Welcome to the 2nd post in the new series on postmodern spirituality. Let’s talk about what’s called “flow,” those times when we have “optimal” experiences, such as the “runner’s high,” great sex, making music (well :=) or solving math equations. Flow is a major component of spirituality. The most beautiful people in the world are those whose lives are filled with flow. Perhaps you know someone like that. More below:

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is a psychologist at the University of Chicago.
He has studied the conditions within which people have “optimal experiences.”
He summarized his findings in a wonderful book entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.

I read the book when it first appeared in 1990. It spoke to me and I had a number of “ahah” moments. Csikszentmihalyi went on to spend his career on studying flow in humans.
Here is the Amazon link to the latest edition. It has the “Look Inside” feature, so you could see the table of contents.
https://www.amazon.com/Flow-Psychology-Experience-Perennial-Classics/dp/...

According to Csikszentmihalyi, flow is

the state in which people are so involved in
an activity that nothing else seems to matter;
the experience itself is so enjoyable
that people will do it even at great cost,
for the sheer sake of doing it.

People can experience flow in any type of activity. However, it is not typically experienced during relaxation, such as watching television.
Flow rather is experienced

when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits
in a voluntary effort
to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.

I like this concept of “flow” very much. One of our daughters is a talented artist: to see her immersed in drawing or painting, as often on computer as on paper, is to recognize someone in flow. We’re hoping that she will live a life filled with flow immersed in her art.

Let’s unpack his definition a bit. So, flow is experienced:

1. When a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits
Yup, TV won’t produce flow, because we’re passive recipients, not active participants.
A documentary may bring us new knowledge and insight, and a good movie may produce in us a mental connection and many profound emotions, but it doesn’t produce a stretching of the mind to its limits.

My son has mobility issues and was never able to experience flow in sports. But he regularly experiences flow through the stretching of his mind to its limits through math and computer games. He does tertiary level math “for fun” in his free time. It’s a genetic gift from Lovie; I struggle to add and subtract :=)

He doesn’t want to study math, because “that would ruin the fun.” It would turn math into work and inhibit the flow he experiences in doing it for fun. At the moment, he’s studying a B.Sc in game computing in Ireland, which is where the flow he experiences through playing video games has led him. From the photos, it seems he’s adapting very well: the Guinness certainly is flowing :=)

Experiencing flow when a person’s body is stretched to its limits is fairly self-explanatory. We just saw the Olympics and the para-Olympics are now presenting similar stories of flow, achievement, and disappointment. Like yourself, I’ve experienced flow through the body in various – and often surprising – physical activities.

I played rugby until I couldn’t anymore, because of the flow I experienced. Well, getting clobbered regularly helped increase my appreciation of the flow experiences, such as scoring or tackling well or selling a dummy pass. It’s hard to say it, but I experienced flow in combat, which made the army a home for me. A bad home, but still.

Csikszentmihalyi (try saying that three times fast :=) says that flow is experienced,

2. In a voluntary effort
I certainly have never experienced flow in anything I was forced to do. Like practicing drill on a sunbaked tarmac for hours on end. Or doing household chores, that ever-present necessary evil :=) “Wax on, wax off, my left foot! The laundry is my job and I adopted what a friend of ours called it - “Mount Never-Rest.” Dancing is highly conducive to flow. Notice, however, how being forced on to a dance floor inhibits flow.

In a voluntary effort then. The flow in great sex requires a patient, voluntary self-giving. Athletics and sports provide many flow examples. In South Africa, there is a great ultra marathon called “The Comrades” (http://www.comrades.com/)

It is 87 km (54 miles) and takes place in the winter near Durban. One year, they run from the mountain down to the coast and the next year, they run the up route. More than ten thousand participate, not one of them being me. The length of a rugby field was my limit for voluntary running :=) I used to watch it on TV - incredible stories of people voluntary pushing their bodies to and beyond it’s limits. A vivid memory is of 80-year old Wally Hayward – a Comrades winner in his youth – crossing the finish line, leaving an audience in tears of joy.

So, flow is experienced “when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort.” What kind of effort?

3. to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile
So the rush a gambler in Vegas experiences could be this, that, or the other, but it’s not “flow” in accomplishing “something difficult and worthwhile.” Is that a value judgment? Sure it is. Similarly, buddy isn’t experiencing flow when he zips around the cocktail party being all charming and whatnot from having snorted cocaine in the bathroom.

What of the team that watches their giant domino puzzle entry into the Guinness (there it is again :=) World Book of Records topple exactly as they had painstakingly planned, organized and built? Of course it’s flow.

We have one orchid – the most long-lived one so far. Orchids like things just so. We’ve had all kinds of accidents that disturbed our orchid’s sense of “just so,” and then they just give up the ghost and shrivel. Humbling, is what it is. So if someone presents an orchid at the annual show of the National Orchid Society of Great Britain and wins, the flow of accomplishing something difficult and worthwhile is real.

To recap then, flow is experienced “when a person’s body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.”

I look forward to your comments and reflections. Please tell us your stories of flow – well, perhaps not the ones about great sex :=)

So that is the definition of flow. The ancient Greeks said similar things. Aristotle, for example, said that “flourishing” is the ultimate goal in life. It is achieved through three intertwined elements. If I may paraphrase from his Nicomachean Ethics, flourishing is achieved through:
1. rational activity (sustained, reasoned action)
2. in accordance with excellence
3. over a complete life
(http://caucus99percent.com/content/personal-resilience-aristotelian-virt...)

I think that Aristotle’s description of flourishing is also a description of a life filled with flow. Spirituality is about a life of flow, a life of flourishing. When my eyes close for the last time, I would like it be within a sense of having lived a “complete life.” Perhaps you do too.

It’s wunnerful to talk postmodern spirituality with you. I look forward to your reflections.

Peace be with us (if we find flow in life),
gerrit