Following on from my most recent article about the future (Is it Possible to Read the Future? The Latest Research Says Yes) I’ve been thinking a lot about time — the past, the present and the future.
This thinking was sparked partly by the fact that I recently wrote a will. In the will, I had to state what kind of funeral I would want if something happened to me. I put in my will that I would like the French song “Je ne regrette rien” by Edith Piaf to be played at my funeral. The lyrics of the song (translated into English) read as:
“No, absolutely nothing
No, I don’t regret anything
Not the good that has been given to me
Nor the bad, it’s all the same to me
No, absolutely nothing
No, I don’t regret anything
It is paid up, swept away, forgotten
I don’t give a damn about the past
With my memories
I lit the fire
My sorrows, my pleasures
I don’t need them anymore
I’m done with love
and all its troubles
I’m done with it forever
I’m starting over with nothing.”
Putting this in my will was a spur of the moment choice rather than something I had thought long and hard about.
However, when I thought about it later I realised this song was perhaps not the right one because I do have some regrets.
I would love to re-do my youth with the wisdom I have amassed over the last 10-15 years. (I expect this is something many of us would love to do!)
Specifically, here is what I would change if I could go back and re-do my life:
I would get EMDR (which is a trauma therapy) in my 20s rather than in my 30s. I went through a natural disaster in my 20s and also had a very troubled childhood and adolescence with plenty of traumas. Trauma cast a shadow over my 20s and early 30s which was a shame when there was a solution. During my 20s I dabbled with other modalities which helped me a lot but they weren’t specifically designed to be used for trauma. I found EMDR to make a big difference to the PTSD but I only started doing it last year. I so wish I had done it much sooner.
Similarly, I wish I had started dancing the tango sooner. I stumbled upon Argentine tango (milonguero style) by accident around February of this year, and it has become a passion of mine. I have been learning intensively and started going to milongas (which are tango dance parties). I haven’t had this much fun dancing since I was a teenager and I wish I had started in my twenties.
If I could re-do my life I would also go back and tell my past self: that guy is not worth it! Stop stressing over men who are no good for you! How much time and energy did I waste over wondering what it meant if a guy did or said such and such? My advice to my past self would be to lean back and the right one will find you. Don’t get involved with avoidantly attached men who make the minimum of effort and leave you guessing about what their intentions or motives are.
I wish I could go back and communicate this to my past self and have her act on it. So much wasted time and tears over unsuitable men.
Around the time that I realised these regrets, I was also reading a book called the Premonition Code that I mentioned in my last article. This book is about tapping into your future through dreams, visions and inner knowing.
In this book I was reading about a concept in particle physics called retro-causality, which is the idea that an effect can happen before its cause. This is a concept that is explained in a lot of detail in the book. So, in physics it is theoretically possible for an event to occur before its causal factors have happened. We know that the present affects the future, but according to this theory, the future could also affect the present.
The authors of ‘the Premonition Code’ use this theory to underpin the idea that we can tap into our future. We can receive information from our future self, and have that information affect our present.
So, this could mean that we receive information from our future self about a potential car accident in the future for a loved one (this is called precognition), and we can use that information to influence or change decisions in the now, which then impact on or change the future.
Here’s an example of how this sort of information can impact us and change the course of our lives (this is a comment by a reader called Helen on my last article…)
“When I was 21 and still living at home, my mum was getting ready to get her bus for work (it was a double-decker bus back in the day, and you could smoke up there). I began to have strong feelings in my stomach that if she got the bus, I would not see her alive again. It was so strong.
I told mum not to get on the bus and gave her money for a taxi. After questioning me constantly why she should not get on her bus, she finally gave in and called for a taxi.
Mum’s bus that morning went on to have a terrible accident. The new bus driver did not know the route and took the double-decker under a bridge which totally took off the top deck roof and crashed. Mum would have been sat up there smoking and luckily there were no fatalities as no one was sitting upstairs. Just cuts, bruises, and shook up, so my gut feeling about the bus which had not crashed yet saved her life.”
Once I read this book, I began to think about engaging with my future self more consciously to get her help to achieve my goals.
After all, my current self was looking back over the past and thinking, “I wish she had just known/done/tried this!” And so my future self is actually the best expert on what I need to do in my life now. She has the best advice for me because she has already climbed the mountain and traversed the terrain. She can now be my guide.
