Ecstasy is a Step into an Alternative Reality

If you do not know by now who Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is, let me enlighten you.

The book “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience” is based on the authors ‘interviews of people who appeared to obtain a lot out of life, either in their work or their extracurricular activities – not only the artists and musicians, but also people from all walks of life, including surgeons and business leaders, and those who found satisfaction in sports and games. Csikszentmihalyi found that all of them described a similar sensation when they were totally engaged in an activity they enjoyed and could do well. They all reported achieving a state of mind with no sense of self, in which things came to them automatically – a feeling of “flow”.

People experiencing flow also describe feelings of timelessness, clarity and serenity, which led the author to liken it to a state of ecstasy. (In its truest sense, from the Greek ekstasis, meaning “being outside yourself”). A major part of the enjoyment of flow is the sense of being outside everyday reality, totally separated from the cares and worries of ordinary life.

Flow is the key to optimal enjoyment of any activity and consequently to a fulfilling life.

How can we achieve the state of flow?

The state of flow occurs when the challenge of an activity matched a person’s skills, the task should be doable, but also to extend our capacities and to demand our total concentration. Only a reasonable balance of ability and difficulty could lead to flow. If someone’s skills were not up to the task, this led to anxiety, and if the task was too easy to be performed, it led to boredom or apathy.

Flow is important to make your work more rewarding and meaningful.

Flow will definitely be experienced when you are doing something that you are good at and that you enjoy doing. It is not something that you might not know. It is a subject of high interest now.

Why?

We live in a hectic society with fast moving and rapid changes in the world around us. Technology news, society movements, political changes, economy growth or diminishing, all are affecting our lives in a sense or another. We cannot escape it. We are forced to change every day and to do things that we might not enjoy, or we are not good at, but have to strive to learn a skill (of which we know we do not particularly feel can become a strength) in order to survive, not live.

We are living when we are doing truly what we enjoy and have performance on it. In this not so wonderful train of events in our lives, we feel inside (don’t lie to yourself, I know it too), we are not on the right path. However, we carry on, as some of us have children, some of us have debts, some of us have to reach a goal, some of us need money and food and shelter, some of us are blind to the consumerist society and some of us simply are not ready for moving forward. This carrying on is not making the world a better place. Acting as puppets to get the strings and be moved in a direction that would generate some applause to “live” a little, won’t benefit ourselves, and it will clearly not benefit the people around us, for whom we strive so intensely.

So, the era of personal development emerged. Because it is needed. It is not just a “trend” or just a “fashion” asset, it is not just for the middle and upper classes. It is for everyone; it is supposed to target all walks of life. Even the beggar on the street is striving to live another day. We are all suffering. We need the flow, we need coaches, we need psychologists and therapists of all sorts to help us look inside ourselves, to help us establish the connection with what we can truly achieve if we would choose to believe in ourselves.

The ultimate goal would be to reach the flow in your everyday life. Eckart Tolle spoke about living in the present. Flow is about living in the present, it is about fully engaging with an activity that can benefit others and that you find it satisfying, not because of its financial repercussions, but because of simply working on it, putting your talents to work, offering your creativity a concrete action, not just an intention.

You need to let yourself experience the flow. The activities that make you be in the flow might not be particularly the ones that give you the salary at the end of the month. Or you may be blessed and it is. However, you owe it to yourself to find that path in which you are in the flow. It is the only way we can wake up; it is the only way we can generate positive actions, feelings and most importantly changes.

There is this saying, you all know it: “Change is the only thing that is constant”.

So, what can you do in a changing world?

You can adapt and grow your talents and experience more of your flow state of mind. Changes offer numerous new opportunities. Even in disasters, there are positive possibilities.

I wonder how this world would change if we would all stop doing what we hate, and start doing what we enjoy, what would make us flow.

Why do I believe it is important for everyone to experience the Flow? It is like a drug, once you know how it feels, you will do everything (however, as a responsibly human being, every possible legal, moral action) just like an addict (having in mind the urge, the need) to feel the same again. However, the only difference will be that an addict is trying to feel again the first sensation encountered as that was the best experienced, whilst in the state of flow, you will feel better and more enlightening experiences each time you work in the flow. What does this mean? People will have performances, people will be happier, people will know what they are good at and will generate ideas, will create and boost a project, an organisation, their family, their communities, their own lives. What will this result into? A better economy, since we all know what we are good at and are let to do what we enjoy, we will perform. There is no more “envy”, no more greedy people, no more “manager versus employee”. There is humanity. There is hope. There is good. Of course, you will say: utopia.

Guess what? When you are in the state of flow, for you, everything is perfect, and the best part, it is not imagined! (As in the case of the meaning of the “utopia” word = an imagined place or state of things in which everything is perfect)

Ecstasy state of mind connected to the flow state of mind as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi compared it, only pinpoints the fact that we get absorbed into a different reality, we are involved with a different state of being in this universe, we are fully concentrated and can attract what we need and desire into our lives. When we are in the flow, we know exactly how to do it and we get immediate highly positive feedback, which can only make us good, supporting our choices.

What do you choose to see?