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ChexMix
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Is "flow" another form of meditation?
#21121483 - 01/14/15 05:18 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Flow as in that experience when you forget yourself and become totally absorbed in whatever it is your doing?
I feel like I need more of that in my life. What's your source of "flow?"
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Halayudha
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Re: Is "flow" another form of meditation? [Re: ChexMix]
#21121860 - 01/14/15 06:53 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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I just heard this line from the Gary Davis blues song I'm listening to 
"I must keep flowing I can't keep still."
This was my first thought when I saw your post -
“To study the Buddha Way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self. To forget the self is to be actualized by myriad things. When actualized by myriad things, your body and mind as well as the bodies and minds of others drop away. No trace of enlightenment remains, and this no-trace continues endlessly.” -Dogen
There are quite a few ways to improve concentration and flow, or absorption. . . auto-suggestion is a very good one. There are so many suggestions in the world, that we receive, through television, ads, marketing - and a lot or most of those don't really have anything to do with us. So to practice positive messages to oneself is a very good way to overcome these things. It's like streamlining of one's energy, and it works wonders in every endeavor.
-------------------- Call me not rebel, though { here at every word {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King
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saenchai
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Re: Is "flow" another form of meditation? [Re: Halayudha]
#21122117 - 01/14/15 07:37 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Sparring, writing, lifting weights, meditating all let me access that ease of being and sense of enhanced ability. Whatever you enjoy doing and do a lot your brain adapts itself to doing it very efficiently like with proficiency or "genius" eventually, you will feel flow when you do it. It will be different for different people depending on their temperaments.
You can achieve flow through anything that you enjoy doing and practice a lot. Ideally, once you know how to flow in certain things and get better at meditating, try to make your whole life a flow experience. I don't think that's too unrealistic, I'm pretty sure monks do it. I think that would point to complete mastery of being in this lifetime if you are always in flow and so grounded in beingness that you are never perturbed by worldly shit. If it isn't possible, it is a good north start to work towards, anyways. +1 on auto suggestion/hypnosis.
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ChexMix
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Re: Is "flow" another form of meditation? [Re: saenchai]
#21122900 - 01/14/15 10:17 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Cool cool, thanks...what's auto-suggestion though?
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saenchai
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Re: Is "flow" another form of meditation? [Re: ChexMix]
#21122994 - 01/14/15 10:50 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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The way I think of hypnosis is we are all kind of like autopilot machines or like water being shot through pipes of instinct and conditioning. We can't really change the pipe system and or have very little power over our changing what habitual branches we make every day in our decision space. We tend to have little willpower to actively try to change our habits or even our inclination or awareness to change in our daily life. When I use hypnosis tapes or any kind of psycho-cybernetics, I am training my mind to automatically have new choices and a wider decision space/new pipes to flow through.
Instead of feeling a crazy hard pull towards doing the same thing I've always done, all of a sudden my mind starts to feel automatically pulled towards better, more healthy ways to be or do. Or it slowly gets pulled from self defeating patterns to more functional ones. Some of the stuff you'll find in that field is bunk or ineffective but some of them work really well in my experience. It's like having mini learning/brainwashing experiences on your subconscious mind that create real change because they are experiential, not intellectual.
The best thing is it's easy and takes little time and effort. Just pop in your headphones for 20-30 mins every night or less before sleeping and it's done.
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Bjorn_Stormcrow
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Re: Is "flow" another form of meditation? [Re: saenchai]
#21123023 - 01/14/15 10:59 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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for me its when i'm crafting, not all the time, like if i'm under pressure of a deadline, or if i'm doing something on a comission that I don't REALLY want to do. but the majority of the time I just get so engrossed in my work, even though I know i'm thinking it doesn't even really feel like that, its just... doing, with ideas and blueprints and designs popping into my head when I need them. I've lost entire days in that state, only stopping when i'm either done or i'm simply too exhausted to continue.
-------------------- Live Mythically
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Spacerific
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OP, both flow and meditation are labels. Obviously the experiences have a great deal of overlap and similarity, and they're both very good for ya.
Quote:
I feel like I need more of that in my life.
