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We come to the week in Alternative Perspectives class where we see how far one’s embrace of alternative extends. We call it visionary futures (aka visioning, visualization, imaginal visioning, creative imagery, intuition, etc.). We rely heavily on the work of our own Professor Emeritus Dr. Oliver Markley. He used to teach an entire 15-week course on visionary futures. He also does public workshops and has published extensively on the topic. His view of the core ideas:
- Rational/analytic methods for futures work need to be complemented by “imaginal” visioning methods that are based on higher intuition
- “Prophetic” foresight, involving a moral or wisdom component, is essential given the existential challenges ahead
In other words, in a practical sense, this approach is a useful complement to the prevalent empirical rational, measurement approaches dominant in organizations. And we need different approaches to solving the big problems/challenges of the future.
I think it is fair to say that it’s not for everybody, but this work is finally being recognized by professional futurists as valuable. But it is gaining some recognition. Oliver organized a series of articles for a special “Symposium” issue of the Journal of Futures Studies on intuition in futures work that won an APF Most Significant Futures Works Award this summer — in the “Advance the methodology and practice of foresight and futures studies” category.
It’s been helpful for me to distinguish between different types of intuition:
- Holistic hunch or “gut” feeling (memory influenced)
- Transcendental insight or vision (memory independent)
We’re aiming for the transcendental insight or vision, which admittedly is more challenging to access than our gut feeling. Developing or ability to access our transcendental vision is not easy. But it fits with the notion of foresight needing to up its game (if you will) on the left-hand side of Wilber’s Integral Matrix. Many years ago I wrote about how my scanning was imbalanced toward the right-hand side…relying on right-hand sources. It was really quite disturbing to me – when have those moments of cognitive dissonance. Something’s wrong here – that launched me into Integral Futures. And it opened me up to exploring new ways to access the left-hand side, thus my curiosity about intuition and visionary futures was now activated. I guess the point of my little story here is that one can come to this work when it makes sense. I had an opportunity to take the Visionary Futures course from Dr. Markley when I was a student in the program in 1988-1990. At that time, I was not ready, quite frankly. I’m kicking myself now, but to be honest I probably would not have gotten much out of it, because I was not open to it.
These days I have integrated some of these tools into my practice. I would say that I mostly use these tools only with clients with whom I’ve built a close relationship. Perhaps they’ve been of greater use to me in how I do my own work, that is more of how I build my own capabilities, than in directly working with clients. Andy Hines
Nice post Andy – thanks. I’ve talked about trusting instinct (the gut) but you’d added another dimension for me that I’m going to have to work on 🙂
that really is a key thing as Oliver describes it — much tougher to do the transcendental in my experience.
Hi Andy,
A great post recognising Oliver’s work and some of my interest areas. I’m into Intuitive Foresight & Wisdom research.
Oliver also has a good paper and read on ‘Olaf Stapledon: Personal Reflections on Cosmic Inspiration from a Pioneering Visionary’.
For Intuitive Foresight there are several texts that I find are a must have they are listed so that your students and other practitioners and researchers can also pursue this course of thought if they so choose:
1) Handbook of Intuition Research – Edited by Marta Sinclair
2) Handbook of Research Methods on Intuition – Edited by Marta Sinclair
3) The Creative Mind an Introduction to Metaphysics – Henri Bergson
4) Henri Bergson Key Writings – Edited by Keith Ansell Pearson and John O Maoilearca
5) Bergsonism – Gilles Deleuze
6) The Light of the Soul – The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, Alice A Bailey
7) Philosophical texts in general for the differing historical meanings of Intuition
8) Eastern Philosophical texts for deeper spiritual practices, interpretations and equivalents of Intuition
This field of study is not one that you can come to with a short course as it requires an openness of mind, deep and broad philosophical understanding and a good degree of practice experience. Life experience. The interesting thing is that there are considerable overlaps with new scientific & neurological findings, with ordinary and non ordinary states of consciousness and with the likes of paranormal capabilities such as clairvoyance, clariaudience, remote viewing, insight and character reading, telepathy and such mind extending domains. Again an open mind is critical without it a practitioner should perhaps focus on more normative traditional areas and methods.
I hope the above references assist your students into the future.
Kind regards,
Brett Martin
Email: hello@brettmartin.com.au
LinkedIn: https://au.linkedin.com/in/brett-martin-62a8a635
wow, thanks so much for sharing this terrific resource list!
Hi Andy,
When you hosted The Learning Forum’s Foresight Council many years ago, we had Dr. Markley share his work. I found to make total sense. In addition to running The Learning Forum, I co-founded a company that uses neurofeedback for training on self-awareness, imagery, unconscious bias and related capabilities.
Perhaps the next step for futurists or anyone who has to make decisions about the future is this kind of training that helps you link your brain with your heart and your gut. Mind, body, intuition.