Future Visioning truly is the ideal default pastime. Really, what better use of our brain, imagination and time? And it carries you in to good emotional states, so you get the feel-good factor of that future experience in the present moment. What a bargain!
If we could all train ourselves to flip our ‘free time’ thinking from ruminating (on the past or future) to visioning our happiest, most blissful, or even just ‘satisfying’ futures, we would a) all be in better mental health and b) collectively manifest this world into the heaven on Earth it’s meant to be.
Let’s meditate…
***10minMedwithInsightTimer***
Wow…..! What was that?!
Emotion Surfing!
It was awesome!
Emotion Surfing is the best form of future visioning available to you. Exactly as you did, you slip into the meditative state – calm, relaxed, receptive. Then you allow a good-feeling emotion to arise or name itself… You allow yourself to really feel that feeling, to embody it, to bask in it… And only then do you start to open to envisaging future scenarios that you might associate with that feeling. And it’s surprising what arises, isn’t it?
Yes! The first feeling that came to me was MIRTH! Oh it was fun to feel it in my body! And I could picture myself laughing within my work… Lovely! Then it was AWE: I really felt the AWE, it reminded me of being in New York, and then I could see myself beholding some wonder of the world or other, on my travels, awe-struck. Likewise… flying above the ground in a paraglider… Then BLISS arose. …And my beloved came to mind. Then DEEP SATISFACTION… and I could see work accomplishments… It was so fun and free.
To summarise the steps of Emotion Surfing:
- Get into the meditative state
- Let a good-feeling emotion come to mind – sensed and/or ‘named’
- Bask in the embodied feeling of it
- Let future scenarios come to mind in which you are feeling this way
- Bask some more until it fades… and the next emotion comes to mind
Tell me more.
You have worked hard to get to this point. You have already integrated a great deal of ‘charged emotion’ and brought compassion and forgiveness – of self and other – to the fore in your life. This has opened up the passage for Emotion Surfing to become an ‘accessible tool’ to you. For others, the vividness of present concerns will still block the ability to Emotion Surf with ease, but you are learning Qigong which is an excellent technique for integrating charged emotion and getting into the receptive state.
Remember, emotion is ‘energy in motion’ as Michael Brown says. Qigong translates as ‘energy play’ or ‘energy cultivation’. Your work with qigong is not incidental or trivial. It is part of your offering to the world. Cherish it and honour your learning. You will discover its essence in time. And that awe you described? Imagine practising qigong with Taoist monks in China… All things are possible when you follow the flow of your emotion surfing.
I am deeply moved by today’s practice and learning. May it blossom and bear fruit for the good of all. Amen.
I am emotion surfing