So how would you like to start to get it?
Quote:
What's your source of "flow?"
I approach as many activities as possible with the nice trippy hand movements that the trips told me how to do. Yeah, you know what I mean, those ones 
Also, I tend to live by this as much as possible:
The very thing itself will then be fascinating, attractive and engaging, and so will lead to flow a lot of the time. All hail our alien lord and master
-------------------- Blessed are your eyes because they see, and your ears because they hear.
For truly, I say to you, many prophets and righteous people longed to see what you see, and did not see it, and to hear what you hear, and did not hear it. - Matthew 13:16
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crkhd
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Re: Is "flow" another form of meditation? [Re: Spacerific]
#21124026 - 01/15/15 07:29 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Anything that gets the lymph fluid moving is your friend.
Trippy hand movements as stated. These are the forefront of Flow.
Tap into that trippy-hand-movement-ness and you will find your answer. [it's Kundalini!]
Energy dance. It's not like normal "skanking" the crap you see at raves. It's a freeform full spectrum expression of every organ in your body. It's like an inner Smile meditation except it's moving. You're channeling ecstasy to each and every organ in your body. Using the body's innate intelligence which surprisingly (not) is smarter than anything your mind can come up with.
Sensuality. Get in touch with your sexual self. The root of it is being able to caress anything how you would caress a pair of boobs.
Edited by crkhd (01/15/15 07:50 AM)
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Halayudha
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Re: Is "flow" another form of meditation? [Re: saenchai]
#21124405 - 01/15/15 09:53 AM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Quote:
saenchai said: Sparring, writing, lifting weights, meditating all let me access that ease of being and sense of enhanced ability. Whatever you enjoy doing and do a lot your brain adapts itself to doing it very efficiently like with proficiency or "genius" eventually, you will feel flow when you do it. It will be different for different people depending on their temperaments.
You can achieve flow through anything that you enjoy doing and practice a lot. Ideally, once you know how to flow in certain things and get better at meditating, try to make your whole life a flow experience. I don't think that's too unrealistic, I'm pretty sure monks do it. I think that would point to complete mastery of being in this lifetime if you are always in flow and so grounded in beingness that you are never perturbed by worldly shit. If it isn't possible, it is a good north start to work towards, anyways. +1 on auto suggestion/hypnosis.
Quote:
ChexMix said:Cool cool, thanks...what's auto-suggestion though?
Auto suggestion is really anything you think or say, because they have an effect on you.
The incredibly potent, little spiritual book Powers Within is a simply excellent exposition on the topic, as well as the 4th chapter of Varieties of Religious Experience, by William James (all about the religion of healthy-mindedness, as he calls it).
One especially good way I have found to do so is to write out such messages in cursive on paper. A few of the ones I have found are "I am strong," "I am healthy," and "I am at peace." There's been research done throughout the years that indicates that even writing in cursive also helps the mind with flow, so that's one reason I decided to do it that way.
I also use two gatas from Thich Nhat Hanh,
"The mind can go in a thousand directions, but on this lovely day I walk in peace; With each step a gentle wind blows, With each step a flower blooms."
Which more often I have sung softly while walking in the woods, as well as
"I have arrived, I am home in the here and in the now"
These two I've sung more often, but occasionally written on paper. . .
As well as mantras and holy names, many thousands of times. .
But the simply auto-suggestion practice, without the mantras or holy names, is a fairly hugely beneficial practice in itself. . .
The way I've come to understand it, the way that it helps, is that it helps unify one's energy. I first came across the idea of how we can be divided against ourselves in Powers Within 7 years ago. It was Mirra writing, and I don't remember the exact way she put it, but it was about how we can get so, so much more done if we don't get in our own way, if we don't have conflicting efforts and goals within us.
So this practice - the way I've seen that it helps, is that you're consciously direction your energies along specifically chosen pathways - positive, strengthening, healing, and liberating avenues. So while you're doing it, you're improving focus and you're also enacting positive things, and when you're not practicing, it becomes much easier to be calm, in the face of things that would normally bother you, to be strong, in situations that would otherwise be difficult, and to be fearless in situations which might otherwise cause fear. . .
