32. “Flow”

⬘⬙⬘⬙⬘⬙⬘ The old writing without changes:

 

8. HOW DO YOU “SEE IT” IN OUR WORLD?

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 2013

 

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi – Psychologist, sociologist and anthropologist noted for his work in relation to happiness, creativity and the subjective well-being. He is an author and the former head of the University of Chicago Psychology Department. His most notable work was “Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience.”  (1990, Harper & Row )

 

The name Mihaly is of Hebrew origin and most commonly used in Hungarian speaking countries, as it is a Hungarian form of Michael, derived from the Hebrew mikhael.  The Hebrew name, as always, has a meaning.

 

h4317. מיכאל miyka’el; who (is) like God; Mikael, the name of an archangel and of nine Israelites:— Michael.

In addition, his last name can be broken down into three words, the last of which is the same as his first name.

Hungarian Csik = ribbon, streak, stripe, band, bar

Hungarian Szent = sacred

 

Mihály Csíkszentmihályi therefore means “Who is like God, a Sacred ribbon (or strand in God’s tapestry) who is like God.” 

 

To follow is a Ted Talks video by Csíkszentmihályi. It takes almost 20 minutes.

 

http://www.ted.com/talks/mihaly_csikszentmihalyi_on_flow.html?source=email#.UiHevkL1mrw.email

 

“Answer me, O Lord, answer me, that this people may know that you, O Lord, are God, and that you have turned their hearts back.” Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering and the wood and the stones and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, “The Lord, he is God; the Lord, he is God.         1 Kings 18:37-39

 

Excerpts from the book (Pages 49-55):

 

A challenging activity that requires skills

 

“Sometimes a person reports having an experience of extreme joy, a feeling of ecstasy for no apparent good reason: a bar of haunting music may trigger it, or a wonderful view, or even less-just a spontaneous sense of well-being. But by far the overwhelming proportion of optimal experiences are reported to occur within sequences of the activities that are goal directed and bounded by rules-activities that require the investment of psychic energy, and that could not be done without the appropriate skills.

 

“It is important to clarify at the outset that the “activity” need not be active in the physical sense, and the “skill” necessary to engage in it need not be a physical skill. For instance, one of the most frequently mentioned enjoyable activities the world over is reading. Reading is an activity because it requires the concentration of attention and has a goal, and to do it one must know the rules of written language. The skills involved in reading include not only literacy but also the ability to translate words into images, to empathize with fictional characters, to recognize historical and cultural contexts, to anticipate turns of the plot, to criticize and evaluate the author’s style, and so on. In this broader sense, any capacity to manipulate symbolic information is a “skill,” such as the skill of the mathematician to shape quantitative relationships in his head, or the skill of the musician in combining musical notes.

 

“Another universally enjoyable activity is being with other people. Socializing might at first sight appear to be an exception to the statement that one needs to use skills to enjoy an activity, or it does not seem that gossiping or joking around with another person requires particular abilities. But of course, it does; as so many shy people know, if a person feels self-conscious, he or she will dread establishing informal contacts, and avoid company whenever possible.

 

“Any activity contains a bundle of opportunities for action, or “challenges,” that require appropriate skills to realize. For those who don’t have the right skills, the activity is not challenging; it is simply meaningless. Setting up a chessboard gets the juices of a chessplayer flowing, but leaves cold anyone who does not know the rules of the game. To most people, the sheer wall of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley is just a huge chunk of featureless rock. But to the climber it is an arena offering an endlessly complex symphony of mental and physical challenges.

 

“One simple way to find challenges is to enter a competitive situation. Hence the great appeal of all games and sports that hit a person or team against another. In many ways, competition is a quick way of developing complexity: “He who wrestles with us,” wrote Edmund Burke, “strengthens our nerves, and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.” The challenges of competition can be stimulating and enjoyable. But when beating the opponent takes precedence in the mind over performing as well as possible, enjoyment tends to disappear. Competition is enjoyable only when it is a means to perfect one’s skills; when it becomes an end in itself, it ceases to be fun.

