Are We "There" Yet?

No matter where life takes a person, there is only this one moment, which can't even be reduced to a "one". So much of my life, I have worried about where this body is going, but in reality, has the mind really traveled anywhere? To where does the mind travel when it is already arrived?
   When I was an undergraduate student, I remember asking myself the question, "am I moving toward things, or are things really moving toward me?" This is my way of asking the question, what makes me think that I am moving toward something when even the notion of space and time are constructed from my subjective experience? Can I locate the coordinates without the reference point of the mind? Reflect on this and one might find that there is no place to where one is moving or progressing.
  I believe that a lot of my own anxieties about life arise from embodied metaphors which I haven't  really questioned before (for a discussion about this, see Johnson, 1987). An example might be the metaphor of the path and "obstacles in the path". These metaphors always assume that there is a place one is supposed to be going to or continually arriving at. But what if there isn't any goal one is arriving at, and what if it is continually changing from one moment to the next? Can I breathe into that experience and allow myself not to be impelled by the idea of a path and an obstacle in the path? What happens when I simply choose to "miss the boat", and not to be drawn into the idea that there is a boat? Again, it might be an interesting exercise to examine the unconscious or implied metaphors of one's writing and speech to see what is becoming a vexation in the mind. Can the mind rest in the awareness that these metaphors are not actually physical things upon which one is impelled, but might in fact be just thoughts that we use to navigate our lived worlds?
  Many cognitive approaches to therapy stress modifying one's thoughts, but I wonder if examining one's unconscious "embodied" life world and story might be an equally effective way of questioning the kinds of metaphors that can create "visceral" experiences (such as difficulty, pressure, "spaciness") which aren't in fact in the physical world at all. Could contemplating these metaphors as no more than thoughts reduce anxiety and allow a person to be more present in their lived experiences?

Johnson, M. (1987). The Body in the Mind: The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination,and Reason. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.