Flow: Appling Your Spirit Right Here Right Now

Good Day Everyone!

Today I want to talk about Flow: Flow is the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology)

This concept was first proposed by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in his seminal work: (1990) Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience'. New York: Harper and Row. ISBN 0-06-092043-2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mih%C3%A1ly_Cs%C3%ADkszentmih%C3%A1lyi

This work described as positive psychology or flow comes the closest in describing the optimal state of applied spirituality.

Csíkszentmihályi identifies the following as accompanying an experience of flow:

1. Clear goals (expectations and rules are discernible and goals are attainable and align appropriately with one's skill set and abilities).
2. Concentrating and focusing, a high degree of concentration on a limited field of attention (a person engaged in the activity will have the opportunity to focus and to delve deeply into it).
3. A loss of the feeling of self-consciousness, the merging of action and awareness.
4. Distorted sense of time, one's subjective experience of time is altered.
5. Direct and immediate feedback (successes and failures in the course of the activity are apparent, so that behavior can be adjusted as needed).
6. Balance between ability level and challenge (the activity is neither too easy nor too difficult).
7. A sense of personal control over the situation or activity.
8. The activity is intrinsically rewarding, so there is an effortlessness of action.
9. People become absorbed in their activity, and focus of awareness is narrowed down to the activity itself, action awareness merging^[2].

Not all are needed for flow to be experienced.

Components of Applied Spirituality:

1. Clarity: what is desired and sought (asked for) is clear. Mind is clear.

2. Laser focus and attention: Peeling potatoes or writing a novel, the full SElf is brought to bear the the object of focus.

3. No awareness of self: in a sense there is no boundary between the object and focus-er.

4. Direct and immediate feedback between self and Self - it FEELS

5. effortlessness of action - easy, with ease,

6. Distorted sense of time: time flies by or seems to slow

7. intrinsically rewarding: you're doing what you love, it feels good, right and correct.

8. Internal state of willingness, allowing, open....receptive within and then transferred to application externally

9. Deliberate, intentional (the individual is sovereign) choice of point of focus.

10. self Mastery, then is using the free will to choose to allow Self to flow through the mechanism of mind and body to create at will.

More to come....

thanks for reading!

Kath