Do You Use Hindsight, Foresight or Insight?

Insight is best!

The Lady in the garden at Evergreen, calmly living by insight.

We can go through life using either hindsight, foresight or insight as our guiding principle.

Which one is the best?

Hindsight

I’ve learned a lot through hindsight. Hindsight is looking back and seeing what went wrong and resolving never to do it again. For example, I’ve learned that scammers are sneaky, mint shouldn’t be planted directly in the ground but in an escape-proof pot, and struggling to open a stubborn bottle of purple ink should not be done while wearing a white blouse.

As you can probably see, using mostly hindsight to navigate life can leave you wallowing in a continual series of messy situations.

Foresight

Foresight is having the ability to accurately see into the future, to know ahead of time exactly what is going to happen. Most people, including me, aren’t good at this. We can make rough guesses, suspect certain outcomes, or assume the best or worst in a developing situation. But note this well: we could be wrong.

Many people down through time have listened to false prophets, only to be disappointed. And let’s face it, most of us are not gifted Tarot readers, psychics or prophets either.

Using mostly foresight is a risky way to live too because we’re often left stranded when things we assumed we had the foresight to predict don’t come to pass.

Insight

Insight, though, is possible for everyone, all the time.

Insight isn’t found in the past or the future.

Insight happens now.

In the context of this article, insight is a deep and clear understanding of the present moment, made possible because we are paying alert attention to it.

Being fully aware, we perceive the elements and issues involved and act on this information, but also, at the same time, we allow, in the moment, our accumulated wisdom and experience, along with universal intelligence, to flow into it too, all this happening within what spiritual teachers call the light of consciousness.

What is the light of consciousness?

A simple definition, although there are no words that can fully explain it and our limited human mind can’t grasp its magnitude either, is that it’s the ever-present, eternal, energetic vibration coursing through all visible and invisible things.

For us to have sight - to see things around us - we need light. This light could be supplied by the sun or moon, a candle or torch, a lit match. But for insight, it isn't a physical light that comes into play. It's the light of consciousness.

We have what we could call human consciousness, but this consciousness is too often cluttered and clouded by thoughts, beliefs, desires and fears, whereas the light of consciousness is uncluttered, unclouded. Pure. It comes from a deeper place

Connecting with this makes insight possible.

These three things – hindsight, foresight and insight – all play a part in our life.

But if we use insight, we don’t need hindsight or foresight.

There’s no need to look back with regret (hindsight) or look to a future we hope will happen (foresight).

When we rise above our thoughts, our stuff, our entanglements, we’re just present – here, now – accessing the timeless, eternal light of consciousness.

With love, Marlane