From Flow State to Meditation

Catching a glimpse of Mind Nature

Sep 07, 2023

I promised a while ago to write about flow states and their connection to mindfulness and meditation. Ths idea for this post emerged when I realized that these three states feel very similar to each other (albeit with some important differences, which I’ll go into later). Their interconnection also started to make increasing sense to me as I worked with meditation students, many of whom described going into spontaneous meditations during flow-state activities like playing sports, making and listening to music or doing deep, complex work. (Let me know in the comments if you’ve ever had that experience.)

flow

The idea of flow states was originated and popularised in 1990 by Hungarian psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in his book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (which I highly recommend). Being in a flow state, sometimes also called being ‘in the zone’, involves one or more of the following qualities:1

immersive focus born of enjoyment: being completely and effortlessly absorbed in an experience
deep attention or self-forgetting: feeling that you are at one with the environment, in touch with a larger sense of self and/or distant from everyday concerns
mastery or control: doing something that you know you can do, and that provides clear feedback as to whether you’re doing it well
a sense of growth and challenge: whatever you are doing is not easy enough that you can do it mindlessly, not too much that it overwhelms you, but just hard enough that you have to stretch yourself to meet it
an altered sense of time: time seems to pass without you knowing it has, either speeding up or slowing down considerably

Not all of these need to be present for you to enter a flow state, and sometimes even one is sufficient. If you are fortunate (or if you train your awareness), you could slip into flow while you work; for many people, it is their hobbies that provide the flow state experience. For example, I go into flow when I’m swimming, lifting or swinging heavy weights, writing, and teaching. I’ve known people to find flow state while cooking, dancing, listening to or making music, organizing parties, climbing, reading, playing sports or doing deep work like coding or research.

One of the greatest clues to flow state is that you are doing the activity for its own sake—for the way it makes you feel. Even though there may be external goals and rewards along the way, it is the state itself that motivates you (sometimes even addictively so!) From the book:

“The mystique of rock climbing is climbing; you get to the top glad it’s over but really wish it would go on forever. The justification of climbing is climbing, like the justification of poetry is writing; you don’t conquer anything except things in yourself… The act of writing justifies poetry. Climbing is the same: recognizing that you are a flow. The purpose of the flow is to keep on flowing, not looking for a peak or utopia but staying in the flow. It is not a moving up but a continuous flowing; you move to keep the flow going. There is no possible reason for climbing except the climbing itself; it is a self-communication.”

In the words of Csikszentmihalyi:

...It is when we act freely, for the sake of the action itself rather than for ulterior motives, that we learn to become more than what we were.

There is thus a strong resemblance between flow states and the yoga of action described in the Bhagavad Gita (karma yoga).

You have power only over your actions, never over the fruit of those actions. Do not act for the sake of results, but do not be attached to inaction either.
—BG2.47 (trans. Charu Ramesh)

flow and meditation

The qualities of flow overlap significantly with the meditative state, particularly immersive focus, deep attention and an altered sense of time. Interestingly, the two other qualities—mastery and challenge—are the ones that people have trouble with in meditation practice. Either they get bored (the opposite of challenge), or they feel a sense of helplessness or failure (the opposite of mastery) because they don’t know what to do with their experience. If you can solve these two issues, meditation automatically becomes much more appealing and enjoyable. At that point it also resembles flow state very closely, the only difference being the orientation of the experience (outward vs. inward.)

Also like meditation, once you find one flow state activity, its impact can spill over into the rest of your life. In the book, Csikszentmihalyi talks about flow state being a way to consciously gather and direct your own psychic energy, so that you create an increased sense of clarity and meaning in your life. I’ve found that being in flow for some amount of time every day is both a healing state and a form of mind training that goes beyond personal development. Flow state is magical because in it, we lose ourselves and touch the essence of reality: depth, sensitivity, timelessness, creativity, interbeing, spontaneous action…

I leave you with some descriptions of flow state from the book (bold emphasis my own). See if any of them resonate, or inspire you to seek it out in your own life.

