You're all in your head
Going with the flow is a matter of mind
I’ve always been a bit of a floater. I’m naturally pretty content to go with the flow. Take opportunities as they come and pursue the things that seem sensible if not desirable.
So the idea of wú wèi naturally appeals to me.
For anyone not familiar with wú wèi, it’s Dàoist philosophy1. It is sometimes associated with getting into a state of flow. That description is a bit misleading though. It’s more about surrendering and adjusting one’s effort according to the natural ebb and flow of circumstances as they are. This allows a sort of effortless action. Rather than force things, work with the forces already at play. Thus, ‘going with the flow’ (all day, every day) is a more apt description than acting to get into a ‘state of flow’.
Mastering this is hard. It’s also much deeper than accepting circumstances around you as they are. I’d say that’s the easy part.
Over the December 2022 to January 2023 new year period, I sat a 10-day silent meditation course. The environment was fairly consistent for 10 days straight. Accepting and going with the flow of that and the silence was pretty easy. Eat, meditate, eat, meditate, eat, sleep, meditate… You get the point.
Sitting so much was hard. Dam, that was hard. I had pains in joints and muscles I didn’t know I had. But that was also relatively easy.
The hard part was accepting the mind. Fuck me it likes to talk to itself. It was day 3 when I realised, the darn thing never shuts up, and I had 7 days to go.
I’m an introvert, but even so, there’s only so much of being with my own thoughts I can take!
I mean it, the mind never shuts up. Even when you think you’re not really thinking, there’s a monkey in there running riot.
With a history of severe mental illness lasting the best part of a decade, including a stint in a psychiatric hospital, I’ve had my fair share of psychology sessions. Cognitive brain therapy helps us to leverage the influence our thoughts have over our emotions. By constructively adjusting our thoughts, we can overcome negative emotions. I’ve found this somewhat, although not entirely, true.
Ten days meditating taught me we can’t control our thoughts (at all). Admittedly using thought to control thought has some effect, but it is at best a temporary solution and ultimately futile. When it comes to emotion, self-talking it away is akin to forcing it away, so it’s pretty hard. Honestly, I find it torturous.
I’ve found it far more effective to sit with an emotion, to simply observe and let it just be. When doing this, it immediately starts to dissipate. Sam Harris makes a similar point2:
“The next time you feel a negative emotion, like anxiety or fear or anger, notice what happens next. How long do you stay in the grip of that contracted state of mind? How long is it useful to feel this emotion when responding to whatever challenge has appeared in your life? It’s not that the goal is to never feel these emotions again. They’re signals, that something’s worth paying attention to. But, how long must we let the alarm bells ring. With mindfulness, you see that these emotions begin to evaporate the moment you notice them and then you can respond to whatever’s happening in the world, without being miserable.”
It seems learning to sit and observe emotion, however painful, and learning to let thoughts come and go is the real art of going with the flow. It’s hard only in the sense it requires consistent practice. But ultimately, this approach has led to me feeling mentally free.
Cover image: Photo by me in Yunnan, China.
This is a beautiful post, Michael. Thank you.