Flow as the core of a spiritual practice

What is flow?
Flow is a mental state of focused attention in which we are productive and creative without apparent effort. It can happen when engaging in an intellectual activity, like writing, or while doing a sport, like rock-climbing. I mention these because these are two occupations that are often given as examples of flow. They also happen to be my favorite activities.
Flow was named by the psychologist Csikszentmihalyi, who gave it these six characteristics:
Focused attention on a task.
Merging of action and awareness.
Decreased self-awareness.
Altered perception of time, which either speeds up or slows down.
Feeling of complete control.
Positive emotions like joy, pleasure, euphoria, meaning and purpose.
Flow is a healthy mental state
In another article, The Neuroscience of Flow, I explain the key characteristics of flow and describe the brain neuronal circuits that mediate it. I will not give scientific references for what I say in this article. You can find it in that one.
Flow turns off the default mode network, which is active when we don’t focus on anything in particular; when we daydream, reminisce the past or fantasize about the future. It is also active in some negative mental states, like rumination. The default mode network includes the medial prefrontal cortex, which mediates the feeling of the self. Therefore, it is a mental state that brings up the ego.
In contrast, flow turns on the executive attention network, which deactivates the medial prefrontal cortex. It activates the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, increasing focus and performance, and the orbitofrontal cortex, reducing impulsivity.
This led me to think that flow is a healthy mental state that not only lets us do things in a joyful, productive and creative way, but also promotes a better way of living in general. Because it increases mental energy, it can push away depression. By turning off the ego, flow can ward off anxiety and craving.
Like many things in life, mental states become habits. By spending a lot of time in a given state, you develop a groove that makes it easier to return to that state. If you spend a lot of time in the default mode network, it becomes hard to step out of it to stop daydreaming and following your ego. If, on the contrary, you spend a lot of time in flow, it becomes progressively easier to enter it. Then, you are able to do a lot of things in this state of apparent effortless.
We spend most of our life working. Most people find work meaningless and exhausting. We feel that we are wasting our life away by having to work to make a living. However, if we were able to do a substantial part of our work in a state of flow, we will waste less energy and would feel more joyful doing it.
Mindfulness or flow?
Developing joyful and meaningful mental states is the basis of many spiritual practices.
We practice meditation to cultivate a mental state in which we are more aware of our emotions and thoughts, and therefore can direct them in a healthier direction, away from rumination, anger, anxiety, shame and other negative emotions, and towards joy, curiosity and compassion.
Mindfulness is a mental state that consists of opening the mind to all sensations, thoughts and emotions, without rejecting or attaching ourselves to any of them. We just let them pass, like clouds in the sky. An important directive in mindfulness is not to judge any of our mental contents. We don’t push away those that we consider bad or dwell on those that we consider good. Since judging is one of the main activities of the ego, mindfulness diminishes the ego.
Flow also diminishes the ego by decreasing self-awareness, turning our attention towards our task instead of toward our self. We are not able to enter flow until we stop judging ourselves and engage playfully with our task, so that the energy that is wasted judging is directed towards the action. That is one of the reasons why flow feels so effortless.
However, mindfulness and flow are different mental states. Mindfulness also turns off the default mode network, but it does not engage the executive attention network. While all mental contents are allowed in mindfulness, flow requires a strict filter to only allows sensations and thoughts related to our task.
Practicing mindfulness requires us to take time away from our daily activities, because we cannot be in an open-minded, non-judgmental state while we work or do chores. However, we can train ourselves to enter flow to perform any task, even the most menial. When I attended sesshins — multiple-day Zen retreats — one of the daily activities was samu: some banal work like sweeping the floor, cut vegetables for cooking or cleaning the toilets, which had to be done with absolute focus. Even eating meals was done following an elaborated ritual. When done right, samu led to flow.
While being different, flow and mindfulness support each, because both of them require the same soft control over the mind. By soft control, I mean that we cannot enter these mental states by exerting willpower: our conscious mind forcing the rest of our mind to do its will. Instead, the entirety of our mind, conscious and unconscious, has to slide into those states.
By alternating mindfulness and flow, your mind learns to gently enter these states in an integrated way, without the inner conflict of one part of the mind trying to control the other. No confrontation means no wasted energy, so we don’t experience the loss of willpower that comes when we force ourselves to do things.
Choose the right challenge
So, how do we enter flow?
Flow requires balancing skill and challenge.
