Flow And Writer’s Block

If “Pen and Sword” is dealing with the overlap between martial and creative arts, one clear arena is the phenomenon of “Flow.” First introduced to the western world as a word by psychologist Mihaly Csíkszentmihályi, in his 1990 Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience, friends turned me onto it quickly, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It seemed to me he was describing phenomena rarely explored in the Western world, but very well understood in yogic and martial sciences. I also recognized the states described in the arena of writing, and from conversations with, and observations of masters like Larry Niven and Harlan Ellison, knew that this state could be channeled but rarely consciously controlled, was the secret to high-level performance, and was the lowest rung on the ladder of “esoteric” experience. If I felt the same thing running five miles, practicing Tai Chi, in writing, on long distance drives, in meditation, and in various forms of sacred ceremony, then this was not only real, but I had a “language” to describe these states that now tracked not only with personal experience and esoteric teachings, but Western psychology and science.

That’s cool. I love it when ancient multicultural teachings map over with Western science, but I’m not limited in what I believe and do by what science has experimentally determined. Would have missed a LOT if I waited for labs to catch up with personal experience (by the way, the way to explore these things safely is to have the “safety rails” of demanding health in all three major arenas: body, relationships, and career. Hard to…