Coming Into The Flow Of Life

This talk was given during a weeklong transformational retreat with the theme "finding flow in difficult times". It introduces our concept of flow and outlines what it takes - from our perspective - to be in the flow of life. Along with Allan Watts we understand flowing with life as neither careless drifting nor fearful clinging, but being fully present with the experience of life. Personal references have been deleted from the talk.

Transcript

So welcome to our first session explicitly on flow this morning.

Suzanne was already talking about why we chose the topic of flow,

And I'll talk a little bit about what we understand by flow.

We took some sessions to discuss what we actually mean,

And then we'll take the time to talk about what you understand by flow,

Because in the end the idea is that you define your meaning,

Which is probably the most valuable for you.

There is a definition in positive psychology of flow by a gentleman called Csikszentmihalyi.

It's an unpronounceable name.

I learned it in my coaching training.

They told me how to pronounce it,

And the truth is Csikszentmihalyi.

I don't remember exactly.

Just maybe a short glimpse of what this idea of positive psychology is.

In Western psychology,

We focus very much on mental illness and fixing the problem when it's already appeared,

Like we do in Western medicine.

We're great at addressing the problem,

Most of it.

In Eastern psychology,

As in Eastern medicine,

We focus a lot on prevention and Eastern psychology on cultivating wholesome states of mind,

So we're looking at cultivating mental wellness.

Positive psychology took that from the Eastern tradition and brought it into the Western psychology.

There's a very famous book called Positivity.

This gentleman was researching on flow because he wanted to understand what makes people happy.

His definition of 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.

The idea is,

How can we contribute to our own happiness?

He says,

The best moments in our lives are not the passive,

Receptive,

Relaxing times.

The best moments usually occur if a person's body or mind is stretched to its limit in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult or worthwhile.

In this definition of flow,

There's a lot around effort and accomplishment.

So being stretched to the limit.

We were talking about this and then we actually both have said,

Based on our own experience,

That we think flow has to do with effortless effort,

With wise effort,

With the ability to make an effort and let go.

This is a little closer to the Eastern concept,

Basically.

What we always say is wise effort.

There's a concept in Chinese,

Somebody speaking Chinese,

I think you,

You can maybe pronounce the word properly,

It's come from Daoism,

It's called Hui,

Hui,

Is that correct?

And so that is defined as the dynamic,

Effortless and unselfconscious state of mind of a person who is optimally active and effective.

The state of harmony is both complex and holistic,

Involving as it does the integration of the body,

The emotions and the mind.

And so there is an element of ease in that definition and there's an element of coherence between body and mind.

And what's very important with that definition is that flowing with life,

So it comes from Daoism and so being in the way is being with the Dao.

So flowing with life,

Being in the way,

Gets us beyond self-focus and it's not so much focused on the I and the me and the self and my accomplishment and my performance,

It's very much focused on something bigger than myself.

And so another theory to say that the definition we like best is the one by Alan Watts that says,

The art of living is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging on the other.

It consists in being sensitive to each moment and regarding it as utterly new and unique in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

So really it's what I was trying to convey also with the yoga,

It's this balance between letting go and drifting and clinging and that's easier said than done as most of us know.

And so this is basically what we want to talk about in the next days and we came up with a few elements that actually make this state between careless drifting and fearful clinging possible.

One is the willingness to be present for life as it is,

Which is inherent in both the practice and the attitude and the state of mind of mindfulness.

So being present to our sensory experiences,

Suzanne will talk about this more later tonight,

This afternoon,

Our thoughts and our emotions being present to our surrounding and thereby also noticing that tendency of the mind to hold on to what we like and to push away what we don't like,

What Jyotindra,

The neuroscientist,

Calls the craving mind.

And that's what usually gets us into trouble.

We want to hold on to something,

We want to push away something we don't like and when we're very much in the holding and very much in the pushing then usually we get ourselves into trouble.

As we were saying yesterday,

Mindfulness has two wings,

Awareness and compassion.

And so flow also has an underlying attitude of compassion and kindness because otherwise it's impossible for us to be present with all our experiences,

Especially with the unpleasant ones.

