For the last several Thursdays, we have been discussing Rob Brezsny’s Pronoia is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings. This is the last Pronoia post. Click here to read all the Pronoia posts.

Last week, I told you that I would do an exercise from Pronoia and share my results with you for this, our last discussion of this funny and eye-opening book. The exercise I’ve chosen is #2 on page 271, just a few pages before the book’s end. Here’s the text of it:

The iconoclastic physicist Jack Sarfatti proposes that all “creative thought by artists, craftsmen, and scientists involves the subconscious reception of ideas from the future, which literally create themselves.” Beauty and Truth Laboratory researcher Vimala Blavatsky puts a different spin on it. “Our future selves are constantly transmitting great ideas to us back through time,” she says, “but most of us don’t believe that’s possible and consequently are not alert for it.”

What do you think is the most pressing communique your future self is currently beaming your way?

I love the idea of my future self looking back through time and offering encouragement and ideas. In fact, much of the impetus I feel for becoming physically stronger comes from a vision I had several months ago of myself as an older woman, tall and lean and radiant in a long white dress.

Do I think that my future self actually exists and is beaming thoughts to me right now? I honestly don’t know, but I don’t think it matters. To me, the point of this exercise was to loosen my grip on what I think reality is right now and see into possibilities for the future, then inhabit those possibilities, and from this different perspective, speak to today.

So, what does my future self tell me? She says Relax. Not put-your-feet-up-and-vegetate relax, but take-a-deep-breath-and-have-some-faith relax. So often I (and many of us, I think) have such a death grip on the way I think I should be that it actually constricts me, physically and emotionally and mentally and spiritually. And constriction is not what we’re here for. Quite the contrary, in fact.

She also says that the path forward is one of joy. Being brave and audacious and open-hearted are all joyful ways to be. Whereas feeling guilty, assigning blame, and casting judgements are total wastes of time. Connecting with joy in our every day tasks has a bit of a learning curve, she tells me, but is more than worth the effort. The future is an incredible place, she says, and you helped bring it into being. Be proud! Be humble! Give thanks!

Looking at the present moment as though it is the past is illuminating. Right now, it feels as though we are living in some uniquely anxious times, but all times are uniquely anxious for those who are living in them. I just finished reading the Little House books for the first time since I was a child, and was stunned both by all the hardships that the Ingalls family endured and by the pleasantness of the lives they lived regardless. Even when they had nothing but each other, Laura would run wildly through the sun-filled prairie, Ma would sing while she did her chores, Mary would enjoy the feeling of warmth on her face even though she could not see the sun, and Pa would get down his fiddle and play.

It was comforting for me, as I read these books, to know that ultimately Laura grew up and had a lovely life with her husband Almanzo, and that her daughter Rose grew up and had her own version of a lovely life. In the same way, it’s comforting to inhabit my own self 30 or 40 years from now. It gives me a broader perspective and a sense of continuum. However the story turns out, it’s ultimately going to be okay.

We look back on history as a static, possibly even boring story—this happened, then that happened, then something else happened. But the truth is that the lives folks lived back then were full of craziness, just like ours. And they had the choice to face the craziness with grim determination or with light-hearted faith, just like we do.

When the past was the present, it felt a lot like our present does today. And since the present moment is the gateway through which the future arrives in all its ragged, unexpected glory, it makes sense that we should make right now as beautiful and engrossing as we can. Doing this—taking full and cheerful responsibility for right now—is the ultimate expression of love for the future. I will ensure you are as awesome as today. I promise.

To be a master of pronoia is to be fully and joyfully engaged in life. To do so, we need to cultivate humor, self-care, a large perspective, a light touch, a willingness to be foolish, a sense of adventure, and faith.

Pronoia is so full of guidance on how to do this that I feel as though I could engage with it for months or even years and still not get the whole depth of it. It’s an ongoing exploration for sure. But what isn’t?