Scott Barry Kaufman in his Substack post, “ Reclaiming Flow,” points out that Maslow described flow long before Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. And Maslow’s description is, in my opinion, and I think Dr. Kaufman’s too… richer.
Kaufman summarizes it this way, “flow is the state of being so fully absorbed in an activity that you lose self-consciousness, time distorts, action and awareness merge, and the activity becomes its own reward. The structural conditions are well-described — a clear goal, immediate feedback, and a challenge that matches your current skill level so closely that it neither overwhelms you nor bores you.”
What I like is the snuggle up between being and action. Cheek and jowl. “A state of being fully absorbed in activity” - and neither overwhelmed or bored. And that is key, because for those of us blessed with a wow wow nervous systems — we of the human powered mass spectrometer von super collectors, those of us toting the Sensory Processing Sensitivity designation — for us, boredom is a long way off and vanishing into the distance while we smell the roses. And overwhelm is an overly affectionate Labrador Retriever leaping into our arms every time we walk out the door.
Flow for the HSP is a different caliber than for those resting comfortably in the large bulge of the normal distribution. I once described my daily experience as very similar to what people describe as being on mescaline. Aldous Huxley described his 1953 mescaline experience as a profound intensification of visual perception that allowed him to see the "naked existence" of ordinary objects, such as flowers, chairs, and his own flannel trousers, with infinite beauty and significance. I recently photographed daisies while out on a morning ride on my bike. Felt pretty similar to that.
Those are times when I’m in the State of Absolute Being. And wow, lets have more of that please! but also, and here I must tone down my enthusiasm, it’s not all about flow.
Wait, what?
Yeah, flow is great and all. I mean, I’ve pretty much built my whole personal philosophy around streams and flow and being in streams and in the flow, and riding streams and… well you get it. But what is the point of a state of absolute being?
It’s bliss.1
Yeah, but other than that.
Flow prone-ness, as Dr. Kaufman points out, “isn’t a function of how smart you are; it’s a function of how peacefully and single-mindedly you can attend to what’s right in front of you.”
Whoops, hang on, you have to be peaceful?
No, the actual truth of the matter is that you don’t have to be anything in particular. The researchers said its a “different underlying mechanisms from attention during mental effort.”
Go with the flow baby.
Yes, go with the flow. Not effort, per se, but being. I love the way Kaufman puts it, “We’re not pushing harder. We’re attending more peacefully.”
So back to my question, what is the point of a state of absolute being? The point is that it shows you what is really important. It’s not endless performance enhancement, it’s not awards and accolades, it’s not, and here I start to ramble… but it’s not, for me, about being in the state of absolute being.
No?
No. Its about being in a life in which absolute being has somewhere to be. Its about a life well lived. States of absolute being are part of that well lived life, but not the whole of what we live for. We could start chasing absolute being and then feel depressed that we don’t live there all the time. The postal code for absolute being is never the same, after all, because our interests, skills, and challenges are ever changing.
The point, I think, is to construct a life that rings with the sound of well forged balance. Harmony sounds right to me to describe this balance. And for some that is performance everything. Strap on that fit bit and run with the wolves. But me, run? I don’t think so. I’m more of an ambler. You do you, as they say. Sometimes that is used as a dismissal, as in, “Its ok for you to be so weird if it floats your boat.”
My type of weird is to take pictures of daisies with a 60 year old lens and then pump my pedals home to eat eggs with Coastal Cheddar while watching an Electric Viking video about the newest Chinese cars. Is it all absolute being? No, not at all, but it is another kind of flow. It is the flow of one well chosen facet of life after another. And it is the human being moving through it while also going to work, and going to class and also walking the neighbourhood hand-in-hand with my sweetheart. A well balanced life.
Its all the many tendrils of life that make up the being in the state of absolute being. The point is that we all need a life in which we can experience those delicious states, because nothing is better about a state of absolute being, than sharing it with others.
Beyond the state of absolute being, is the mystery of being together. And it doesn’t stop there. It’s being all the way down. My wish, in regard to absolute being, is for every person on the planet to have that, and to have it without taking it from someone else.
Not eutopia, exactly, more like you-and-me-opia. or everyoneopia. Opia for the masses. All lives… lives worth living. What a world it would be.
I one time asked a woman who described a meditative experience as blissful, why I should take the time to learn it. She said, “Richard, because it’s BLISS.” Ok, fine.
I really liked the turn you make here: from asking how to experience more flow to asking what kind of life gives those experiences somewhere to belong.
There’s something quietly radical in that. A peak state can easily become just another thing to optimize and chase. Your framing brings it back into relationship with the ordinary parts of a life — work, walking, photography, food, other people. Not less meaningful because they aren’t “absolute being,” but perhaps what gives those moments their meaning in the first place.