So it's this willingness to also,

And not only,

Also turn to our experiences,

Our unpleasant experiences with love,

Which is the definition of compassion.

To be in the flow of life has another element,

Which is to be aware of the inherently unsatisfactory and imperfect nature of our lives.

And modern Buddhist teachers call this shit happens.

So unpleasant things will happen in our lives and no matter how hard we try,

There will be times in our lives when we won't get it right.

And I guess most of us have made this experience.

And then we get hooked and we try even harder and it's actually not solving the issue.

That said,

It's always also,

Of course,

To be aware of the beauty and the magic of life.

I really like that image of the yin and the yang where you have the black part and the white part and there's a dark spot in the white and a light spot in the black and that's actually usually how life hopefully is.

There's another element which is called equanimity.

You could use the word serenity or gelassenheit.

And that's this ability to cultivate a peaceful heart in the midst of it all.

And this is basically what we start to practice when we practice collecting our mind.

We really practice calming the mind so the mind can stay peaceful even on those rocking refugee boats when the pirates come and of course that's a very advanced practice.

So that's,

If we're very,

Very well practiced,

Then ideally we have that equanimity and we can stay calm and peaceful even in those situations.

There are a few elements involved in equanimity we'll talk about in the next days,

On Tuesday,

Because this is actually a very,

Very important factor,

I think personally,

To being or finding back in the flow of life.

It also has this element of wise effort we've been talking about,

Of knowing when to hold on and knowing when to let go.

There's one book on the Huwais,

It's called Trying Not to Try.

So it's always this element of balance.

It also has an element of believing in the value of a balanced heart.

If we don't think that it's very important and helpful to have a balanced heart,

It's not going to be possible to cultivate equanimity.

Another element of being in the flow of life is to accept the impermanence of life.

There's a nice phrase by Anthony DeMello,

It says it's absolute cooperation with the inevitable.

Because what often happens is that we cling very strongly to what we know and we're very scared of transition because usually in transition there's that part of emptiness and not knowing what's going to happen next.

And that's very scary for most of us.

I know a few people who really like to be in that state and they really feel the opportunity.

I don't know,

Maybe Kasper is smiling,

You may be one of them,

I'm not sure.

Who really like to be out there in the open and say,

Wow,

Let's see what life's going to bring.

But of course,

Especially when we have a lot left to let go of something we love and we're in a state of grief,

It's very hard to accept impermanence.

And so it gives us a sense of freedom and agency if we come to the realization that we cannot influence what life brings to us,

But we have a certain freedom how we deal with it.

On the one hand,

Impermanence also has a different aspect and it has the aspect of renewal.

It has the aspect of the magic of aliveness because aliveness is always changing.

And I think this time of the year,

That's why it's also so beautiful to come here.

You really can feel the beauty of renewal and the little flowers and the little beetles and everything and the light and the little lizards and even the little snakes coming out.

And so we hope that we can also share with you or make you touch into that potentiality that lies in transformation as scary as it may be,

Which is when things are really hard.

We think one of the very important elements to find back in the flow of life when we feel very lost.

We therefore,

As we keep saying,

Not only put all that emphasis on you being there with the suffering and accepting that suffering as part of life and so on and so forth,

But you also being there with the beauty of life and all the things that are enjoyable.

And the interesting thing is that even when you're very sad and grieving,

There are moments where you can still enjoy the beauty of the flowers and the sunshine.

And the other day I was listening to a talk by our teacher Tillman,

Who was saying for some people it's very hard to even allow themselves to also be happy when they're actually sad and to just become aware of this dance,

The 10,

000 joys and the 10,

000 sorrows that are always there.

And it's always a dance between the one thing.

So there's always that light spot in the part of the darkness.

And there's always,

Always a dark spot in the part of the light.

And that makes this thing like the yin-yang a whole.

So for us,

Being in the flow of life also means the possibility of healing,

Of profound healing,

In the sense not of fixing things and just getting everything right and staying forever young and self-optimization and no wrinkles ever.

And at some point,

If I'm trying hard enough,

I'm just going to be this perfect mother,

This perfect wife,

This perfect friend,

This perfect husband,

Whatever you want to be.

