February 2015 Audio Meditation

For many years, I’ve written and taught about the optimal future self and have seen what a powerful and useful resource it is. Recently, I began to think again about optimal futures, or each person’s optimal future, as another way to access possibilities and states of being that are positive and empowering. 

One of the key elements in exploring and experiencing optimal futures or the optimal future self, is to keep preconceptions and assumptions out of the way and to be open to the unfolding experience arising from the intention we bring into the process. Intention is the rudder that orients us to the probability or probabilities that resonate with what our intention conveys.

As I’ve begun to offer this as a guided meditation to colleagues, I’ve discovered that there are many ways people experience their optimal future. The key thing is to generate the intention that orients the experience. For some people, there is a sudden thought or awareness that opens a new door of understanding. For others, there may be a symbol or image that conveys a new felt-sense experience or awareness in some way that offers a moment of inspiration. Another person connected with the essence of ease, a quality that she has had trouble accessing. Her body immediately filled with an experience of ease and she spent her meditation time soaking that in. For me, my first experience was of a wave washing over me, cleansing me of old habits and learnings. No doubt, the experience will be unique for each person.

As is true with the optimal future self work, what is important is the experience that arises, whether that experience is a flash of insight, connecting with a living image or frequency/essence, or some other awareness that arises. The key is to feel the experience, preferably in the body but that may not be the way it comes into awareness each time. Because of my background in Somatic Experiencing® and hypnosis, I encourage people to notice what sensations arise during these experiences when possible, and to take time to soak in those that are new and helpful to have.

Remember, as well, that we live in a world of infinite possibilities, so in this meditation you focus on what’s optimal for you. You don’t want just any old future. In this meditation, you seek to connect with your optimal future.

One of the things the Internet has given us is more access to connecting and communicating with one another.  This is all to the good when the communication promotes the well-being of everyone.  It becomes a problem when it allows people to feed their fears.  We see this phenomenon around the world in those groups that seek to oppress or eliminate other groups of people who may be different from them or in some way represent a threat.

As a trauma specialist, this got me to thinking about how important it is to be conscious of our fears and to cultivate ways to become even more conscious of, meet, and process this powerful emotion.  So much of what creates division and conflict among human beings—be they in a one-on-one relationship, a family, a community, a country—is the presence of underlying, and often unrecognized or disowned, fear.

For this week’s practice, I’d like to offer a practice that can be helpful in recognizing and dealing with the presence of fear.  Fear isn’t an emotion we can eliminate because it’s an important survival response that we need throughout life.  It’s essential that fear can motivate us to jump out of the way of a bus we hadn’t seen, or remind us not to walk down a dark alley alone in the middle of the night.  The problem is that we are often afraid of things that aren’t threatening and, when we act on these kinds of fears, we often generate even more trauma in ourselves and others.