled upon us. After a few moments I asked,
“What’s the message of the flashing red lights?”
“Hmm,” she replied, “probably that
we’re supposed to stop.”
“Oh, that’s not what I meant!” I
said. “We both know that there are no accidents, so why has
this train crossing stopped us NOW?”
Char had been waiting for days to tell me something
that was upsetting her and we had spent the last hour on a walk
along the Fraser River, deep in conversation. She had been feeling
anxious and upset about a project she was involved with and she
had convinced herself that it would be better for her to drop out.
My friend Char is a very logical thinker and she laid out for me
all her reasons for abandoning this project in such a steady stream
that I was left with little to say. How could I refute such well
thought out evidence?
Now on our way back, we sat, serendipitously stopped
by a train that roared past endlessly in the night while Char considered:
What is the message here? What am I not seeing?
Finally she said, “I’m never on the train,
I’m always watching it go by. Once in a while I get tired of
waiting and I climb aboard a train that I think might be going in
the right direction — but then something happens: I get anxious
and frightened. I think, “This can’t be the right train;
it’s twisting and turning and going through all these dark
tunnels. Who are these people who are traveling with me? I don’t
know if I can trust them.” I get myself so worked up that I
end up jumping off long before the train gets to where it’s
going. Then, after the train reaches its destination, I hear from
someone I met onboard and I find out that it was going where I wanted
to get to, but now I’ve been left behind. And once again, I’m
watching trains go by and waiting for the right one."
“What an amazing metaphor,” I said. Could
this train passing by now be a message from your higher Self? Perhaps
it is asking you to consider another perspective, Char,” I
said, gently.
“Yes,” she replied, quietly. “I think
I need to go home and do some journaling around it.”
Guidance from our wise inner being is constantly
being presented to us everywhere and in every moment. When we feel
upset, agitated, and righteous it’s hard to hear communication
from our higher knowing. The incessant chatter that goes on in our
minds blinds and deafens us to synchronicity, coincidence and metaphor
— all ways that our wise inner being communicates with us.
There are messages in books that you happen to come
across; in magazine articles you are attracted to reading, in your
environment and from your body. So, when your palm pilot crashes
or your cell phone looses its signal, when you unexpectedly have
time to read an Oprah Magazine in the waiting room, or when you
suddenly get a headache or sore throat, get curious.
Ask yourself
What is the message here?
What am I not seeing?
What is it I need to know?
Is there another way of looking at this?
One day, after running errands in Vancouver, I decided
to stop in at Banyen Books rather than head straight home. On the
counter there was a bowl of little inspirational cards. I picked
one out and read…
“Be still. How else can you receive?”
Once again I was reminded that we just need to quiet
that ever-chattering mind long enough to remember that at any given
moment we have a choice — to listen or not to listen. Spiritual
guidance is accessible to us anytime.
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