If you’ve spent some time on this site, you know I like to meditate. I covered the basics in this post, which I would recommend reading before you read the post below, just to cover the very basics.

Any meditation you do is simply shifting your awareness inward. It doesn’t have to be more than a couple of minutes, but in my experience, a good meditation that has an extended effect on me has to last at least fifteen or twenty minutes.

And sometimes I can’t focus on the meditation and get caught up in my thoughts and pissed off and I say fuck it and go do something else. That’ll happen sometimes. Anyway…

Future Self Meditation

I have to give full credit to Steve Pavlina for this one.

I usually do this meditation it at least once a week, and every single time I do it, I feel great afterwards. Maybe I should do it more.

After you’ve achieved a relaxed, meditative state, imagine two chairs facing each other. Sit down in one chair, then imagine your future self from five years from now sitting in the other. This person is your ideal self, exactly who you would love to be in five years.

My conversation usually starts something like this:

Me: Hey man, what’s up?

Future Me: Not much buddy, how you doin?

Me: I’m good. God damn you look good. Obviously you’re still lifting. How are things?

Future Me: Chaki, you honestly can’t even imagine how amazing my life is. (insert details)

Me: Well that’s great to hear. Hey, I’m having trouble with ____. What advice can you give?

And the advice is usually not to worry about it, things turned out great, I’m worrying too much about things, just keep doing what I’m doing. Occasionally I’ll get a specific piece of advice that feels like it didn’t come from my own mind, but actually from my future self. I love when that happens.

Then you can tell him a story about something that recently happened, good or bad, and he can reminisce with you about it. Remember, your future self has experienced everything you have and more, and he loves to reminisce with you.

After you’ve asked your future self whatever questions you have, say thanks, he will leave, then you switch chairs.

Into the chair you just left comes your past self from five years ago. He says what he will to you, then asks you for advice.

Try to remember what problems you were having five years ago. In my case, I was fat, depressed, stressing about finding a girlfriend, working a shitty job, and impatient for the cold weather to end, hating the fact that I was in the Northeast, and all kinds of other stuff.

When you give advice to your past self and remember how clueless you were then compared to now, it brings a sense of reality to the conversation you just had with your future self. Odds are, the vast majority of the things you were seriously worried about five years ago have been resolved. It’s probably been a while since you even thought of the things you used to worry about five years ago. So it is with most things you’re worrying about presently. They will seem completely insignificant in five years, almost laughable, and you can take comfort in that.

When you’re finished conversing with your past self, stand up next to him, have your future self stand next to you so you’re in the middle of the two of them, then visualize the three of you combining into one. Right as you all combine, you explode in a bright white flash of light, and you can open your eyes and end the meditation.

You now feel awesome.

Healing Meditation

I don’t think anyone specifically has taught this meditation, but I’m sure it’s a combination of other ones I have read.

Whenever you have some kind of physical ailment you can do this meditation to bring yourself relief. You can also do it for others you care about, no matter how far away they are. One of my dogs, Buddy, contracted Lyme disease a few months back and I did this meditation every day for a while. Obviously there’s no way for me to prove that I helped, but I feel that I did.

After you’ve achieved a relaxed, meditative state, focus on your breathing. Take a large breath and as you inhale, imagine you’re absorbing great amounts of healing energy into the crown of your head (the very top). This healing energy is white and it’s all around you always. I always imagine I’m breathing in this energy from the trees outside.

As it gathers in your head through your crown, it condenses into a single, bright, white point in your third eye (right behind the spot between your eyebrows). You should be able to feel it there. As you near the end of your inhalation, take a brief pause and this healing energy condenses and intensifies further.

As you exhale, this single white point of light diffuses through your entire body and flows through you, healing all of your physical ailments.

If I have a specific ailment like a headache or a sore shoulder, I imagine that single point of light going directly to the physical location of the pain. Your imagination is the limit here. Sometimes I imagine the white light swirling in circles around the pain, sometimes I imagine it diffusing a bit and soaking up the pain then exiting through my toes, and sometimes the point of light just stays there.

When you’re trying to heal someone else, imagine the point of healing light exiting from your third eye as you exhale, teleporting instantaneously to the other person, then healing him of whatever ailments need to be healed.

You can do this for as long as you like. Usually I’ll do fifteen or twenty cycles of breath, but it doesn’t really matter.

I’ve healed many headaches and other sores in my own body with this meditation, and it’s possible I’ve healed others as well, although, again…can’t prove it 😉

This meditation can be done with emotional pain as well.

Ideal Life Meditation

I do this one at least once a day, every day, as I’m going to sleep at night. Often when I wake up in the morning as well, and in the middle of the day if I need a break from whatever I’m doing.

Once you’ve achieved a relaxed, meditative state, simply imagine exactly how your ideal life would look. Imagine you’re living it. Imagine you’re meditating, but you’re not your present self. You’re your future self taking a break from his day, thinking about his life, and everything is just how he wants it.

The most important part of this meditation is to visualize specifics. Where are you? What were you just doing? What are you about to do after meditating? What does your dwelling look like? How much money do you have in the bank? And most importantly of all, how does it feel to be your ideal self living your ideal life? Hold onto that feeling and try to maintain it throughout your entire day. In so doing, you powerfully summon the power of the Universe to come to aid you in achieving your deepest desires.

It’s also important to be objective. There will undoubtedly be negative aspects of your ideal life. Imagine the new stresses that would come with having a lot more money, a larger house, fame, an exotic location, or whatever it is you desire. Often times you are only subconsciously aware of these negative aspects of the life you desire, but not consciously aware of them, so you can’t remove those blocks unless you think about your ideal life objectively.

You may even find that you don’t really want what you had previously thought you wanted. Would you really want to be a billionaire? With such a status come an avalanche of headaches that you’ve probably never even considered.

The more often and intensely you visualize exactly how you want your life to be, the more specific about it you are, and the more you can capture how it would feel to be living that life, the more likely you are to achieve it.