I'm choosing a few arbitrary examples but in truth, it helps in literally everything you'd wish to do.
Cheers.
-------------------- Call me not rebel, though { here at every word {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King
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MarkostheGnostic
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Re: Is "flow" another form of meditation? [Re: ChexMix]
#21126773 - 01/15/15 08:26 PM (9 years, 4 months ago) |
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Aro Meditation Course #14
"Flow ‘Flow’ is a state familiar to many musicians and athletes. It is sometimes called ‘being in the zone’. Flow is experienced by everyone – but may not be noticed. Typically it occurs in an activity that is difficult – but which you have practiced so extensively that you have become proficient.
Flow involves:
a heightened and narrowed state of attention, so that you are aware of nothing outside the action; an absence of self-consciousness (‘losing your self in the music’); a sense of the merging of action and awareness, with the loss of distinction between the actor and the action; the feeling that the action is effortless, even when objectively it involves great exertion; absence of thought combined with presence of awareness; confidence, or absence of worry about losing control; and transformed perception of time, so that a moment may seem to last minutes, or hours pass like minutes. Scientific studies have demonstrated that flow can result in dramatically improved practical performance. It is also enormously enjoyable – and people are happy roughly in proportion to the amount of flow they experience.
For most people—unfortunately—flow is transitory, infrequent, and unpredictable.
Just as non-thought cannot by produced by force – you cannot force flow. Non-thought is produced by patiently repeated, gentle non-doing. Flow is produced by patiently repeated, vigorous doing. You may discover flow when playing guitar, skiing, making love, or even playing a video game.
The good news is that shi-nè increases the frequency with which you experience flow – and makes it easier to remain in flow longer. This is because thinking about what you are doing immediately ends the flow experience. As long as you allow your fingers to play guitar by themselves, the music flows. The moment you think ‘wow, this is great’ or ‘the next bit is complicated’ – it falls apart. In fact, flow occurs when we allow action rather than acting deliberately. Action in flow is neither voluntary nor involuntary: it is choiceless but mindful."
This Aro school has prescribed techniques for getting into the flow. This on-line course describes 2 of 4 (all 4 are in their book Roaring Silence: Discovering the Mind of Dzogchen by Ngakpa Chogyam and Khandro Dechen).
"Lhatong Lhatong (pronounced lah-tong) is a state similar to flow, but found in meditation.
They differ in that:
lhatong involves panoramic awareness of the physical and mental environment – rather than the narrowed focus of flow; you practice lhatong while sitting still – so there is no physical activity; lhatong allows thought where flow allows action. They are similar in that both involve:
absence of self-consciousness, or a merging of identity with the unfolding events; absence of deliberate action; effortlessness, confidence, and enjoyment. Lhatong differs from ordinary thinking in that thought spontaneously appears in empty space. Ordinarily thoughts appear in ‘the mind’ of a thinker who produces them. In the lhatong experience – there appears to be no thinker. There is no one to interfere with thoughts – and no one to be distracted by them. They simply flow of their own accord.
Lhatong may occur unpredictably during shi-nè. It is also possible to encourage lhatong using a specific technique.
The technique A few weeks ago, I mentioned that most techniques other than shi-nè are applicable only in certain situations.
The technique for lhatong strictly applies only when your mind has settled sufficiently in formless shi-nè that no thoughts have appeared for several full minutes. Typically this occurs only after you have been practicing for at least an hour a day for several months – often several years. However, you can experiment with this technique any time your meditation is calm and relaxed, thoughts are slow and faint, and you are aware of gaps between them.
The technique is to alter your posture – in order to open yourself to the world. The world then provokes thoughts – which you allow to flow.
In the fully-opened lhatong posture:
Your eyes are completely open and you gaze straight ahead. You raise your chin slightly to allow the raised gaze. You place your hands palms-down on your thighs, rather than palms-up in your lap (see the hand pictures from week 8). The more open your posture – the more thoughts are likely to permit distraction. So experiment with opening your eyes gradually – then raising your gaze – then your chin – and then repositioning your hands.
