"The great thing, then, in all education, is to make our nervous system our ally instead of our enemy.”
— William James
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I think we all know the experience of being totally lost and at the mercy of a particular train or loop of thought and emotion that we just can’t escape.
That’s why I was very motivated to learn, and practice, meditation –
As an attempt to gain some freedom from my busy, erratic and sometimes worried, anxious, angry mind.
We know we’re doing it, right?
Stuck going around and around in circles in our heads, thinking the same looping thoughts, focused on the same fears or frustrations – all the stuff we can’t do anything about right now, but we just can’t stop thinking and thinking …
When we’re stuck like this, it’s near on impossible to make the kind of difference in our lives and to others that we want to – we’re too busy swamped by our own thoughts and emotions to move anywhere well.
Stuck is a fine word to describe it.
As Dr. Frank Crane wrote a long time ago, at the turn of the last century –
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“Our best friends and our worst enemies are our thoughts. A thought can do us more good than a doctor or a banker or a faithful friend. It can also do us more harm than a brick.”
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But we also know the feeling and experience of life when we’re free of the mind, free of negativity and self-criticism, free of the past and the future too – simply present, alive, here and now.
I still remember that day on a warm Sunday morning walking to the bakery to get some baked goodies for my buddies back at my student flat.
It was one of my first real tastes of the ease of simply existing – with nothing to prove and nothing to hide and no one to impress.
Free of constant self-monitoring and evaluation, free of regret or concern about another moment; simply walking down the street with some coins jangling in my pocket with the sun on my face.
That experience faded over the course of the morning, but I never forgot the freedom I felt; the simplicity and peace I felt being in my own skin.
All is well.
How often can you say that about your life?
That right now, all is perfect? That whatever the past was or the future may contain, in this moment, all is mightily fine – you wouldn’t change a single thing?
I’d say, from my conversations and looking on social media and figures on mental health, not many of us are living lives where we live in a constant state of ease and happiness in the way things are.
There’s glimpses though …
At the end of a fine meal with good company, when your team pulls it all together, being on holiday with the family close and content, at the end – or even in the midst – of exercise, making love, snuggled in reading to a child, getting lost in a novel or learning some fine facts on a deep YouTube or podcast dive …
You know the experience of freedom from the mind.
You do, even if you think you don’t.
You do what you love because you forget to think about any other moment in time. What you love brings you to a point of complete presence – and a quieting of the criticism, judgement, expectations, regrets, frustrations and fears that our addiction to thinking brings.
Now the secret to a life well lived is not only to do what you love – that’s critical to your sanity and your ability to give to others – but to be able to love everything you do. Even taking out the recycling.
Steven Kotler is a flow researcher and author. Flow describes, in part, this experience of being absorbed in the task in front of you; of being able to marshal your energies, not wasting effort on thinking, but really being complete in the middle of ANY activity.
He talks about flow being characterised by 4 things – STER for short.
The flow experience is:
Selfless
— where the thinking and over-analysing sense of the little you vanishes.
Timeless
— where time takes on weird qualities or even vanishes. You can think 30 minutes has passed and it’s been 3 hours, or 10 minutes can seem like an eternity.
Effortless
— where even though you might be working very hard, it feels effortless.
Rich
— where the sensory experience of being and doing is so alive, complete, and well … rich.
If that’s not a great definition of all the spiritual and near religious experiences I’ve ever had, I don’t know what is.
But religious or not, flow means you are at the height of your powers.
Free of distraction and doubt, whatever you are doing – kicking back or chasing more – not only comes alive but is done extremely effectively and efficiently.
And who doesn’t want more of that?
I do.
Now the intensity of flow changes dramatically, but the point is you can learn to replicate flow states and have more and more absorption.
How?
I am simplifying, but love Steven’s words on this:
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“Flow follows focus.”
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The ability to pay one-pointed attention is crucial, yet it’s something we don’t practice.
Often people ask me what I get from meditation, and it certainly isn’t to get good at meditation. It’s to get good at absorption and flow; which in turn, as I was saying, means I can be better at life –
More effectiveness, more efficiency, more enjoyment.
Absorbed in the moment, complete in the moment, playing and dancing with the moment.
It doesn’t mean you don’t have a goal, heck, you might even be downright obsessed with something –
But the doing and the being is more alive than the analysing and the useless doubts and fears and constrictions of our heads.
So.
If you want more flow and to be less stuck in thinking, here’s what you need to know:
1. It’s possible for you –
What IF you could have the kind of absorption in each and every moment where you wouldn’t change a thing? You can, it’s possible for you. My Ascension teacher says it’s actually everyone’s birthright; it’s our natural state. We’ve all just fallen into bad habits and had different role models.
2. It’s all about practice –
Practicing the right things, yes, but this is a skill. Turning your head from a random, chaotic puppy to a well trained sheepdog is simply a matter of repetition and curiosity.
3. It’s not about suppression, strain or control –
Curiosity doesn’t involve effort. You don’t need to battle or stop your mind or your negative habits; you just need to have a different relationship with them – and the presence and awareness that lies outside of the mind
4. The experience of being in love with life has little to do with the emotion of love —
It’s more to do with the absence of paying attention to judgement. Emotions and feelings come and go. First and foremost is your choice to be present, or not.
Simple huh?
Perhaps not easy, but only because no one has shown us. We think being stressed and struggling is the cost of making the difference we want to make.
It’s not the case.
All your heroes knew or know about flow – maybe not consciously – but they know how to apply themselves to the one moment they can do anything about, and ignore everything else.
Alrighty?
Find a way of prioritising your choice to be present and filled with presence.
It’s so important; it’s everything.
Let me know if I can help.
Go well!
Arjuna