With this in mind, I have started meeting with my future self on a regular basis.
I have been inspired by how much further along on our life path she seems to be. I am inspired by the fact that in my meditation, she appears to have achieved the goals I am now working on. I have been asking for her advice and I have been implementing the action steps she has been giving me. I have been staying the course she has encouraged me to stay on.
Would you like to meet your future self? I have created a free guided visualisation where you can do that.
The audio is 30 mins long altogether, but the meditation starts about 7 mins and 20 seconds into it (in case you want to skip the introduction, which is basically a summary of what I have written in this article.)
If you do the meditation, I’d love to hear how it went for you.
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I’m very intuitive, so I immediately went into a light trance. I was “told” two things, (1) know thyself, and (2) my hand lifted and went to rest on my heart. I then “heard,” open your heart chakra. Now I have to figure out how to do that!
The gift from my future self is a desire to work. I have been uninterested in my work (art making) for some months. My future self told me to set aside some time each day to work, coming from an intuitive deep place of desire to find what is most important to me, disregarding any competitive feelings, but coming from a deep sense of my own unique purpose. Not to feel pressure to produce, but just set some time to make work. The strongest personality trait of my future self was a humility born of quiet confidence. Uninterested in making an impression on others.
Jody, thanks for sharing. You might find this article helpful: https://annasayce.com/rebalancing-the-heart-chakra/
Stevie, that is lovely. Glad you had a go at this meditation!
Thank you, Anna! I appreciate how short and yet effective this meditation is. I received simple and practical assurance from my future self regarding achieving and maintaining better health (my future self is vibrant!), and I feel inspired to follow that advice.
Tamlyn, great to hear! Thanks for sharing.
Thank you! Once again a quiet way to appreciate the resources the universe has for us in difficult times, I’m very grateful as my future self was assured and colourful and brighter than I feel I can achieve – she helped with knowing this was possible once freedom and confidence could be achieved, and that there is no need to rush or panic but keep steady and calm for the serenity and deep confidence she transmitted, for my relationship and the future shared weight that would therefore be manageable for me
Chelsea, I love that! Thanks for sharing your experience with the meditation.
This was really interesting! I couldn’t see my adult self. I kept seeing my four-year old self. It kept saying shed your four-year old self. (Even the roots coming out of my root chakra were coming out of my four year old self). Thank you so much for sharing this.
Hi Anna,
Thank you so much for your meditation. My first time through it did not achieve any results but I tried it again after a few days and I was astounded by the results. The following in an account of my experience:
Upon meeting with my future self I was surprised that he appeared to look much younger than me. I could see that he was my younger self with what looked like an aged patina. My future self had this calm confidence. As we walked toward each other he grinned and welcomed me like an old friend. I was kind of taken back that I didn’t seem to fit into this timeline because I felt like I looked so much older than him.
I asked my future self several questions, mostly for advice that he might have wished he had known when he was my age. There was no verbal answers but I had an understanding that he would send me insights and mental communication that would help me.
The first insight that he showed me that I was wearing a very thick coat that was 2-3 inches thick. He explained to me that this was made up of the things that I become to believe were a part of me. I understood that this is what made me look so much older than him. It was composed of fears, doubts, anxieties, etc. He pointed out that these things we not apart of me and that I could shed these things like a cloak. He also showed me how when I walked the cloak dragged against the ground impending my progress.
The most shocking insight that he communicated was that “physical pain” was not a part of me and could be shed like all the rest. I did not understand this because my pain was associated with a pinched sciatic nerve in my back and this was a part of my body. He assured me that this was not a part of me and that it could be shed as well.
Previous to partaking in this meditation I was having trouble sleeping because of the pain in my back. I had waken about 3am and had been tossing and turning until about 4am trying to get comfortable but the pain persisted. This is very common for me. I decided since I could not sleep I would try your meditation again to contact my future self.
At the end of the meditation as I lay in bed thinking about the sequence of events I suddenly realized there was no pain in my body. It had disappeared. I was surprised by the turn of events because I had not referenced my pain in any of the questions I asked my future self. I had come to believe that this pain was part of the trials of life that I would endure.
Thank you, again!
Jay – that sounds like such a great experience.
I resonated with your comment because I used to suffer from chronic pain. In case you’re interested, I went into how I cured mine in this post: https://annasayce.com/rebalancing-the-heart-chakra/