Sounds like an odd question, doesn’t it?
Because being in flow (i.e. in the zone/pure presence/in the Now) is supposed to be where it’s at, isn’t it? That’s what I’m always saying!
But it’s been making my 10yo daughter cranky.
You see, I bought her a new audiobook, to listen to on her Yoto player and she’s been devouring it. Listening to it at every available opportunity.
When she’s listening, she’s very much ‘in flow’, one of the defining characteristics of which is, she's not there.
What does that mean? It means in that moment, there’s no need for her human operating system to go creating a sense of self.
Instead, she’s just in the story. More accurately, she is the story! Her mind is bringing to life the words she’s hearing and she’s inhabiting all of those fictional characters (instead of her own fictional character, lol).
And ‘no self’ feels good.
But boy, is it making her cranky.
Every time we try and engage with her for, oh you know, the usual: eating food, getting dressed for school, that sort of thing, we get our heads bitten off.
In truth, I can be the same from time to time, and I bet you can too.
You’re totally into something creative—no self!—and then someone interrupts you with a demand.
In that moment, it really looks like you’ll never get that nice feeling of flow back, and there’s a real risk of crankiness… but you can relax.
Because the nice feeling doesn’t come from what you’re doing, or from audiobooks. It comes from ‘no self’, and that’s something (nothing?) that never goes away (was never there in the first place?)
Oh god, I’m tying my self in knots here.
The things we can do with thought!
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
~ John Milton
Indeed.
Have a lovely day.
💟
Giles
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Giles P Croft
Flow… creativity… presence… there's no end to any of them 🤷🏻♂️