Future Perspective, Present Experience,
and Dream of What Will Be

By Evette Gardner
January 2010


How you think about the future has a direct effect on how you feel in your present because your thoughts are what create your life experience. Take a moment to really turn this over in your mind. Your experience in life is determined not by the circumstance you find yourself in, but on how you respond to your circumstances. It is your response which dictates what you go through within yourself.

Experience is based on feelings, not events. Events are merely what you draw on to create your life experience. Fifty thousand people in a stadium can witness and play a part in the same event, yet each will have a different experience because each will be thinking different thoughts during the event. Thoughts give rise to feelings, and feelings are what produce impressions, and these impressions make up your experiences in life. And whether your thoughts are focused on what is currently occurring around you, or on what took place in the past, or on what is to follow in the future, thinking always happens in the present moment. What you think now you experience now. Therefore your future is now.

It’s a waste of energy to dwell on what will be with angst for what will be is not a settled state by any means. The future is but a wealth of possibilities and potentials. Likewise it is futile to look to a future moment to compensate for, or correct a present pain. Doing this will only cause you more misery because the hurt you feel now will only be intensified by the yearning you also feel to hurry up and be in that imagined pain free future moment instead of where you are. Be of a mindset that’s optimistic about the future but don’t live for it. Have joy in the journey that leads to what will be because the moment that begins your future is happening right now.

Be excited about your life’s possibilities but don’t get attached to any particular expectation. Be open to walking down other paths that might lead you to your ultimate desire. For example, if you desire something juicy and you set out to get an orange to satisfy this desire but life presents you with an apple, run with it. Make the most of your experience with that apple and see where it takes you. An apple can be just as juicy as an orange, but you have to be open to this possibility in order to experience it.

It’s more productive and conducive to your enjoyment to look at your future as being rich with many possible ways to satisfy your fundamental desire than it is to lament your misfortune of not getting exactly what you asked for, exactly the way you envisioned it. Have a little faith, surrender to the journey. You can’t see all the ways life may potentially satisfy you so let the hand of Spirit guide you. Faith can be one of your biggest assets in life if you learn to rely on it. Faith can bring you down roads you never imagined before. It can open you up to even more splendid experiences than had been your initial goal. Life is fluid. Therefore you would be wise to learn to move with this flow and let the tide carry you. Why struggle when you don’t have to?

Does this mean you need to give up planning for your future? No. Have dreams, set goals, and be resolved in your effort to work towards those goals. But, and this is a big but, be open to the multitude of ways there are of reaching those goals. Trust the creative power of your intention. You have conveyed to the universe the quality you would like to see demonstrated in your experience (it could be love, it could be cooperation, it could be richness, or whatever else have you), now you need to surrender to the creative power that responds to your established desire. Does surrendering to this responsive power mean you have to be willing to abandon your dreams? No. But it does mean you have to be willing to modify them. Let your dreams grow as you grow. Dreams are just a means of motivating you to action. Think of them as summary sketches not fleshed out stories of what’s to take place in your life. You don’t get to say exactly what your life situation will look like when the spirit of your desire is finally demonstrated in your situation. So don’t get attached to the details, just hold onto the feeling, of your dreams.

So what if the dream you had a year ago doesn’t look anything like the dream you have today. If the feeling underlying the dream is the same, it’s still actually the same dream. You may, for example, dream of now pursuing B instead of A. But the basic idea and feeling of what you want to see realized in your life may remain the same. Don’t fall into the trap of believing that if you change what your dream looks like it’s the same as conceding failure. It’s not a matter of “giving up” on one dream for another because even though the appearance of your dream may change over time the desire that inspires your dream will remain constant until it is realized. Dreams have a natural tendency to evolve. Don’t resist this progression. Think of it this way: if those dreams you had a year ago helped to move you to what you aspire for today, then to let them go and move on from those “old” dreams is not abandoning your dream, it’s developing your dream. It’s allowing your dreams the freedom to mature. Those old dreams served their purpose of motivating you within the circumstances you were in, but now that your circumstances have changed it’s okay for your dreams to morph into something else too. Even if things haven’t materialized as you first imagined they would, so what. Trust the journey. Make the most of whatever life presents you with and have faith that such an active practice of gratitude will lead you to where you ultimately want to be.

Evette Gardner can be reached at Comments@YourDivineInheritance.com
© 2010 Evette Gardner