Being in the flow of an aesthetic experience:

A man who lives in one of Chicago’s suburbs, and takes the elevated train to work every morning says:
‘On a day like this, or days when it’s crystal clear, I just sit in the train and look over the roofs of the city, because it’s so fascinating to see the city, to be above it, to be there but not be a part of it, to see these forms and these shapes, these marvelous old buildings, some of which are totally ruined, and I mean, just the fascination of the thing, the curiosity of it… I can come in and say, “Coming to work this morning was like coming through a Sheeler precisionist painting.” Because he painted rooftops and things like that in a very crisp, clear style… It often happens that someone who’s totally wrapped up in a means of visual expression sees the world in those terms. Like a photographer looks at a sky and says, “This is a Kodachrome sky. Way to go, God. You’re almost as good as Kodak.”

From a poet and rock climber:

“It’s a Zen feeling, like meditation or concentration. One thing you’re after is the one-pointedness of mind. You can get your ego mixed up with climbing in all sorts of ways and it isn’t necessarily enlightening. But when things become automatic, it’s like an egoless thing, in a way. Somehow the right thing is done without you ever thinking about it or doing anything at all… It just happens. And yet you’re more concentrated.”

From a Japanese motorcycle gang member, describing a ‘run’ (a race) through the streets of Kyoto with the rest of the gang:

I understand something, when all of our feelings get tuned up. When running, we are not in complete harmony at the start. But if the Run begins to go well, all of us, all of us feel for the others. How can I say this?…When our minds become one. At such a time, it’s a real pleasure…When we realize that we become one flesh, it’s supreme…we get high on speed. At such a moment, it’s really super.

And a few more:

Loss of self-consciousness can lead to self-transcendence, to a feeling that the boundaries of our being have been pushed forward…
During the long watches of the night the solitary sailor begins to feel that the boat is an extension of himself, moving to the same rhythms towards a common goal.
The violinist, wrapped in the stream of sound she helps to create, feels as if she is part of the “harmony of the spheres.”
The climber, focusing all her attention on the small irregularities of the rock wall that will have to support her weight safely, speaks of the sense of kinship that develops between fingers and rock, between the frail body and the context of stone, sky and wind.
In a chess tournament, players whose attention has been riveted, for hours, to the logical battle on the board claim that they feel as if they have been merged into a powerful “field of force” clashing with other forces in some nonmaterial dimension of existence.
Surgeons say that during a difficult operation they have the sensation that the entire operating team is a single organism, moved by the same purpose; they describe it as a “ballet” in which the individual is subordinated to the group performance, and all involved share in a feeling of harmony and power.

Flow state begins with an outer activity or experience, but it ultimately leads to a dissolution of boundaries between self and world, a transcendence of ordinary mind and a glimpse of the unity and creative force that lie beyond.

mindfulness

Next up on the continuum of states is mindfulness, which, for today’s purposes, I will define as open awareness of what is. Another simple definition is being here now. It’s a feeling of immersion in and openness to the present moment, when you are receptive to yourself and the world with all your senses, your body, your heart, your mind and your spirit. Mindfulness is both a practice and a state of being.2 As I often say, the word doesn’t capture the beauty of the experience. But maybe some Zen poetry will:

Across the summer stream
With such joy
My sandals in my hand.
—Buson

between flow and meditation

I place mindfulness in the middle of the Outer/Inner continuum, between flow and meditation, because it was originally understood as an ‘off-the-cushion’ or informal practice. It’s what meditators do, the state they embody, when they’re not formally meditating. It is also a form of meditation-in-action, meaning it happens while you live your life in the world.

Mindfulness includes the abovementioned qualities of deep attention, immersive focus and altered sense of time, but it applies them to contexts where the activity isn’t the catalyst for the state. In flow, it’s the nature of the activity that evokes the experience of the state. In mindfulness (and also in meditation), we learn to embody the state regardless of the activity. The deepest practice of mindfulness is in the midst of difficulty, heartbreak, sorrow, rage, tragedy etc.

Since you went away
No flowers are left on earth.
—Soseki

Mindfulness when practiced day-to-day typically lacks the elements of control and challenge, which is why some people find it boring. It’s often applied to mundane tasks that we do mindlessly, like washing dishes or folding laundry. But there is a different kind of growth and peace involved in the practice of mindfulness, one that’s harder to describe and less tangible than becoming better at an activity or even developing as a person. It’s a transformation of consciousness, an expanding ability to appreciate the texture of reality and the mystery of perception. You gain familiarity with your own mind, the nature of your consciousness and attention itself.

