According to Eastern teachings we initiate the power of flow in our lives by:
1. COMMITMENT
If there were only one personal attribute we need for flow, one that makes everything else possible, it would be commitment: to our own growth and expansion, to our family, to our chosen profession, to truth, and to the greatest whole. With commitment, we say yes to life, and we don’t just mouth the word. We take a stand for our deepest values, and we do everything it takes to live by them…
2. HONESTY
Honesty, like Janus, the Greek god of hearth and home, has two faces: one that looks outward and one that faces inward. Inwardly, as we enter more deeply into flow, we seek integration, the coming together of all of our sometimes - conflicting parts into one powerful whole. This requires a solid commitment to identify and break through layers of misconceptions, self-deceptions, emotional scars, limiting and self-sabotaging beliefs, outdated responses, internal conflicts, buried dreams, hopes, and fears — all the accumulated baggage of human existence. We are ruthlessly honest with ourselves, no matter how uncomfortable that may sometimes be. We pursue the truth because we know it will set us free from old wounds that interfere with our experience of flow. We question and probe our own inner world to see what’s real, what’s true, and what’s not. The result of this quest for the truth is a deep self-understanding and a peace that can come only when we truly know ourselves…
3. COURAGE
Courage does not require climbing rocky cliffs but rather, day in and day out, overcoming our fears by stepping outside our personal comfort zone, following our intuition, and making ourselves available to the larger plan. It means we transcend our limited self - definitions to be open to new information and stretch beyond the way we’ve always done things in the past. It means we listen within and sometimes turn left when everyone else seems to be going right. It allows us to risk ridicule to create something new, or to risk rejection when we are being true to our sense of what’s right…
4. PASSION
Flow is conditioned by passion - passion for life, for knowledge, for a cause, for a relationship, for truth. Passion means caring deeply about something beyond ourselves. It means engaging with it at intense levels. It means letting go of self - protective caution to involve ourselves wholeheartedly with what we love…
5. IMMEDIACY
Living in flow means living fully in the present. We don’t hang out in the past rehashing old issues. We don’t hang out in the future trying to second-guess how things will turn out. We settle all of our attention on each interaction, whether it’s washing a dish, making love, attending a meeting, or reading to a child. We are fully engaged in whatever we are doing, and time seems rich and full and resonant and still, all at once. This state of awareness is called immediacy…
6. OPENNESS
Being ready and willing and available to a wide range of possibility makes the power of flow abundant in our daily life. When we are open, we waste little energy in warding things off; we do not erect walls between ourselves and the world. Instead, we embrace whatever develops, for we know that everything we experience has value. Events unfold naturally and effortlessly because, without preconceptions or judgements, without fear or anger, we are willing to do whatever a situation requires…
7. RECEPTIVITY
Being in flow means that we are ready to take our part in the unfolding of events. We listen to our inner voice for messages, we observe all that happens around us — especially synchronicity — and we then move in harmony with the moment. But we don’t attempt to control the outcome of those events. Instead, we hold open the space in which potentiality exists. Lake a dancer poised in the still moment at the start of a movement, we can go in any direction the music suggests…
8. POSITIVITY
In positivity, we seek out the value in every situation, at every turn, emphasise it, and work actively with it. That’s not to say that we are Pollyannas or blind to the negative potential of a situation; through experience, we’ve learnt that in the positive side lies the potential for movement. We believe everything happens for a reason, and that perfection is found in each moment. As a result, we don’t shrink from difficult people or situations or challenges — we move toward them…
9. TRUST
One thing can switch the experience of flow on and off in an instant: trust in flow itself…
London Spa Girl x
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