Skill means that we have to train to do things. When we are learning a new activity, like skiing, we need to exert a lot of conscious control to translate the things that we learn in theory — keep your skis parallel, use your edges, flex your knees — into the right muscular actions. Until these actions become automatic, we cannot release conscious control. Because consciousness is the slowest thing that happens in the brain, our movements are clumsy. Consciousness also requires a lot of mental energy, so we soon feel exhausted.
However, once we learn the skill to do something, we may fall on the opposite problem: doing things automatically, using muscle memory. In our example, our skiing may become lazy, doing the ample turns that we feel comfortable with instead of continuing learning new skills.
To enter flow, we need to take our task to the edge of our ability, so we can do it well, but it’s hard enough to require all our focus. A couple of hours ago, I was bouldering at the climbing gym. I started doing some easy problems, V0 and V1, then moved to V2, then challenged myself to V3. I failed to complete some of the V3 moves, so I knew I was at edge of my skills. When I became too gripped, I moved back to V2 problems to restore my flow. I keep a playful mindset, laughing at my failures and knowing I was doing great, regardless.
The struggle period: generating sustained attention and effort
It is not possible to enter flow right away. There is always a period of struggle in which we gradually focus our mind on our task. There may be some internal whining. We may be tempted by distractions.
During this struggle period is when we require self-discipline.
Entering flow involves commitment. We have decided to perform this activity, so we leave anything else to the side. In the struggle period is when we focus our attention on our task, with unbendable intent.
Flow requires passion. You must love the task that you are about to perform. Some anxiety and mixed feelings are okay, but if you hate what you are about to do, if it has no heart, you need to wonder why are you trying to do it in the first place. What is the origin of your internal resistance? Can you find a way to recognize and honor the parts of yourself that do not like the task, and re-establish your internal unity?
When I rock-climb, there is a part of me that gets really scared. It’s a child-like part of my mind, but it’s also the part that prevents me from taking too much risk. I call it the survival ego. It is opposed by the daring ego. I need to listen to both of them, negotiate with them. Sometimes, I will bring down the challenge to decrease the risk.
If possible, create an environment free of distractions. These days, I have the luxury of having a study at home in which I can close the door to write. If you don’t have that luxury, another option is to become habituated to a busy environment, so you are able to focus no matter what goes on around you. Many writers work in coffee shops and similar public places. During the hardest part of my scientific career, I didn’t have an office, just a desk in my lab. My postdocs worked around me, handling rats and equipment, and I was barely aware of them. I wrote some of my best papers and grant proposals during that time.
Abandon the comfort zone
Writing scientific papers and grant proposals are high-anxiety activities. Both will be harshly criticized by other scientists. Most papers are rejected on first submission — you are lucky if they let you resubmit with corrections. To get a grant funded, you are competing for limited research funds with the best minds in your field. I was on soft money, meaning that all the funds for my lab, including my own salary, came from grants. If I didn’t get a grant, I would lose my job.
Often, we enter flow fighting anxiety and fear. In rock-climbing, fear is ever-present in the vertiginous void behind your butt. The first thing you learn when you start climbing is how to turn that fear into sharp focus, into flow. Perhaps what allowed me to survive my high anxiety scientific career was this ability to overcome fear that I learned climbing. Other scientists, however, face similar challenges and they are not climbers.
One of the great things about flow is that fear fades away once you are in it.
Of course, one does not always have to face fear to enter flow. People write, paint, dance and play music without facing consequences, good or bad. However, the fact that you are challenging yourself to do something hard entails a certain amount of anxiety.
To experience flow, we have to abandon the comfort zone in which things feel easy. We have to venture into the unknown, experiment with things we haven’t done before. We come face to face with the randomness of the world. Novelty and unpredictability are essential to flow. You don’t know what is going to happen; you can only do your best as things come at you. That’s when flow awakens the insight and creativity within us.
Plugging power drains
Flow has a certain inertia, but there is no guarantee that you will stay in it once you have entered it. If you lose it, you’ll be back to square one, having to go through the struggle period all over again.
There are many things that can take you out of flow. They are called power drains because they increase the energy that we need to stay in flow, or to perform our task without flow.
Some power drains a pretty obvious. Do not try to multitask. The brain doesn’t work that way. What our mind does is to switch attention from one task to the other, so that our attention never fully focuses on one activity and we never enter flow.
Do not take scheduled breaks. It’s likely that when the time comes to take the break is right when you are deep into flow, so you will ruin it. Then you’ll have to go through the struggle period again. Instead, wait for a natural breaking point in your task or until you feel tired.
