Long Self Practice
The Spiritual practice of connecting to your past and future self.
Time isn’t linear. It is happening all at once.
Turns out time does not flow like water. Einstein said so. It is our awareness of existence that is linear.
Long Self is a term used by cognitive neuroscientist and futurist Dr. Julia Mossbridge and anthropologist Eric Wargo to describe the awareness of ourselves over time. This includes pictures and models of oneself from birth to death overlaid over one another. While awareness of one's younger self is easy, the mind-bending concept of connecting to our future self is possible and can become easier with practice.
🔮 Can you envision a time where an uninspired version of yourself is helped by a pep talk from your future self? 🔮 In in her talk (starting at minute 52), Julia Mossbridge explains that regularly connecting with your future self can greatly enhance your well-being. A 5-day experiment where participants recorded messages to their future selves showed significantly increased levels of perceived well-being. The most impressive part is that the well-being of people with high and low ACEs scores matched after the five-day practice, which is an incredible result!
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Check out this video of a lecture by cognitive neuroscientist and futurist Dr. Julia Mossbridge’s work on what she calls “mental time travel” or “precognition”.
The whole video is fascinating, but if you don’t have 90 min to kill on YouTube the jist is: We’re able to get messages to and from our Future Selves. Connecting and communicating with your future self mindfully can help you heal past trauma and “see” the future.
“I think of each of the events of our life like beads on a necklace and controlled precognition is like making the necklace, making the connection between our past and future selves. There’s something extremely strengthening and powerful about connecting with yourself over time,” Mossbridge says.
Informational time travel - getting information from the future.
Mental time travel - allowing your model of you to travel back or forth in time. Connecting to you in childhood or to your future self.
Value that comes from connecting to yourself over time.
I also really like this article on bbc titled What We Get Wrong About Time and this blog post calling in yogic philosophy to explain perception.
The practice
Borrowing a bit from Tara Brach's meditation playbook (linked below), engage in a dialogue with your future self. Sit down for a meditation, and envision your future self as a mentor of sorts. Talk to them, share what comes up, and then pause to receive guidance. Mossbridge stresses that the key lies in liking your future self and trusting that your future self has sage advice for you.
Does it work?
It is a comforting practice but I find my skeptical part wondering if I am just sitting there, making it all up. So my problem-solving part took the reins and here is what we came up with:
Consider the fact that time is not linear, if it is indeed happening all at once, then we could do the same practice backward. Starting from a place of knowing, the now. So, in order to strengthen this intuition muscle, this receiver, I write letters to my younger self, giving myself advice, complimenting myself on decisions that turned out to be the right ones, giving guidance at forks in the road, pep talks to when I was taking wrong turns and encouraging that it will all work out.
And, in this nonlinear time, those notes, like breadcrumbs through time, strengthen my receiver for the advice yet to come. As I refine my connection with my past self, I’m tuning in to insights that echo back from my older, wiser, and more mature self. It works!
Future Self MEDITATION
These are the recordings I use.
A 7 min short one and a longer 12min sit.
by Tara Brach
LETTERS TO MYSELF
Intimate notes to self, lessons I learned in my 20s and 30s, about accountability, agency, partnership, parenting, awareness, self-care, self-love and more.