Flow

If there is something arising from within you that is natural and spontaneous and deep, that is not seeking. You’re being can flow in a certain direction, and be acting, without it being ego activity… a great deal of knowledge and understanding can arise out of such authentic activity, and become integrated as true understanding. This is why two people can read a book and understand it at different levels of depth. The difference is not that one is smarter, but that he is really into it – the impulse toward the understanding comes from his heart. (Diamond Heart Book 4, pg 37)

Experience and the flow of events

If we reflect on our experience, at any time, we can see that it is actually not just changing from one thing to another, but it is in constant flow. In other words, when we attune ourselves to the changing panorama of our experience we begin to be aware not only of the fact that inner events are transitory, always changing from one thing to another, but also of the sense that this change is actually a flow of inner events. We recognize it is a stream of impressions, feelings, thoughts, images, sensations, states, and the like. This statement would appear to be a truism, since it is obvious on reflection that our experience is a flow of events, outer and inner. However, an intellectual recognition of the fact that experience is a constant flow and change is not the same as knowing our experience directly as that flow and change. In the direct experience of the soul, we know directly and intimately the sense of a direct attunement to the flow. We are not only cognitively noting flow, we are the flow. The flow becomes experientially more significant than the particular experiences or inner events. We actually experience ourselves as a flowing river of impressions. The river becomes the foreground of experience and the events recede to the background. (Inner Journey Home, pg 78)

As we become more steadily attuned to the flow of experience, the particular forms and specifics of experience begin to appear as manifestations of a flowing medium. The flow takes center stage in our awareness, and this can precipitate the recognition of the medium underlying the various forms of experience. We no longer experience a succession of experiences, but a flowing medium whose flow is the manifestations of the experiences. It is not then a succession of events, but rather the current that carries events. The flow is of the substance of the soul, the medium of consciousness that underlies the specific experiences. The river of consciousness carries various forms or, more accurately, manifests these forms. (Inner Journey Home, pg 80)

We can experience flow as the stream of experiences, without these experiences being disconnected. At the same time the flow is not a displacement of medium from one location to another. The whole field feels flowing, but not spatially, not horizontally. We feel the flow of experiences as a fountain or a bubbling spring, instead of a river or a stream. This is a more subtle perception than the stream image, and is more accurate regarding the source of the impression of flow. There is neither destination nor source, but merely the flow outward of the arising of experience as a continuous flowing fountain of conscious presence. The fountain effect is a sensation, a feeling, an impression of flowing. The streaming fountain is a bubbling stream of experiences, where the bubbles and eddies are the forms experience is taking. It is like creation out of nothing, like a water fountain that does not have a source. The water emerges from nowhere; an experience was not there, and now it is there, while flow is always present. This is a wonderful way of experiencing our soul: ever fresh, ever new, a source that is also the destination. (Inner Journey Home, pg 82)

Flow and time

When we are in the midst of the experience of flow, being the flow, the appearing presence, with its various forms, time changes meaning. We are not then connected with linear time, clock time. Time becomes the flow itself. We normally feel the passage of time by being aware of the flow of impressions. When we are the flow, the flowing appearance, then this flow is the context within which experience happens. Both time and space lose their structuring power, and the recognition of them is not separate from other events within the flowing appearance. The expanse of presence gives rise to the concept of space, and its flow gives us the concept of time. But experientially we feel the flow itself as real time, for we are actually in touch with the ground of our normal concept of time. In other words, real time is the life of the soul, the unfoldment of the soul. Each period of it is a period of growth and development, not just a temporal space in which events take place. (Inner Journey Home, pg 86)

Flow and universal transformation

Both arising and the continuity of appearing give the impression of flow. Reality is flowing out, from formlessness to form, from nonexistence to existence, from nothing to appearance. Flow becomes another way of experiencing universal transformation, where we experience the totality of all forms of existence as one tapestry that is flowing out; the outflow is continuous but changes its patterns and colors, giving us the impression of change and movement. In the experience of flow we feel more intimately the direct sense of the dynamic presence. We experience all of Reality as one presence, sculpted and formed into the various objects and phenomena of existence. The totality of this field of presence is moving, flowing out within a particular pattern. This patterned outflow appears as the changes and movements we ordinarily perceive. In other words, in the experience of outflow we directly feel the process of creation. Being does not create something out there, apart from itself. It simply flows out of its own inscrutable depths, into the forms, colors, and shapes of the world. (Inner Journey Home, pg 357)