But the biggest, meanest enemy of flow is the ego. When the medial prefrontal cortex enters the game, it brings us back into the default mode network.
One way the ego sabotages flow is perfectionism. Flow is a mental state of playfulness and experimentation. It involves a lot of trial and error. Being in flow doesn’t mean that we are going to do things flawlessly. In fact, if we make no errors, it means that we are not learning, that we are not challenging ourselves to leave the comfort zone. Perfectionism is when the ego butts in to tolerate no mistakes. The ego rides on that awful emotion, shame, to make us feel bad for doing something wrong. All the playfulness and joy is gone. We are wasting energy on an inner conflict, instead of investing it into the activity to which we have committed.
An even more subtle way the ego raises its head is when we start wondering if we are in flow. Ironically, you will never get into flow by trying to get into flow. You’ll be back in the mind-trying-to-control-the-mind game. So forget about flow. Set the conditions, commit to your task with unbendable intent, and go!
Focus on the process and not the destination
Yet another way the ego interferes with flow is by focusing on the reward we will get from our task. That reward can be simply that pat in the back we give ourselves for having accomplished something hard. Or the bragging rights in front of our friends: “Man, I red-pointed a 5.10d climbing route yesterday!” Other times, it’s a financial reward, public recognition, or fame.
Most tasks have a goal, and that’s okay. I write this article to publish in my blog and in Medium, attracting more readers and making a small amount of money. But we need to forget about the goal while performing the task.
Of course, the activity should fit the objective that we have set for ourselves; we need to pay attention to that. But that is different from anticipating the reward we are going to get or, even worse, our disgrace in case we fail. That is a huge distraction and a power drain.
Detachment from our goals is emphasized in many spiritual traditions. In Zen, mushotoku consists of doing something with detachment from any reward we are going to get. The whole Bhagavad Gita, a sacred text of Hinduism, is devoted to explaining the benefit of acting without attachment to the outcome of the action.
Flow with menial tasks
If flow requires engaging in an activity that is challenging enough to match our skills, then is it possible to achieve flow doing menial tasks? After all, that’s what I claimed before when I spoke of doing samu in Zen sesshins.
The literature on the neuroscience of flow assumes that it is only achieved through challenging activities. However, what constitutes a challenge is up to you. In Zen’s samu, the challenge is to engage in a menial task with absolute concentration. This complete focus is a carry-over for the long periods of meditation and from the environment of the sesshin.
Any small task can be transformed into a challenge. If you are chopping a cucumber, can you do it slices of even thickness, very fast? I have watched sushi chefs do that and tried to emulate them at home. Cooking, sweeping the floor, doing dishes or washing your car can be done mindlessly or in flow. It’s up to you to decide. When you do things in flow, the smallest task can bring unexpected joy. That’s one of the best things I learned in Zen sesshins.
I am not saying that you should try to live your entire life in flow. That is not possible and can easily become an ego trap. Ideally, we should balance a mixture of mental states during the day: mindfulness, flow, daydreaming, reminiscing and sleep. In reality, what happens is that our attention is captured by TV shows and social media when we are not working. We do not devote as much time as our ancestors to daydreaming, fantasizing and remembering past experiences. I suspect that our lives are less rich because of that.
Flow as part of a spiritual path
I am an atheist. I don’t believe in an afterlife. And yet, all my life I have followed a spiritual path. I have practiced yoga, Zen and learned from a variety of other mystical schools.
My spiritual path consists of attaining my full potential as a human being. These days, I call that hunting personal power, following the philosophy of the Way of the Warrior. Personal power is not power over people and things, but attaining a state of self-knowledge, inner integration and soft control over my mind that decreases suffering and brings happiness.
For many years, practicing meditation and seeking altered states of consciousness was the goal of my spiritual path. Since I discovered this idea when I was 13, achieving some sort of Nirvana or illumination was one important goal in my life.
However, after many years of practicing meditation in its many forms, I reached an impasse. It was not bringing the mental clarity that I had hoped to achieve, much less an illumination. Zen teachings defined satori or illumination in confusing ways.
So I stopped doing meditation. I started writing instead. This was something I loved and, much to my surprised, brought the insights about myself that I had sought through mediation. Perhaps is that my long years of meditation gave their fruit that way. However, I realize that it was the state of flow that I achieved while writing, professionally as a scientist or as a hobby, what brought me this joy. So, lately, my inner work centers on cultivating flow and other elements of the Way of the Warrior, of which I will write in future articles.
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