It's more this idea of wholeness,

Healing in the sense of wholeness,

Which means integrating all of your life's experiences,

The pleasant and the unpleasant and the neutral,

Into that story of your life,

Knowing that the story is continuously changing.

It's not the story of your life that started when you were three.

It's going to be the same story when you're 80.

It's making the story as you go along.

And as you go along,

If you can integrate your experiences into a coherent story,

That means that you can be whole.

And Suzanne will talk about this on Thursday.

And if there's something you cannot integrate,

And there's this wound that keeps opening up,

Then we call this trauma.

And it keeps you from healing profoundly and truly and becoming whole.

And that's what makes a great part of your suffering from trauma.

Is that correct?

And so we were talking about what it really takes,

And we think it really takes,

To be in the flow of life,

It takes surrendering to love.

And we'll talk about that on Thursday,

But I'm just going to touch on what I mean by that,

What we mean by that.

The one element of surrendering to love is that trust that our heart is strong enough to hold it all.

And that's the tough shit that when you're going through an experience where you feel like maybe my heart is breaking and I cannot hold it,

And you can cultivate this trust.

So the good thing about trust is some of us are born with trust,

That's great,

But you can't cultivate it,

You can work with it.

You can really come back to it consciously and revisit it.

So one is that trust in the compassionate nature of your own heart.

The other is the trust in the goodness of your own heart.

And that's what I was saying earlier.

We are cultivating all those wholesome states of mind,

But the fact is that they're already there.

Your heart is good,

Like we were talking about this the other day with some of you,

Like this joke we always make when we were at the LSE together,

And I performed so badly at my economics course because I was studying social anthropology,

And you could see that in all cultures compassion is our first instinct.

We are made to cooperate.

We are made to help each other at least in our in-group and often surprisingly in the out-group too.

And they were telling me that we are rational maximizers.

I kept saying to Susanne,

This is not true.

I mean,

I can't do this because she's like,

Whatever,

Get on with it.

Just do your calculations and write your stuff.

But I just couldn't understand it.

So the point is it's the nature of our mind and our being to be compassionate simply because a human being cannot survive alone.

It's not happening.

You have those people going,

But for the first 10 years of your life,

You're in trouble.

You really need to hold together.

So even Darwin said that,

Yeah?

Sympathy is our first instinct,

Stronger than self-interest.

And then the third is really that surrendering to whatever you believe is out there.

It can be God.

It can be the universe.

It can be the infinite ocean of compassion.

It can be limitless love.

It can be loving awareness.

It can be your ancestors,

Like I for some reason with all our journeys,

I have like a huge strong connection to my ancestors.

Every breath journey,

Like all there.

And so it's like they say,

You know,

This physicist I was talking about him last year,

Durer,

A quantum physicist,

He says,

We think we are the little white foam on top of the wave,

Separate from the white foam on the top of the other wave.

But the truth is we're the wave,

And the wave is the ocean.

And this is who we really are.

We just forget.

It's called delusion,

Yeah?

We have a virgin attachment and delusion in classical Buddhist teachings.

And so we always forget that,

But this is really who we really are.

And the more we know that the wave is the ocean,

The more we can accept that our little human incarnation is a great experience or a very challenging experience,

But it's probably not going to be all of our whatever kind of manifestation.

And that can be very helpful.

It's of course very helpful if you have been growing up and educated in any religious tradition and you just have that already.

You believe in God or you've been taught whatever and it's very accessible to you.

For those of us who haven't,

It's a little more difficult because it's something completely irrational and transcends our rational mind entirely,

But it's got to do with our deep inner wisdom.

And I think the challenge is,

And I'll talk about this more on Thursday,

Is that our society prevents us from really trusting what we really know because we focus so much on rational understanding and that's something we can't understand.

So there's another thing that I think you've heard Suzanne say a few times,

Which is connection.

So we don't have to do it alone.

Actually,

We can do it alone,

But also we don't have to do it alone.

And a lot of times when we're out of the flow,

We're disconnected from our inner voice.

We're disconnected from the people who matter.

We're disconnected from the meaning in our jobs.

We're disconnected from nature.

We're disconnected from the values that we really trust.

