Unification

Essay: Flow, Unification of the Mind, and Unification of Purpose

It is a myth that we only use ten percent of our brain, however, in everyday life, it can feel like we aren’t utilizing all of our mental power because, psychologically, our one brain powers many different, and sometimes conflicting,  parts of our psyche. This complexity results in us effectively having, not one mind, but many sub-minds.  And these sub-minds are not all aligned around one single goal.  More on that in a moment.

Despite our usual experience, there are some activities in which our sub-minds are mostly in agreement:  when making art, performing an athletic feat, dancing, making music, or a myriad of other activities in which one enters a state of flow.  In flow, many of our sub-minds are aligned.  That alignment is part of what creates the state of flow.  And that’s part of what makes flow so enjoyable.

Meditation, at least for advanced meditators, also allows one to enter a state of flow.  

In fact, in meditation, one can go farther into flow than other activities.  And, with enough meditation, it is possible to align all parts of the mind.  This is known as unification of the mind and it is considered an impressive accomplishment among meditators, and a necessary step to achieve even more advanced and enjoyable mind states.

Flow and unification are similar mind states and both bring a sense of joy and rapture.  I believe that we have evolved to seek these pleasurable states because they exist to tell us that we are doing the right thing.  After all, doing what is good for the evolution of our species should feel good to encourage us to do more of it, just as sex feels good to encourage us to procreate.  Think of flow as sex for the mind, and unification as a mental climax.  

It’s not surprising to me that flow states often happen when we are creating as the creative act seems to be what humans exist to do.  The pattern repeats infinitely: Art, technology, innovation, knowledge, love, meaning, or, via sex, procreation - the drive to create seems to underly our purpose somehow.

These enjoyable mental states provide  feedback to our mind, whispering to us to follow this path further. They show us a path to freedom - internal freedom - which is true freedom.  Somehow, in the freedom of our psycho-spiritual space, creation is our path to transcend mortality.  Creation transcends un-deadness into aliveness.  Creation transcends mortality to immortality.  Creation transcends captivity into freedom.

When we are in flow, we are fully attentive to the present moment.  That’s the reason we lose track of time and hours pass like minutes or minutes pass like hours.  Flow immerses us in the eternal present.  

In our normal, everyday state, we feel that we move through time, but in flow, the perspective flips and we become the medium through which time moves.  It feels as if every moment is a still picture and we are flipping through these frames, one at a time, very rapidly of course, but one picture at a time in its infinite completeness is being projected onto the screen of gratitude which never changes. That’s why we call it “flow” - we become the unchanging eternal and time flows through us.  

Of course when in this state we “lose track of time!”  And then, suddenly look up to see that four hours have passed in an instant!  

The fewer obstacles that block the river of flow, the stronger the flow state, and the biggest rock blocking the river’s flow is our egoistic self, which, when fully in flow, disappears.

As we focus more and more of our mental power on now, we receive and notice more and more incoming information, that is, we perceive more “pixels” per “frame.”  When our mind becomes unified, we utilize the full and formidable power of human attention to be fully present.  

You’ve no doubt heard stories about people who, in describing an emergency situation, say things like, “Time slowed down and everything appeared to pass in slow motion.  I stopped thinking and just acted.”  

From time to time, we all experience being thrust unexpectedly into the eternal now by being shocked into it by external events, such as a breathtaking sunset or a life-threatening situation. But the way to reliably enter such a state is meditation.

As I mentioned earlier, one of the insights that arises out of meditation is that most of the time, we don't have only one mind.  But, instead, we have many different minds (or sub-minds if you prefer) all desiring different things.  And to add to all that mental chatter, all of our minds, in their own way, think that they are looking out for your best interests! 

Together, they form a kind of “committee,” arguing over what actions and thoughts need to be focused upon. With each decision, some sub-minds lose the argument, and some sub-minds win the argument.  If you’ve ever seen the Pixar movie, Inside Out, you can think of a mind like what the movie depicts, but with many more members on the committee.

As a simple example, let’s imagine that you pass an ice cream shop and think, “Ice cream sure sounds nice.”  The part of your mind that loves sweets will push you to go buy ice cream.  And the part of your mind that wants you to experience pleasure and happiness right now will agree - go ahead, you deserve it.  But, the part of your mind that worries about your health will disagree.  The part of your mind that is watching your weight will also disagree. And the part that thinks ice cream is a waste of money will disagree.  

Even in this simple example, you can see that your many different “minds” are “arguing” over what should be done.  And they all are trying to do what’s best.  But conflict arises when they  disagree about what’s best.   

If you’ve ever said or done something and then regretted it and had to apologize, “I’m sorry, I don’t know where that came from,” now you know where it came from - it came from one or more of your sub-minds.  Sometimes members of the committee “go rogue” and take action before “you” have made the final decision. 

