A Book on Flow

By Arjen Broens

When I read "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi in 1990 I had no idea what he was writing about and it sounded almost magically far in the distance and only to be experienced by top athletes and high performers.

Of course, my state of projection in those days did totally ignore the reality out there, right in front my face. I was studying Land surveying back then in The Netherlands with a clear direction in my future.

Since my time studying Aikido, I started to notice this state of flow and went out of it as fast as it came to me: it intrigued me, the sense of a calm, effortless moving through space, this meditation in movement.

This state of effortless living is certainly not only for the high performers and the top athletes: you yourself are very much able to engage in this absolute peaceful harmonious state.

Perhaps not within sight you think, at this very moment as the world might be upside down for your mind due to past experiences or earth moving losses, but you are here, right here and that is where it all starts and happens. Nowhere else.

This book deals with the explanation, the initiation and maintaining of this flow state in yourself.
In my own words: how I picked up the words from Mihály Csíkszentmihályi and started to define this within myself in my progress over time.

The world totally changed, but only within myself: my projections, my anticipation, the way I started to perceive the world as it is, not as I, this I thought inside, liked to see it or looking at it from a burning desire. None of that remained.

What stayed, was reality. Everything else vanished. The projection made way for daily happiness which I then realised, was there all the time, under these layers of thought and mind.

Enjoy this one too, things will fall into place.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Arjen Broens
• Release date: Sep 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798201490065

Arjen Broens

Born in The Netherlands, moved to The Highlands in Scotland on the evening of 11-11-2008, didn't look back. From Edinburgh to Inverness, living in the middle of no where, deer and nature all around.Started to look within to find what was under the false personality which, as a child, I felt, was there to cope with the world of grown ups around me from a very young age.When the 1st 3 years of my life were full on encouragement to laugh, walk, talk, pursue to experience when it all changed into correction, telling me what not to do without telling what I could do from 5 years onwards.I started to see that we all are caught in this merry-go-round, this appearance we hold up and started to write books where, in the past I had my diaries to get me through.Aikido came into my life after a few lessons Jiu-Jitsu to gain confidence where I firmly decided not to want any killing reflexes in this body I left Jiu-Jitsu for Aikido and Iaido which changed my life entirely in a very good way.Books were coming to me at the right time: NLP got me into the right mind set and bumped into it in a second hand book store during a holiday in Ireland for just under a Euro.I chose to invest 30 min each day from then on to change me into who I am: confident, unattached, competent and self assured with life, nature and animals. Pure self and learned from there to listen to my heart with my mind as a worthy advisor to what's going on out there. Thoughts are just options.Started to publish my books in 2013 after both my parents passed away on a very respectable age.Sharing my thoughts and later, my experiences without thought infecting my being, understanding thought and how it is hijacked out there from a very young age and to keep you away from your core inside: the real you you are.Enjoy my experiences in this life, written down for whoever has support by them or fall into your lap as books fell to me without a search, life just happens.Discovered that the real reality is the life support system out there: no books, no gods, no symbols, no religions, no past, no future, just nature as it is is enough, always perfectly on time although our egoic state of mind will disapprove...What Is is now and moving fast into a new now, no time to think as thinking is way to slow to get the real and exact signals, impulses into our senses.Loving what I do, doing what I love: working in construction in the heart of the Highlands, meeting great people on sites and elsewhere.Enjoy life.

Book preview

A Book on Flow

Arjen Broens

Dedicated to Gentle Giant Sam Beaven

R.I.P. 25 Augustus 2023, 27 years young,

forever in our hearts.

Special Edition

Copyright 2023 Arjen Broens

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A mental state where there is no tomorrow or yesterday, no regrets nor desire, no I nor you, nothing really matters only what you are doing right now, right here in an extremely balanced way with an effortless focus and a very strong clarity.

To write down what flow is when you are in this natural state of alignment, is like trying to explain a state in words where there is no mind to translate the instructions to our vocal cords or to our hands to write them down. In flow you are wordless. In this autotelic state, words are useless as the origin of expressed words has its base in our thoughts. Where in flow, we are outside the influence of thought.

As Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi states in his book Flow (1990): The moment your capabilities reach the right level to the challenges at hand in a perfect balance, flow in you emerges, things start to happen naturally and in balance with live itself, effortlessly. Your perception of what is required and your actions are at par with each other, is in a perfect harmony.

Whatever challenge is emerging, you engage them with a sense of play because it is there to teach you something and you happily want to pick up the lesson in the tranquillity of your confidence, this dance of life. You dance with it, not against it.

There is no effort required, no thought, no history or future, just here, now, full on in the moment. The structure of who you think you are, falls away, ego dissipates, mind is not there so, you’ll see that your mind is just an illusion in us all.

If either your capabilities are restricted by your own state of mind or by a lack of experience, or the challenges in front of you are under or above what you can handle at that moment, flow will not establish and life becomes effortful, a struggle, boring or just too much and fear arises, a suffering is experienced. Mind and thought are troubling you, life itself becomes a mental obstacle where, in fact, it is in favour of you, this life support system, thought is in your way, that’s all.

But you cannot see it because it does not fit into your projection: you are in a state where you try to bend reality in what suits you, your I, at that moment, which is an illusion. Reality is real and nothing else, everything else is illusion.

What you think of this reality is imagination. This is the key in our feeling being chased by time, by what happens to us, this suffering we experience where we feel we should be happy. The key sits in the influence we give thought in the story about reality.

You can easily get lost in illusion, not in reality. Thought, off its leash, is desire out of control, is supplying suffering in full swing, eating you from the inside.

All addicts are aware of this beast inside them: I knew it was myself creating it and keeping it going.

With this knowledge that my capabilities and the challenge at hand needs to be in proportion to each other to create the state of flow in me, the opportunity comes up to see if I can work on both to shape an environment in me to make it easier to get them in proportion: to get into flow and stay in this autotelic true state for longer.

To be able to work on my capabilities, I have to be totally honest with myself to be able to analyse what causes the fluctuations in my capabilities: learn from them to harness them, prolong them in keeping them in harmony with the challenges at hand. Thought and its derivative, mind, are the two limiting factors here. To comprehend them, harness them, play with them instead of being played with.

To be able to regulate the challenges at hand, denial, arrogance, self-delusion, imagination and illusion need to be absent in you and me, eradicated at its source: thought.

You need to read them in the reality they are, not the story we form around and about them. This requires an active consciousness, an inner alertness on where your thoughts are going to from the moment they arise and the attention you are giving them. You are in control of exactly that, always have been but perhaps not fully aware that you are.

You have this already but we have not been practising this in our upbringing, we certainly have not been made aware of it.

The external referencing: the importance of what others think of you, parents, peers, friends and family, defines us, is what we’ve been trained to do and has been made more important than your inner balance, gut feeling and intuition. Thoughts and desire were made more important and overruled your true source and internal balance with a suffering life as the result.

You need to see that a