How to Open up to the Absolute Future

So much of magic involves opening up to the future unconditioned by the past - what the philosopher Jacques Derrida called the absolute future. 

The thing about the absolute future is it's so weird most people can't even begin to imagine it.

Indeed, they just don't even try.

Most of us humans, when revving up to envision "the future" - conjure an image that's quite similar to what we've previously experienced in life, but maybe with a few tweaks. 

Which is okay, if you totally love what you've previously experienced in life.

It's much less okay if you're tired of the same old, same old and interested in creating profound positive change in your life - as most of us magicians tend to be. 

In order to work effective magic, you have to learn how to expand beyond the bounds of the previously-known.

So to begin opening up to the absolute future, take a moment to consider your relationship to the unknown.

What's your "default setting" for dealing with uncertainty? 

How do you handle uncertainty about what tomorrow will bring, or uncertainty about what the past has meant, or about even uncertainty about what you mean in relation to the world and other people?

This is an important question worth asking, because in truth all of these things are always uncertain. 

There's no "conclusive, objective answer" that can determine once and for all what your future will be like, what the past has meant, or what you mean in the social universe. 

As a magician, all of these are unknowns that have to be subjectively felt and subjectively decided - by you, and you alone. 

(If you want to hear way more about this, you can go read the collected works of Kierkegaard on subjectivity.) 

The tragedy is that many people never even try to decide these important matters for themselves.

They let their interpretations of their futures, of their pasts, and their relationships be decided for them, by whatever prevailing mores float into their heads via media or other people's opinions.

Sadly, the "default setting" that's often imbibed through media and through other people's opinions is a really lame, shitty one.

Women, especially, are conditioned by society to interpret all the unknowns and uncertainties of their lives to just mean "bad, wrong, and not good enough."

In The Undervalued Self, the perceptive psychologist Elaine Aron goes into detail exploring all the ways that sensitive, intelligent people tend to undervalue themselves.

To get extra-weird for a moment: If you think about it, it's possible that "self" is just another world for "the unknown" ...

.... as Buddhism has long demonstrated, what we feel to be our "selves" is just an ever-changing, totally fluid stream of thoughts and feelings. "You" today has not much in common with "you" at age 2.

I'd offer that when we habitually devalue ourselves, what we habitually devalue is the unknown that pervades all experience.

We do this in order to lower our anxiety and feel like we "know" the unknown ... we "know" that it sucks. 

This feels miserable, and it's not the most magically efficacious solution.

So, try this: 

For the next week (or however long you like), practice noticing whenever you go into a default interpretation of the unknown (past, present, future) as being somehow bad or scary, or as meaning that you're "not good enough"...

... when you catch yourself doing this, give a wry smile and decide that actually, according to you, the whole vast unknown - of your future, past, and present ...

.... is utterly good, deeply magnificent, and full of wild revelation. 

Make notes in your magical diary as to what happens. I think you'll find it quite intriguing.