Not knowing and flow

Where self-conscious thought ends, flow begins.

A topic turns up repeatedly in my writing, and it is coming around again: returning to not knowing. Actually, that’s two topics, returning and not knowing. The two appear on a regular basis in my life, most often these days during meditation. I do 45 minutes of Zhan Zhuang and 30 minutes of zazen every day, and both focus at least partially on posture. I’d done zazen for a long time before starting Zhan Zhuang, which I began because a bout of sciatica meant I couldn’t sit at all for months. Before that, I’d been aware that I really couldn’t sit squarely above my sit bones on my meditation stool.

Now, after 5 years of Zhan Zhuang, and a back injury that brought another bout of sciatica, I am actually able to sit up during zazen, back erect yet relaxed. With years of practice, I realize that I must give in to not knowing what’s next at a certain point. Yes, I know all these little things about getting myself in balance (so many little things!), but at some point in the process, I need to allow myself to simply sit and breathe. Not really knowing what to do next for my posture, I let go and see what happens, radically trusting that it will be OK. Inevitably, the many adjustments to posture have prepared me to more deeply relax into a good posture I’d never quite experienced before.

Why go into telling you all that? Because it is so very similar to the process of finding flow in music. We’ve all heard about the 10,000 hours it takes to become an expert performer on an instrument, but rarely does anyone mention that when one gets there, one can mostly dispense with conscious thinking and let the music flow through. And it’s not that different with many other skills.

I taught aural skills for a number of years. In the last several years, I worked increasingly with students on getting to flow. We don’t have nearly enough time in class to get there, of course, but we can work on the pathway. And work on the pathway is only somewhat about flow. The pathway to flow is hard work on the details: in aural music theory, that means demanding much of oneself by spelling intervals, singing intervals, hearing them in context, playing them on one’s instrument… over and over and over. When one really knows one’s materials deeply, instinctively, then flow is possible.

But flow doesn’t happen just because one knows one’s materials deeply. It requires that we develop a new attitude toward mistakes, opening to the process itself, allowing the mind to provide answers when needed. My great teacher, Marianne Ploger, put me on this path many years ago, by playing interval after interval in steady succession, having me identify them in the space between. By putting attention toward keeping the flow — as if actually performing music! — one finds errors correct themselves. Stopping, berating oneself for making an error is a self-reinforcing practice. Moving ahead with trust that one will get it the next time allows one’s brain to take care of corrections.

Working hard, demanding much of oneself on the one hand, and letting go of expectations of perfection on the other: one must find balance in all phases of an endeavor.

I am reminded of this regularly as I sit zazen. And I often return to the awareness that the practice of music itself is considered by many to be a contemplative path. The great representation of the “Tree of Contemplative Practices” made by the Association for Contemplative Mind in Higher Education put music on the very trunk of the tree! Not all practice of music fits that description, of course. There are mean, overly demanding teachers of music, who sometimes produce great players if they don’t crush the spirit of their students. But my point is that the study of music is a place where we can experience a little bit (or a lot) of flow by balancing our demands for excellence with desire to have fun doing it.

Where to be? Not too hard on oneself. Not too easy on oneself. Balanced. And I’d say the same for relations to others: respect for others is not just a willingness to let others be as they are, but to have the courage to speak up to those who need input.

Here’s a closing thought on flow from Kris Kristofferson, from a 2009 Rolling Stone interview conducted by Ethan Hawke, relating his thoughts about playing football and how it informed his music:

“Like when I was playing football, and we were really moving the ball forward — and you knew nothing could go wrong. Every block, every pass, every run, it couldn’t go wrong — well, it can be like that onstage when, God … The harmony sweeps in and holds you. It’s the same feeling I had, being a part of a good team. It’s beautiful, because you lose yourself, which is the same thing that happens when you’re writing well or doing any true creative act. You lose consciousness of yourself as an individual. That’s the great escape.”