FLOW As we become more steadily attuned to the flow of experience, the particular forms and specifics of experience begin to appear as manifestations of a flowing medium. The flow takes center stage in our awareness, and this can precipitate the recognition of the medium underlying the various forms of experience. We no longer experience a succession of experiences, but a flowing medium whose flow is the manifestations of the experiences. It is not then a succession of events, but rather the current that carries events. The flow is of the substance of the soul, the medium of consciousness that underlies the specific experiences. The river of consciousness carries various forms or, more accurately, manifests these forms. ... We can experience flow as the stream of experiences, without these experiences being disconnected. At the same time the flow is not a displacement of medium from one location to another. The whole field feels flowing, but not spatially, not horizontally. We feel the flow of experiences as a fountain or a bubbling spring, instead of a river or a stream. This is a more subtle perception than the stream image, and is more accurate regarding the source of the impression of flow. There is neither destination nor source, but merely the flow outward of the arising of experience as a continuous flowing fountain of conscious presence. The fountain effect is a sensation, a feeling, an impression of flowing. The streaming fountain is a bubbling stream of experiences, where the bubbles and eddies are the forms experience is taking. It is like creation out of nothing, like a water fountain that does not have a source. The water emerges from nowhere; an experience was not there, and now it is there, while flow is always present. This is a wonderful way of experiencing our soul: ever fresh, ever new, a source that is also the destination. ... When we are in the midst of the experience of flow, being the flow, the appearing presence, with its various forms, time changes meaning. We are not then connected with linear time, clock time. Time becomes the flow itself. We normally feel the passage of time by being aware of the flow of impressions. When we are the flow, the flowing appearance, then this flow is the context within which experience happens. Both time and space lose their structuring power, and the recognition of them is not separate from other events within the flowing appearance. The expanse of presence gives rise to the concept of space, and its flow gives us the concept of time. But experientially we feel the flow itself as real time, for we are actually in touch with the ground of our normal concept of time. In other words, real time is the life of the soul, the unfoldment of the soul. Each period of it is a period of growth and development, not just a temporal space in which events take place. *** Both arising and the continuity of appearing give the impression of flow. Reality is flowing out, from formlessness to form, from nonexistence to existence, from nothing to appearance. Flow becomes another way of experiencing universal transformation, where we experience the totality of all forms of existence as one tapestry that is flowing out; the outflow is continuous but changes its patterns and colors, giving us the impression of change and movement. In the experience of flow we feel more intimately the direct sense of the dynamic presence. We experience all of Reality as one presence, sculpted and formed into the various objects and phenomena of existence. The totality of this field of presence is moving, flowing out within a particular pattern. This patterned outflow appears as the changes and movements we ordinarily perceive. In other words, in the experience of outflow we directly feel the process of creation. Being does not create something out there, apart from itself. It simply flows out of its own inscrutable depths, into the forms, colors, and shapes of the world. A. H. Almaas
Posted on: Mon, 17 Mar 2014 18:33:57 +0000
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