Both field and mountain
All taken by the snow
Till nothing yet remains.
—Joso

As I mentioned in a previous post, the best way to get into mindfulness is to open yourself up to sensory pleasure. Your senses are natural anchors and gateways to ease. Plus (in the tantric understanding) they are conduits of divine perception, so whenever you engage them you are communing with the essential energy of the universe. Over time as you practice, you are able to remain in open presence regardless of whether the experience is stimulating or enjoyable—which is the end goal of mindfulness practice.

The black crow that I always despised,
And yet, against the snowy dawn…
—Basho

meditation

The most inwardly-oriented of the three states is the meditative state as experienced within formal meditation practice. In this context, we enter the flow of internal experience—thoughts, emotions, breath, sensations, desires, imagination, instincts—and open ourselves to whatever is happening inside us. As I mentioned earlier, people have trouble with meditation either because they don’t know what to do with all this inner material (lack of mastery), or because they find their inner life boring (lack of growth or challenge).3

When I was training as a meditation teacher, my mentors used to say that meditation is a lot like watching a movie, or playing a video game4, inside yourself. You are the stage, the actors, the director, the scriptwriter and the audience, all at once. In the beginning the plot might scatter or run away from you, or you might get lost, or stuck in a particular scene; but over time and with training, the whole thing unfolds like a perfect mystery, unique and precious every time you practice. What you develop in the process is a vast, open awareness that accommodates everything inside you.

The reason we need training to achieve this is not because it’s somehow alien to us, but because we are accustomed to blocking it out via judgments, interpretations and analyses. In meditation, you let your mind rest and run at the same time, and that deep awareness emerges spontaneously, because it’s always there anyway.

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Conclusion

I started this post with the working hypothesis that flow, mindfulness and meditation exist on a continuum that runs between our inner and outer worlds. Flow states are the most outward-oriented, meditation is the most inward-oriented, and mindfulness is somewhere in between. To be clear, this continuum refers only to the initial catalyst for each state. Once you enter the state, the distinction between outer and inner (as well as between self and other, and between past, present and future) collapses.

To some extent, their respective positions on this continuum reflect the cultures that these ideas originated in. Western cultures are, generally speaking, more outwardly-focused than Eastern cultures, and flow state is a Western idea, though its ideator considers it a universal state that all humans experience and have access to. Meditation is, of course, an Eastern idea, though many cultures around the world have practiced some form of it in their own ways. Mindfulness is a Westernised version of an Eastern idea, so self-explanatory in that regard.

Having said that, I don’t think that flow and meditation are just different words for each other. While they feel very similar, there are important differences in the context and purpose of each state that derive from their cultures and backgrounds. Thus, another way to conceive of the three states is as overlapping circles in a Venn diagram:

Each state has certain qualities that overlap with the other two, and certain qualities that distinguish it as unique—but all three states reveal something about the nature of mind, at the center of the diagram. The term mind nature comes from the Dzogchen and mahamudra practices of Tibetan Buddhism and refers to the essential and universal qualities of (a liberated) mind.5 Often described poetically, they include:

openness, awareness, primordial purity (traditionally emptiness or essence, metaphorically compared to the open sky)
- I’d link this to the sense of oneness and timelessness of a flow state, as primordial mind is said to be eternal and indestructible
radiance, luminosity, clarity, knowing presence or bliss (traditionally clear light or nature, metaphorically the sun)
- This resembles the immersive focus and clarity of attention in a flow or meditative state
expressiveness, responsiveness, creativity or spontaneity (traditionally energy or compassion, metaphorically sunlight)
- This is the spontaneous responsiveness that emerges out of mastery, of just knowing what to do and doing it effortlessly, because you’re so closely attuned to your experience and environment

I feel that entering into flow, meditation or mindfulness is catching a glimpse of mind nature. It’s akin to having a mystical experience and seeing the essence of who you really are, and who you could be, even if only for a moment. Many of the descriptions of flow state in the book talk about losing yourself in something greater, becoming one with the world, or feeling a deep sense of connection with everything around you. Isn’t that what mysticism is? Of course, it requires contextualization and further training to internalize such experiences fully. But isn’t it marvelous that the activities that bring us joy and pleasure, peace and relaxation, are the ones that come from and point to the essence of who we are? It’s like the world wants us to wake up and discover who we are, and is slipping us clues to that magical state everywhere we go.

Whether or not you’re interested in mind nature, finding a time and a way to experience any of these three states can bring enormous richness into your life. I hope this post has inspired you to seek out these states for yourself. Let me know in the comments if you already have your own ways to be in flow, or whether you gained any insights from this post about states of mind.

The Wise Body