Do not allow your gaze to wander. The doing of eye movements breaks lhatong.
Obstacles and antidotes: Nyams A ‘nyam’ is any unusual experience that occurs in meditation. The states of non-thought, and of thoughts flowing spontaneously in empty space, are nyams. Other nyams include non-ordinary perception—what might be described as ‘hallucinations’ in other contexts—and various ‘altered states’. Nyams can be ecstatic, weird, or dreadful.
Nyams can be an obstacle if you react to their intensity with avidity, repulsion, or disregard. Grasping at blissful nyams risks turning you into a ‘seeker after nyams’ rather than a meditator. Nyams are not the goal of meditation – and like non-thought and flow they vanish if you pursue them. Fleeing, disrupting, or screening out confusing or frightening nyams shuts you off from the next stage of your natural spiritual development.
The antidote—as in all else—is to allow nyams to be as they are. Do not attempt to either produce or impede them. Experience them fully—enjoy them fleetingly and lightly when you can—and let them pass.
Nyams usually occur only when you have been meditating intensively for months. They are a sign of progress on the path – but they are not progress in themselves.
Nyams can be an obstacle if you take pride in them. Especially dangerous is mistaking them for ‘enlightenment’ or proof of great spiritual accomplishment. The antidote is the knowledge that nyams occur eventually for all persistent meditators. The types and frequency vary from person to person – but there is no significance to this.
This week’s meditation technique Practice shi-nè according to whichever technique seems appropriate for your mind-state.
If you find yourself undistracted and can maintain formless shi-nè – apply the lhatong technique.
If you find yourself distracted – sing the sound ‘Ah’—as follows.
Open your eyes fully. Fill your lungs by breathing first into your belly and then continuing to fill your chest. Sing ‘Ah’ at a comfortable deep pitch. Allow the sound to continue to the end of your breath – to attenuate gradually – and to disappear into silence. Repeat the sound with each out-breath. Continue until you no longer feel distracted – or for up to five minutes. Then resume shi-nè.
Allow your sense of being to be flooded by sound. Find the presence of your awareness in the experience of sound. Allow the distinction between yourself and sound to collapse.
Singing ‘Ah’ may allow the flow or lhatong experience. If you review the characteristics of flow – you may be able to see why.
Singing ‘Ah’ relaxes vocal energy. The resonance permeates being and dispels tensions created in attempts to establish concrete definitions of what you are.
Breathing first into your belly is a way of taking a full breath. Many of us habitually breath only into our chests because we habitually contract our stomach muscles unnecessarily. It may feel odd at first – but relaxing the belly to breathe fully has many benefits in life as well as in meditation.
The alternating conditions of sound and silence are analogous to the alternation of thought and non-thought – lhatong and shi-nè – form and emptiness. Listen to the stillness after the sound vanishes.
‘Ah’ is the sound of the Tibetan letter A – which has special significance in the Aro tradition. ‘A-ro’ means ‘the taste of the letter A’ in Tibetan. This week’s meditation technique may allow you to discover that taste.
-------------------- γνῶθι σαὐτόν - Gnothi Seauton - Know Thyself
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Halayudha
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After discussing meditation with a friend of mine, almost a week ago, I thought of a couple things a couple days later, and I haven't had a chance to share them. . .
But when addressing feelings of meditation not working - I had a couple of thoughts. .
One is - Don't view it as a goal-oriented exercise. In a lot of ways, it's more of a process, than an activity that has an end in mind. . .
One thing I meant to post in the other thread - is that You, or We, are Infinitely Free. I do remember reading one thing in a Buddhist text that the Buddha said, if you practice meditation for one hour a day, then you are near enlightenment. It's sort of like that - Once you get a good idea of where you are, and where you want to go, then it's only a matter of getting there. In the best way I can understand it, meditation is sort of a process of healing. . . It's also a good way to understand the subconscious - to get in touch with ourselves and regain our sovereignty - I hope I don't wear out that term. . .
-------------------- Call me not rebel, though { here at every word {in what I sing If I no longer hail thee { King and Lord { Lord and King
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