There's a phrase that keeps going through my head when I'm trying to meditate, but unlike most of them, it's actually kind of useful. The phrase is "Is it future, or is it past?". It's something MIKE, one of the Black Lodge spirits, says to Agent Cooper in the Red Room early in Season 3 (The Return). That's a legitimate uncertainty throughout The Return. But I'm not here to talk about Twin Peaks. I'm here to talk about meditation.
Twin Peaks: The Return - Is it future or is it past? (YouTube, WWW)
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It's well known that David Lynch is a practitioner of Transcendental Meditation. I don't really know too much about their practice, except that they use mantras. The Buddhist tradition I learned meditation uses concentration on the sensations of the breath, at least for relative beginners like me. When you have a stray thought, or a stray train of thought, you're supposed to notice it without judgment and return to the breath. Some teachers tell you to tag your thought with a label like "wishing", "remembering", or "worrying".
Now, in MIKE's message to Cooper, what option is missing? Yes, the present. It can always be "future" or "past", but never "present". Which means that it's a reasonable question to ask about the thoughts that come up while you're meditating. Is it future? Or is it past? It can't be the present; if it were the present, it would just be the sensations of breath. Remembering something from the past? Practicing a future conversation? Worrying about something that hasn't happened yet? Is it future, or is it past?
So I've taken to answering the question when a thought arises, and then letting it go without judgment, to return to the breath, which is the only present.