The Deeper Flow
El Flujo Más Profundo
A student describes feeling less stuck but afraid of losing that progress. The teacher points to a deeper trust beyond any conceptual map of "flow," and to the futility of protecting something that was never contained in the first place.
The Deeper Flow
A student describes feeling less stuck but afraid of losing that progress. The teacher points to a deeper trust beyond any conceptual map of "flow," and to the futility of protecting something that was never contained in the first place.
There is something that has changed, in the sense that I'm less stuck than I used to be. But there is a fear of going back to being stuck.
Yes, absolutely. You are in a much deeper place. But you are still constructing some form of solid place to rest in, something you're attaching to. It is a deeper place, but there is more.
So, for instance, even if I suddenly feel stuck again, or I start fearing the future and worrying about results, I can be in the flow of that.
The map versus the territory
Right now you're creating a conceptual map of what it is to be in flow, and then trying to impose that map on the experience. With what you've just discovered, you're in a deeper state of flow. And you're saying, "Oh, I understand. I get this flow. Now I'm doing it." It's becoming familiar enough that you can create a kind of map around it, and then you're trying to control your life in order to maintain it.
What I'm saying is that there is a deeper flow, where life itself is showing you what flow is. Whatever is happening is flow. So if something is happening and you feel stuck, you can look at your beliefs about it. How is this actually flow? "I feel stuck." How is this actually flow?
I think I see, but where are you going with this?
Because then it's going to challenge all of your mental beliefs around flow, around life, around how things should be.
Learning to surf new waves
It's like learning to surf. You've surfed a few beaches, you know them really well, you know the waves, you know how they come, you know their shape, you know when they start and when they stop. Then you go to a different coast. The waves are all different, and suddenly your ability to surf is challenged. If you try to impose your version of flow on the waves, telling them they should be smaller, bigger, turning more this way or that way, you're not flowing. You're controlling.
That's a good metaphor.
What happens when we go to a deeper place is that we learn more deeply how to flow with what is. And it doesn't come from trying to impose on the wave. It comes from feeling into the wave and assuming that it's better to listen to the wave than to try to impose on it. If you try to impose on the wave, you're more likely to lose that battle.
Trusting what is
The metaphor of surfing makes this easy to see, but it's relevant because it has to do with trust. Trusting what is. What if what is, is deeper than I have been able to relate to? Then I'm in friction again. I'm trying to impose again. I'm in conflict, worry, a sense of being stuck, of not flowing. But what if there is simply a deeper trust, a deeper listening?
It never stops, does it? It's like a spiral going deeper and deeper. But you just said it can stop.
The resistance can end
The process of the spiral, the development of that ability to surf, doesn't stop. There is infinite growth and evolution. But the place from which we resist can stop, almost completely, pretty much totally and permanently, to a point where it's hard for me to say whether it's entirely complete or just a hair's breadth from complete.
It has to do with noticing, with seeing fully, that the thing we're trying to protect through our resistance isn't real.
Then all of that effort is futile, and it becomes very hard to keep it up. It's like spending your entire life building an army to protect a treasure chest, and then you open it and it's empty. Would you still be training the army, recruiting, fighting the battles?
Not only that, but what you thought was in the treasure chest is actually everywhere. Which is emptiness. It's presence. It's aliveness. It's empty. It's love. It's freedom.