What brings you flow?

Our bodies are intelligent things.  They know when we are pushing it, trying to make it do what it doesn’t want to do.

We can see the results everywhere, from trauma to mental illness.  We get pushed into stress, pressure, tension.  There is nothing wrong with a challenge, but when we work totally against our spiritual nature, we only get suffering.

We feel physical symptoms from mental stresses.  We may get a compressed feeling in our chest, or a headache, or a tingling on the skin or in the fingers.  It overlaps with physical illnesses, so that the effects of inner tension look very like the effects of heart disease.  There is really very little difference between the two.  They overlap.

We need to look at what brings us flow.  A good example is to think of conversations we sometimes have with others.  Have you noticed how some conversations feel stilted and difficult, as though there are always obstacles in the way?  And yet some other conversations are so easy, like a river flowing; you don’t even have to think about it.

It’s the same with what we choose to do.  Some activities, you will notice, are difficult for you.  There’s just no flow.  Of course sometimes we have to do things that we are not good at, or well fitted for.  But when life is full of things to do that just don’t fill us with joy, that just don’t seem to work, we get depressed, lose our energy, and become dysfunctional.

How can we get our energy back?  Perhaps by thinking of what brings us joy, and doing that.  It’s quite subtle.  Sometimes we have to try things out.  There is no guarantee we will know in advance what is good for us.  It is like a child trying different hobbies – they are given opportunities, and the child feels its body, detects what works and what doesn’t.

When we are old, too, we are allowed to do this.  It is perfectly OK to look at our activities, and think ‘that thing works for me, I feel alive; but that other thing makes me feel like a knotted piece rope, or a piece of food that’s gone off.’  It’s OK to reach into ourselves and detect what we’d like to do, what we feel inspired to do.

Those who don’t follow their inspirations, lose their patterns of existence.  Life feels increasingly hollow, they get depressed, they lose energy, they begin to retire to bed too many times; they stop engaging with life; perhaps become antisocial, or a bit frightened of what tomorrow brings.  It’s not pleasant.

But those who follow their calling in some way, be it a career, or a friendship, or perhaps a food, or just a way of doing things… those who follow something of a calling seem to have an extra energy that everyone else doesn’t have.  They get up in the morning because they want to; they phone a friend that they want to phone, because they have something they genuinely want to talk about.

Otherwise life becomes full of a series of things that we just don’t want to do, things that don’t bring us flow.  It’s not that we need to be selfish; it’s more that we need to do what works for us, like a tree growing towards the light, or a plant growing roots where there is water.

It’s not easy.  Life can seem to trap us in days full of crap that doesn’t float our boat.  But actually we have more choice than we think.  Some of us have relatives to care for, jobs to do, health concerns to sort out.  I don’t want to minimise that.  But even so, we have more choice than we think.  And where there is a choice, there is some kind of freedom, a bit of inspiration, a bit of happiness even.

So ask yourself, if you want to: what brings me a sense of freedom, of inner peace, of happiness?  Am I just preventing myself from enjoying life because I believe that I have to suffer here, repeating the old habits that I used to repeat, having the same old conversations, eating the same old junk food?  Maybe we have much more choice than we think.  I believe we do.