Envisioning the Future Visualization Exercise Used with the Painting Group for Content Search

written by Susan Krieg, facilitator

Relax. Comfortable position. Close your eyes (if you’re comfortable doing so) and begin to explore the past, present and future.
Let yourself relax.

Nothing you see in your mind needs to be shared with anyone else.

It is a safe place, this place you can go to now in your mind, will allow you to see.

Breathe and go deeper into this place of relaxation, go deeper to this place where you can see everything clearly. Go deeper and deeper.

You are relaxed. Breathe.

Now begin to focus on one of the ideas that touched you in some way. Maybe it hurts you to think of it. Maybe it makes you sad, maybe it makes you hopeful. Focus on just one of the realities occurring in our world. Search back in your mind for your experience of this reality. Your personal knowledge of it. A vivid experience of these facts that are powerful and affect you deeply and passionately.

Is there a sense of loss, of displacement or absence or fear? Keep searching, staring from today and travel back in your mind until one experience stands out quite clearly regarding the happenings and occurrences in your world that may feel disempowering, that may feel almost hopeless or shocking. Just one experience that demands your attention now.

Put yourself into that experience again now in your mind. Re-experience it. It’s more that a statistic. Let it become real. Let yourself be a part of it. Experience all that is wrong about it and how it affects you and others.

Where are you in this situation? Look around you in your mind at this place. How old are you. What is going on around you? Who else is there? Who else is being affected? What is happening to them? Are you alone or are there many? What are you wearing? Is it noisy or quiet? What do you hear? Is there talking? What is being said? What do you see now? What colors? Is it light or dark? What do you feel? Are you doing something? What is it? Are you sitting, standing or lying down. What are others doing? What are you feeling in this very specific experience?

Now. Re-envision the experience. Change everything that has made it uncomfortable, belittling, sad or awful. Change it into something else. Give it strength; share it amongst others, even if it’s in a different setting. What would it take to change it all around and transform every inch of the negative? Reach into an empowered space and enrich that situation. Create an enlightened moment, a healing experience. Turn it into the wisdom necessary to change everything. Change the negativity and the devastation into enrichment and a fulfillment of peace and accomplishment and renewal for others and for the planet. Who is benefiting from your vision? What do their faces look like?