Tuning as flow...

One of my classmates at the University of Chicago Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi wrote what's become an important book for behavioral scientists, organizational consultants and top athletes entitled Flow. As I perused Amazon books so I could remember how to spell his name it appears he's expanded recently on the original with another entitled Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience (P.S.) I suspect he now lives what he so aptly describes through his books.

Though I knew him well before he wrote the book I remember talking about the idea in our small seminar of eight led by anthropologist Victor Turner. Turner had this notion that we human beings learn most and are at our best when we become caught in "in between" places which he referred to as "liminal space".

I think what Mihaly did was expand the idea by adding the notion of time ... that we can create for ourselves an ongoing experience of "best effort" when we become so focused in the moment that time no longer is relevant, i.e we are as the common phrase goes "in the flow of things."

In essence, flow is what we experience when we're so in love with what we're doing that effort become effortless and time no longer moves. It's a moment of transcendance when we are closest to who we really are.

Recently, I've begun to have this experience in the time I spend tuning Zelda and playing her keys afterward. And the feeling sometimes moves forward through my other daily activities. I'll look up in the sky and the silhouetted palm tree isn't just a tree; but a glowing being. It can happen anywhere, anytime; but it's grounded in an act of love.

Csikszentmihalyi describes what the experience is and by implication how we can create it. Once we love an activity enough -- writing, performing on stage, singing, painting bookmarks, tuning a piano, whatever it may be for each of us -- we are able to experience an echo of the great creative act that has given life to us all.

In these transcendant moments our hearts open, our spirits soar and our imaginations fly unfettered. In these moments we experience the essence of abundance -- we come to know who we are. I suspect it may be the closest any of us can get to God.