phil| flow

quotes

consciousness cannot be expanded; all we can do is shuffle its content” (Csikszentmihalyi, Pg. 73.)

„But how do such experiences happen? Occasionally flow may occur by chance, because of a fortunate coincidence of external and internal conditions“ (Csikszentmihalyi, Pg. 71.)

„In fact, flow and religion have been intimately connected from earliest times. Many of the optimal experiences of mankind have taken place in the context of religious rituals. Not only art but drama, music, and dance had their origins in what we now would call “religious” settings; that is, activities aimed at connecting people with supernatural powers and entities. The same is true of games“ (Csikszentmihalyi, Pg. 76.)

„In modern times art, play, and life in general have lost their supernatural moorings. The cosmic order that in the past helped interpret and give meaning to human history has broken down into disconnected fragments. Many ideologies are now competing to provide the best explanation for the way we behave: the law of supply and demand and the “invisible hand” regulating the free market seek to account for our rational economic choices; the law of class conflict that underlies historical materialism tries to explain our irrational political actions; the genetic competition on which sociobiology is based would explain why we help some people and exterminate others; behaviorism’s law of effect offers to explain how we learn to repeat pleasurable acts, even when we are not aware of them. These are some of the modern “religions” rooted in the social sciences.“ (Csikszentmihalyi, Pg. 77.)

“Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos, designed to reduce the impact of randomness on experience… It is in this respect that games provide a compelling analogy to cultures. Both consist of more or less arbitrary goals and rules that allow people to become involved in a process and act with a minimum of doubts and distractions” (Csikszentmihalyi, Pg. 81.)

We have more leisure time than any generations before – but that doesn’t mean we are able to use this free time in a joyful way:

“Opportunities alone are not enough. We also need the skills to make use of them. And we need to know how to control consciousness so as to make flow possible – we need to know the internal conditions that make flow possible” (Csikszentmihalyi, Pg. 83.)

“the way in which the ordinary everyday things appear changes when their presence comes to be made present” (Roth, Pg. 128.) 

questions

• if the state of „flow“ is related to religious and improvisational practices, how are religion/spirituality and improvisation linked with each other?

• is the state of „flow“ actually about losing oneself or being fully aware about oneself?
• did you ever experience flow in your artistic practice or daily life? is this state easy for you to achieve or rather difficult? would you describe it indeed as „optimal experience“?
• do you have a specific practice that helps you continue to be engaged in your art and that evokes/enhances inspiration and creativity?

material

literature

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Flow : The Psychology of Optimal Experience, HarperCollins, 1990. 

Wolff-Michael Roth, First-Person Methods : Toward an Empirical Phenomenology of Experience, Sense Publishers, 2012.