 

“But challenges are by no means confined to competitive or to physical activities. They are necessary to provide enjoyment even in situations where one would not expect them to be relevant. For example, here is a quote from one of our studies, of a statement made by an art expert describing the enjoyment he takes in looking at a painting, something most people would regard as an immediate, intuitive process: “A lot of pieces that you deal with are very straightforward… and you don’t find anything exciting about them, you know, but there are other pieces that have some sort of challenge.… Those are the pieces that stay in your mind, that are the most interesting.” In other words, even the passive enjoyment one gets from looking at a painting or sculpture depends on the challenges that the work of art contains.”

A Word about Wrestling

 

First you need to go back and read of the struggles between the twin brothers Jacob and Esau in Genesis. It begins in Chapter 25, when Isaac prays to God for Rebekah, whom he loves and is barren, to bear a child. she gets pregnant with twins, (Genesis 25:23)

And the Lord said to her,

“ Two nations are in your womb,

and two peoples from within you shall be divided;

the one shall be stronger than the other,

the older shall serve the younger.”

There are a couple of tough interactions between Jacob and Esau, who are opposites in their ways, and Esau, in his anger for what Jacob does to him, desires to kill Jacob. 

 

Jacob leaves the area. Then there is an interlude of several years where Jacob establishes himself in life (not without many challenges). And then he returns to his country. And some of his scouts he sends ahead encounter his brother Esau. And Jacob fears for all he has worked for all these years. And before the meeting up with Esau, he has to “wrestle” – wrestle with his fear, wrestle with God. In Chapter 32:1-32 of Genesis, we read of this episode. This is a life-changing encounter for Jacob. He wrestles with God, and God changes him forever. As a result, God gives Jacob his new name: Israel = “God prevails.” We all have fears and challenges. God uses our “wrestling” with them to change us. We like to think of our lives as we begin to live into our “calling,” using the gifts that God has given us (see 1 Corinthians Chapter 12 – Spiritual Gifts) to be where we should be to “get into the flow.” And He does want us using those gifts. But He uses our weaknesses, our challenges, as a means to get us there, as well… See the quotation by Norman Augustine in the video – our “contributing to the world” is often best done by making ourselves vulnerable in our weaknesses. Coming from a place of weakness in marriage relationships, I may touch others’ lives more in their marriages, for example.

“In all the activities people in our study reported engaging in, enjoyment comes at a very specific point: whenever the opportunities for action perceived by the individual are equal to his or her capabilities.… Enjoyment appears at the boundary between boredom and anxiety, when the Challenges are just balanced with the persons capacity to act.”

 

The golden ratio 

between challenges and skills

The Merging of Action and Awareness

 

“When all a person’s relevant skills are needed to cope with the challenges of a situation, that person’s attention is completely absorbed by the activity. There is no excess psychic energy left over to process any information but what the activity offers. All the attention is concentrated on the relevant stimuli. 

 

“As a result, one of the most universal and distinctive features of optimal experience takes place: people become so involved in what they are doing that the activity becomes spontaneous, almost automatic; they stop being aware of themselves as separate from the actions they are performing… “The concentration is like breathing-you never think of it. The roof could fall in and, if it missed you, you would be unaware of it.”

 

“It is for this reason we called the optimal experience “flow.” The short and simple word describes well the sense of seemingly effortless movement.… Although the flow experience appears to be effortless, it is far from being so. It often requires strenuous physical exertion, or highly disciplined mental activity. It does not happen without the application of skilled performance. Any lapse in concentration will erase it. And yet while it lasts consciousness works smoothly, action follows action seamlessly. …

 

Clear Goals and Feedback

 

“The reason it is possible to achieve such complete involvement in a flow experience is that goals are usually clear, and feedback immediate.… Of course, if one chooses a trivial goal, success and it does not provide enjoyment.… Unless a person learns to set goals and to recognize and gauge feedback in such activities, she will not enjoy them.”

 

Next time we will talk about how this reflects some Biblical principles, being another instance where discoveries about our physical world are beginning to help us “see” the Truth of what was written so many thousands of years ago.

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