The Psychology of the Future: A Conversation with James Arthur Ray

Near the end of our conversation, I asked James Arthur Ray whether there was anything he wanted to leave people with, something I might have missed. What he came back to was the idea of a shift in how we think, what he called the psychology of the future.

He pointed to Ken Wilber's notion that humanity sits at the edge of a large step forward in consciousness. Ray said he believes that step is real, and that he keeps noticing signs of it in the people and events around him.

The change he described starts with letting go of one assumption: that a good life should be an easy one. His view is almost the opposite. Life was never built to be easy, he said. It was built to carry meaning. Joy and pain tend to occupy the same room at the same time, in most situations rather than the rare ones.

From there the argument is simple. Commit to a life that means something, and stop waiting on the fantasy of some frictionless, magical version that always seems to live somewhere off in the future. Once you do that, he suggested, you actually begin to live. You fall for the real thing instead of the daydream, and that is where you find whatever greatness you're capable of reaching.

That was the wish he wanted to pass along: that this is the reason you exist, and the reason you're here at all. I thanked him for the time, he returned the kindness, told me to keep going, and we wrapped up.