A major goal of meditation is to reduce and, potentially eliminate, this mental arguing.  In essence, the idea is to get all the committee members to agree upon something.  And, as discussed earlier, once this is achieved, it is known as the unification of the mind.  

Once the mind is unified, all of your sub-minds rally behind one goal as you (the conscious part of your mind) gain increased mastery over your mental state. 

That is why meditation guides often instruct you to focus on the breath (or some other single object of meditation). And no matter how much your mind wanders, just gently “return to the breath.”  What this process is doing (among other things) is training all of your sub-minds to stop bickering and to get behind the one real purpose of the session which is to “focus on the breath.” [1]   And, amazingly, over time, it works!  More and more of your sub-minds slowly get the message to listen to what “you”, as the controller of the conscious mind, want them to do.  As more and more of your sub-minds observe the breath, your powers of perception get deeper and more skillful.  I am shocked how much more nuance I notice about “the breath” after a few years of meditation, compared to when I first started [2].

As you continue to gain skill, this increasing mental unification can be applied to other areas of your life.  Imagine a passive-aggressive person who is ruining their relationship who unifies their mind.  The passive aggressive behavior would eventually stop as their mind became more and more unified.

People sometimes experience a knee-jerk fear when the topics of meditation, mindfulness or “living in the present” are broached, particularly when deeper topics arise that are perceived as too “woo-woo.” [3]

 An element of this knee-jerk fear is that, to a rational, intelligent, thinking, successful person, this all sounds like something that will make one less ambitious.  People are afraid that going too deep will take away their drive.  And western society certainly admires and rewards people who are driven and ambitious.  

After all, if you're just “going with the flow,” when will you ever stop to think, plan, or worry about your future?

I certainly worried about that before I tried meditation in an attempt to let go of anxiety, become more creative, and avoid burnout (though I quickly found meditation was much more than that).  But, outside of short periods of time, it’s not true that meditating will douse your ambition.  And it’s not true because of this concept of unification, which, it turns out, has another aspect which improves everyday life.

This other aspect arose as an insight from my own meditative experience.  And it this: the increasing unification of the mind leads to an increasing unification of purpose.  

In other words, you start to see much more clearly what things deeply inspire you, and what things you are clearly "supposed" to do.  Deep inspired curiosity awakens within you and pursuing those curiosities often feels like coming home to yourself. You become re-interested in things that you’ve forgotten since childhood. You increasingly notice where you are devoted and what things bring you into deep flow states (states which become even deeper as your mind increasingly unifies).  You become attracted to activities that just feel right.  As I mentioned previously, I suspect that there is an evolutionary reason for that feeling.

When your mind is unified, you do the things you know you are supposed to do with far greater power and conviction than those who have not unified their mind, which is almost everyone else.

In this state, you not only know what you should do, but you take inspired action.  You discover your obsessions.  You discover purpose. You discover things that you can’t not do.  

It is true that you might not experience the same level of desire for status, power, vanity, fame or money that typically come as baggage with the word ambition.  

But, to the outside world, you will actually seem more ambitious.  That’s because you will have found the things that have your devotion.  Michael Jordon certainly seemed ambitious.  And he achieved status, power, money and fame.  But his inspiration, his obsession, his devotion was basketball.  And devotion beats discipline every time.  

The Master leads by emptying people’s minds and filling their cores, by weakening their ambition and toughening their resolve. — Tao Te Ching

You will still plan for the future, in some ways with more excitement than before. But you won’t worry about it so much.  You will drop much anxiety because  you will know the direction you need to go with clarity, and you will take action because you will be ambitious for the inner freedom and joy that arise when your mind is unified, in a flow state, doing the very thing you were put on earth to do and from that, everything else will flow automatically, possibly including the status, power or money, but those things will no longer be a motivation.

“It is ordained that to the ambitious, who derive no satisfaction from the gifts of life and the beauty of the world, life shall be a cause of suffering, and they shall possess neither the profit nor the beauty of the world.” - Leonardo DaVinci

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Footnotes:

1.  Meditation that focuses on a single object is designed to build one’s concentration ability culminating in the ability to remain completely focused upon a single object thus achieving unification of the mind and some other extremely blissful mental states.  There is another type of meditation where one opens their awareness to everything they are experiencing, which is designed to cause one’s mind to have insights about reality.  Traditionally, concentration based meditation is known as samatha and insight meditation is known as vipassanna.  Many practitioners do both types. 

2. Once a certain amount of mind unification occurs, one starts to notice “the breath” in feelings all throughout the body, one starts to “see” the breath as flows in and out and connecting to different parts of the body, to different emotions, and even to perceive “breath” as outside the body.  In short, what is considered breath expands to include much more than the feeling of air at the tip of the nose.  One starts to more deeply understand the word inspire.  This topic goes much, much deeper but that is a different topic for a different essay.

3.  I believe the term “woo-woo” comes from the Chinese idea of wu wei which means effortless action.  Effortless action sure sounds a lot like a state of flow.