And I'll put up the book that Suzanne recommended to me and she's been mentioning a lot about,

What is it called?

Lost connections?

So really,

Me being a social anthropologist,

All cultures have rituals,

All cultures have a way to make us feel part of a greater whole and be together.

And so for us,

Maybe it's a way to find this.

I think it's one of the reasons why we really like to offer retreats because we find that this really creates a lot of connection and it allows people to really speak from their heart,

To listen from their heart.

And therefore,

In that ocean of compassion that exists here,

Of kindness,

Of openness,

I mean,

You probably experience this.

You come here,

You hardly know anybody,

And you can talk about everything and they'll listen to you like rarely people listen to you when you just talk to them.

So this is the special thing about connection.

Connection has this element of altruism,

And we kind of come back to this altruism because we think that being in the flow of life also really has to do with purpose.

And purpose usually is not only about me having a great house and a great family and a great car and a lovely dog,

But usually it's about me feeling that my life has some kind of meaning.

And the meaning can be that I'm the most loving mother or the most understanding,

Courageous leader who really helps my people to do their best or whatever.

It really doesn't matter what it is.

The point is that it makes sense to you and that it's meaningful to you.

And in a lifetime of 50 years,

It's probably not exactly the same all the time.

So it may change,

So it's nice to revisit it,

And we'll look at it on Friday again to reconnect right now in your life.

What's your sense of purpose?

What's your sense of meaning?

And then I'll close with the definition of wisdom we like best.

It's when the heart and the mind and the body have a deep connection.

And it's not an intellectual state where you're not thinking and you're not using your prefrontal cortex.

It's not being like a cat.

The cat is not mindful.

The cat is relaxed.

And the cat is just in the present.

Mindfulness involves a very high cognitive effort to be fully present to what's here right now,

To be aware of awareness,

To observe the mind with the mind.

And the same is the thing about wisdom.

It's when the mind listens to the voice of the heart.

We had a longer conversation about what we meant,

And I think we used different words,

But we kind of came to a similar final definition.

You can use very different words,

But it's not this gut-feeling impulsiveness like the firefighter knows what to do when there's an emergency or something like that,

Or you catching your child when it's running over the road or something.

It's this high level of awareness where you're in coherence.

And if you listen to Dan Siegel,

Who's a neuroscientist,

It's a state of mental coherence when the different areas of your brain are in coherence and communicating with each other.

And it's a lot like your limbic brain goes,

Way,

Way,

Way,

Way,

Way,

Emergency,

And prefrontal cortex is cut off,

Or you're just thinking,

Thinking,

Thinking,

And you don't feel your body,

And you're like,

This is what you're thinking.

Now,

It's a state of flow inside your body and inside your mind.

This is where we understand by wisdom.

And again,

It sounds great,

But it's not always available to us,

So this is why we practice our formal practice.

We have a little image that we both really like by Dan Siegel,

Who I just mentioned.

It's called The River of Well-Being.

I'm going to pass the image around.

Don't need to read all my stuff on it.

Just look at the image.

And his definition of mental well-being is that there's a river,

And in the middle,

You're in a state of mental well-being,

Provided,

Of course,

That there is no waterfall and stuff.

So let's imagine a slowly flowing river.

And then there's the right side,

And it's the shore of rigidity,

And the left side is the shore of chaos.

And so in the middle,

You're in the flow.

And then things happen,

And it can get you stuck.

So we'll talk about being stuck tomorrow.

And then things may happen,

And it gets you into that lostness of chaos,

And you're no longer in your river of mental well-being.

And so taking that image a little bit,

We will talk about all these different elements I was just mentioning in the course of the next days,

Going a little deeper into those different elements we felt helped us to be in the flow of life,

And hopefully giving you some inputs on how you can do it.

Or you giving us some.

It's not like we're always in the flow.

I mean,

I don't know about you,

Maybe,

But I'm definitely not always in the flow of life.

And what I can share with you is what I've experienced in my life to get me back into the flow of life,

And sometimes may be helpful to prevent me to get totally on the shore of rigidity.

That's usually my shore.

That's all I had to say.

Do you want to add anything?