Appreciating the Present Versus Visualizing the Future.
By: Ryan Murdoch
Tags: Meditation, Visualization, Self Improvement, Self Development, Personal Development

Appreciating the Present Versus Visualizing the Future.

I recently experienced a collision between two very different approaches to my daily meditation practice and it surprised me how threatened I felt by it. So much so, that I thought it would be worth writing about as an attempt to organize it all into a coherent conversation.

I had originally became fascinated with meditation in my early twenties and followed the teachings of Buddhism, the originators in regards to meditation. For the sake of being concise, I’ll spare you the explanations of the specific lineages I studied under but I will share, in the simplest way possible, what the philosophy behind much of the Buddhist approach to meditation often looks like.

In the temple, more times than not, we seek to accept the present moment ( There’s so much more to it all but humour me ). We cease to wish, if only for a moment, that we were somewhere else doing something else, and choose to wake up at this moment, with acceptance of where we are.

Being human as we are, it seems that we are inherently plagued with a relentless sense of anticipation of the next moment. For example, when we are at work, we might wish to be driving home. When we are stopped in traffic, we might wish to be eating dinner. When we are finished eating dinner, rather than cleaning up, we might prefer to be watching television or going to sleep. Aside from getting into the flow state at work or during your favourite hobby, or a few fleeting moments on a holiday, this feeling seems to pervade the human experience for many of us.

The point of the classical Buddhist method of meditating (although there are an array of other elaborations I’m not mentioning here) is, in essence, to ease into the actuality of the present moment. It is to be aware of our breath, to notice the temperature of the room, to check if we are sitting up straight, to realize that we are thinking about what is on our ‘to-do’ list but to realize then there is nothing we can do about it until we are finished meditating so we choose to forget about it all for this exact moment.

After taking a break from Buddhism (a couple of years?) but continuing to meditate regularly, I inadvertently stumbled upon the ever-growing popularity of visualization in my social media feeds. I found myself watching youtube videos that explained the general approach to the concept and listened to different testimonials of what people had reportedly materialized for themselves and their lives through using these techniques. It seemed that every walk of life was utilizing visualization techniques; from the very ill who had gotten to the point where they needed miracle healing, to high-level athletes that needed to raise their level of self-belief as high to the absolute highest.

So, I created a unique visualization for myself and started rehearsing it in vivid detail as a daily ritual. I had regularly practiced a twenty-minute meditation which now became ten minutes of stillness and clearing and ten minutes of imagining the future in great detail and feeling. In other words, ten minutes of being in the present and then ten minutes of being in the future.

As I became familiar and comfortable with this new and interesting approach, I can say that it began to take on some degree of momentum. I even added ‘neural linguistic programming’ to my regiment of various personal development tactics. I would audibly recite my self-designed character and mission as I walked my dog through the forest or down the city streets. I even had a special spot by the ocean I would regularly stop and speak my words. Before long, I think nearly all of my daily mediation time became exclusively ‘visualization’ time.

When I finally returned to a Buddhist meditation setting and again heard those long-lost words of guidance, those gentle suggestions; to relax, to breathe and to wake up to the honesty and actuality of the moment, I felt my guard go up. I heard a voice inside myself say ‘No, I cannot accept the way things are in my life right now! There’s so much I want to have and be and do right now!’ I was surprised by an overwhelming wave of resistance. How had I incrementally forgotten these teachings? They sounded so familiar and comforting in one way yet so challenging to me in another.

I walked home from that first night back very much aware that I had encountered an inner-conflict of some sort. I decided to let it be for the time being and to ruminate on the subject over the next while. I continued attending the Buddhist meditations and lightly pondered it over the next few weeks.

A few months have passed now and I can honestly say and have deeply considered how these two concepts might relate to each other and whether or not they can co-exist in the space that is the composition of my mind. My current answer to myself is: In some strange way, the two seemingly opposing concepts can occupy the same space at the same time. It’s just the same as how I feel that there are people I know that I can seemingly both love and hate at the same moment. Thinking more though, isn’t that what this world of duality is made up of?… contradictions; up and down, left and right, black and white. We cannot know of one without knowing the other.

So the best I can currently make sense of it all in my daily mediation is that I entertain both ideas simultaneously. I imagine the version of myself that I have created in my mind living in the presence of what I have created from the past. I then ask myself; Looking at the absolute reality of my current situation, what would the ‘future me’ that I have so vividly envisioned do upon waking up at this moment? It’s kind of like asking; What would the hero, who is you, in the movie you wrote and directed, do when faced with arriving at this point of the storyline, however pleasant or adverse?