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1/ Is Mindfulness and Flow the same thing?
I think that they are distinctly separate skills.
The word 'mindfulness' originally comes from the Pali word "sati," which basically means "to remember" or "to remember to observe."
When you’re observing your breath and are able to notice (remember) when your mind wanders off, and then bring it back, then you’re being mindful of where the attention of your mind is moving. Or if we take Jon Kabatt Zin’s definition, it’s
“the awareness that arises from paying attention, on purpose, in the present moment and non-judgmentally”
A state of open awareness and mindfulness is where I believe most meditation traditions converge. All that means is that you have no “object” of meditation (like focusing on the breath) and you are simply resting in awareness. When you are in this state, you are purposefully not focusing on a specific thing.
Let’s contrast this to a flow state. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about a description of flow below:
“My mind isn’t wandering. I am not thinking of something else. I am totally involved in what I am doing. My body feels good. I don’t seem to hear anything. The world seems to be cut off from me. I am less aware of myself and my problems.”
This sounds a lot like deep states of absorption in meditation. I have experienced many states like this where sound and feeling is completely blocked. It is definitely not the “open awareness” that is mindful.
Now, there are different types of meditation! For example, you can be chanting a mantra to the point you’re in a trance and completely “block out” everything else. This can feel extremely pleasurable, but are you really aware of all that’s going on around you in the present moment? Or are you absorbed in the task? I would say that you’re absorbed in the task and you are not being mindful.
You can be deeply absorbed in a task OR you can be mindful. Like in certain types of meditation, in a flow state when you’re making music or reading a book or doing work you enjoy. But this can actually be extremely un-mindful.
Now, this isn’t good or bad. Being more mindful can make getting into a flow state easier, since you are letting go of distractions. But being in a flow state doesn’t necessarily make mindfulness easier, though! My conclusion is that mindfulness and flow are simply different skills and both worth cultivating!
2/ The Light Pen for Dream Journaling
The last few weeks I’ve been getting more into dream journaling, the shadow self and Jungian analysis. Every morning around 6am I wake up remembering vivid dreams — almost always two separate dreams — and write them in my journal that I have placed on my bed stand. It’s usually a bit dark and I don’t keep my phone next to me, so my writing is often a bit sloppy. So I recently got a Light Pen that shines an LED light from the tip of the pin as you write. Problem solved.
3/ What I’m reading
Wow, this book blew my socks off.
I was expecting a fluffy, airy-fairy account of premonitions and telling the future, but instead I got a very thorough book packed full of scientific studies and convincing evidence of premonitions. It’s one of those books that changes how you see the world. Wtf, how does this only have 32 reviews on Amazon?!
A few quotes to pique your interest…
Consider too the painting Gaia by highly acclaimed visionary artist Alex Grey. Painted in 1989, it shows two planes flying over the Word Trade Center buildings in a polluted, ravaged landscape. Was this a warning of 9/11?
On WWII
Hile Wechsler, an Orthodox Jewish rabbi from Western Europe, seemed to foresee these events in a series of premonitory dreams. Wechsler published an anonymous account of his dreams in 1881 in a pamphlet entitled “A Word of Warning.” The dreams foretold a genocidal fate for the Jewish people of western Europe. Wechsler saw that anti-Semitism would become extremely destructive, and that it would begin in Germany and march eastward across Europe to engulf most of the European states. He wrote, “One wants to destroy the Semitic element lock, stock, and barrel ... one wants to rack and ruin the Jews so radically that their atoms will never be connected and re-synthesized.
The illusion of time
Time flowing one way, most physicists say, is a psychological illusion. Can we give up the illusion? Can we “change time” by changing the way we think? The answer appears to be yes.
I’ll be writing more about premonitions in an upcoming newsletter!
4/ What I found interesting
A really interesting conversation about the roots of illness, patriarchy and trauma. A few key points from this video:
Maté believes that conditions like depression, anxiety, ADHD, bipolar disorder, PTSD, and even psychosis can be rooted in unresolved trauma. He argues that these diagnoses are manifestations of underlying trauma rather than separate issues.
They mention Dr. Jordan Peterson and some of his views. I agree with a lot of what Peterson says, but Maté notes that he advocates for "order as an antidote to chaos,” as he talks about in his book. Maté says that rather the answer to chaos is harmony, not just imposed rules. Some men may feel that the world is against them (which is one reason why Dr. Peterson is so popular)…and this can be due to childhood trauma. The solution? Understand this pain, and that leads to healing, and it doesn’t feel like the world is against you!
Small band hunter-gatherer societies were around 50 to 80 individuals where we collaboratively lived, worked, and raised children. Children were nurtured and not subjected to physical punishment. Contrast this way of living with the more recent method (call it patriarchal, or whatever) that emerged with the rise of agriculture, private property, competition, and power. This contradicts our evolutionary needs for collaboration and interconnectedness.
Example - The Aka People of Central Africa: The Aka people, also known as the Bayaka, are a hunter-gatherer group from the Central African Republic. Anthropologists Barry Hewlett notes the cooperative and nurturing child-rearing practices among the Aka. Fathers are heavily involved in caregiving, and infants are carried and nurtured by multiple caregivers, not just the biological mother. Discipline tends to be non-coercive, with a focus on guidance and positive reinforcement rather than punishment.
5/ Quotes I’m pondering
"If a man is crossing a river, or a woman crossing a river, and an empty boat collides with their skiff, even though they'd be a bad-tempered person, they will not be shouting and not be angry. But if there's a man in the other boat, they will shout at them to steer clear and shout again angrily, and all because there is someone in the boat. Yet if you can empty your own boat crossing the river of the world, no one will oppose you and no one will seek to harm you." — Chuang Tzu