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“SHOTGUN!” was the rallying cry for us boys back in the summer of 1970 at Camp Zarahemla. We would be hiking back to the dining hall after spending the day on winding, Appalachian mountain trails. It was all downhill and the most exciting method for a ten-year-old to make his way back was full-throttle running, or to shotgun it. It didn’t matter that there were rocks sticking out of the trail, or huge trees on either side. We were kids and therefore perceived ourselves to be immortal and impervious to injury.
I grew to love running down mountainsides and actually got pretty good at it. I developed a deep trust that my feet and legs would be able to avoid the hazards and smoothly find their way as I flew down, feeling as free as I ever felt.
It was a magical time, being away from our parents at summer camp, with only the teenage camp counselors watching over us. Half the time they would join us, chasing the rush of barreling down a steep track.
I was too young to intellectually process what I was experiencing in those ecstatic moments of controlled abandon. But years later, I realized that I was discovering the joy of flow on those mountainsides. I realized it wasn’t just me trusting my feet and legs but me trusting my natural ability to align with some underlying, energetic intelligence as I careened down the path. My thinking, ego mind had nothing to do with my success. And I never fell or injured myself, despite all the apparent risk. Not once. (I am certainly not recommending that anyone should try this today, but rather just imparting a bit of worthwhile personal history and its lessons.)
I have learned that flow is the height of human experience. When we are acting from a state of flow, or controlled abandon, we are at our best, aligned with that mysterious, greater intelligence, that energetic current of life that enlivens everything in the material world. This is what we abandon ourselves to, a much more expansive part of ourselves that is hidden below the turbulence of thought.
Flow is experienced when we are totally immersed in an activity, not thinking about results, not thinking about what we have to do next, but being simply, fully present, transcending the smaller thoughts of ego. Flow is what happens when the mind is settled within an action. It is the wondrous synergy of being and doing that is the ultimate fruit of the practice of mindfulness and relaxing into a settled mind.
As the teacher, Michael Neill, describes it, flow happens when the pilot (ego-mind) becomes the plane (a conduit for that greater, flowing intelligence). We are designed to be guided by a deeper wisdom that will take the wheel and manage the currents…if we let it.
If you engage in athletics you may be more familiar with the idea of being in the zone. It’s the same experience. I think of a Zen archer releasing an arrow. In that fully inhabited, and internally quiet instant there is no separation between the archer, the bow, the arrow, or the target. As the arrow is released, all are a seamless flowing expression of life’s greater intelligence at its fullest, unified unfolding. And it usually results in a bullseye.
Acting from that sense of flow is acting from our natural state of being. It’s our default before we clog up our mind with the habitual thoughts, opinions, and beliefs that inhibit our spontaneous potential.
We are taught to develop goals for ourselves, to chase after the dreams that society encourages us to chase after—nice houses, cars, big money, and whatnot. And in the struggle of that chase, we often discover a cornucopia of stress-related diseases. Maybe allowing a deeper aspect of life, that greater intelligence, to act through us, to guide us, might be a better way to go. Maybe we should recognize the limitations of a life lived through our thoughts and the ego’s limited strategies towards greater fulfillment. Maybe we should find flow.
Whatever we may do, be it shooting an arrow, hitting a tennis ball, entering the interstate, or running a business; cultivating that sense of flow, through the practice of mindfulness, will help us to act more skillfully. We will be acting in alignment with that greater intelligence that is closer to who we are, beyond the internal noise of surface thought.
We can also find flow within our relationships. Mindful listening when in a discussion or a broader awareness of how everyone is harmonizing when working as part of a team will create a good space for the experience of flow.
Flow can begin with that cultivated sense of awareness and settled mind that we may find on the meditation cushion or yoga mat. But it really gets to soar when we invite that greater internal spaciousness into our many activities of daily living.
An area of life that is truly calling for us to be at our best today is our current, dystopian political landscape. The emotional turbulence and outright fear that dogs so many of us in this Trumpian age makes it challenging to know how to be an effective agent for change. The good news is that we don’t have to know the specifics. We only have to open up to a greater wisdom within and move from there.
It is past time to act from a more enlightened mind state, our natural state of being. It is found as the mind settles into a knowing awareness that is deeper than our thoughts, opinions, and beliefs. When humanity is seen from a settled mind, a mind at peace, there is the realization that there is only One living system, and we are all it—despite the call by those more unenlightened among us to build walls between us.
Engaging insanity at the level it exists will make you crazy. Instead of focusing on our problems, on the lack of wisdom, the fear-mongering, and egomania rampant in Washington D.C. these days, it is time to mindfully focus on solutions. Let’s bring our focus to compassionately working for the greater good of people. And the best approach is to find the flow of this change. When we enliven our activism with the deeper wisdom of flow, which is the wisdom of that greater intelligence acting through us, then our activism becomes a sacred act, a powerful act, an act of prayer.
The time to work towards compassionate change is now and the most skillful approach is to find flow. And so, the call to action is, SHOTGUN!
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Photo credit: Sweet Ice Cream Photography on Unsplash