Flow: The Highest State of Consciousness

Forest

Art and Story by Michael Hooper

For years I’ve been on a quest to achieve the highest state of consciousness. 

The highest state of consciousness is a creative, efficient, and highly productive place. It’s where you are focused and intent upon accomplishing a certain task or goal. You forget about time and feel as if you are on a mission from God. 

Artists, writers, scientists, creative people are always looking for ways to achieve flow. They might call it something else like working at the top of my potential, or maximizing my resources or orchestrating a giant event.

Flow is the greatest of you. Flow brings out the best in you.

How do you achieve the highest state of consciousness?

The shortest and fastest way to achieve flow state is by getting started. Do the work. Sit down at your desk, write down two or three steps to achieve your goal and then accomplish them. Ignore all distractions. Silence the noise, stay focused. "I work until I'm there. Gotta show up to the page," says Skyler Troughton, author of books of poetry and a trilogy.

It is in the work that you will get illuminating ideas. I have found that while researching and writing a story, a second idea will come to me or even a third idea. Ideas pour out of me while doing the work.

Another technique for getting into the flow is to use stream of consciousness writing, popularized by 20th Century writers like James Joyce, William Faulkner and Virginia Woolf.

In The Principles of Psychology in 1890, William James wrote, "consciousness, then, does not appear to itself as chopped up in bits ... it is nothing joined; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let's call it the stream of thought, consciousness, or subjective life."

A person deeply into stream of consciousness writing might dash off 1,000 words in quick order. They write down the first thing that comes to mind and continue writing every thought. The stream might be filled with a bunch of random thoughts, such as, "I must do laundry, the sky is gray, my trailer is falling apart, I wish I knew a good plumber, my book needs my attention, dammit, I'm going to make a cup of coffee and get started writing, oh shit, I forgot to feed the cats. There is no cat food, oh my fucking God."

Some writers want much more control or agency, and write only deliberately and precisely well-thought-out sentences that have been rehearsed. The stream of consciousness writer let's it flow.

I write compulsively every day, starting with a diary entry. Yet rarely am I writing stream of consciousness, but I do enjoy this exercise and have had success creating poems and prose using this method.

Ernest Hemingway ended each day in the middle of sentence. He used this trick so he would never face a blank page or wonder how to continue.

Sleep on your idea. Your subconscious will continue working on the idea while you sleep. In the morning you may have an epiphany about your project.

Psychedelics may enhance or alter your universe, helping you to see things or ideas that you had never seen before or thought of before. Advocates believe psychedelics enhance the level of your consciousness and connect you with the universe at a different level

Michael Pollan, author of A World Appears, says psychedelics have the ability to re-animate a world gone quiet and still. Psychedelics soften our resistance to various forms of magical thinking. Under the influence of psychedelics, we are more likely to attribute consciousness to other entities, both living and nonliving, including plants.

When you talk to a plant, it hears you, if you show it affection with good growing conditions, the plant responds with thriving growth, trying to please you with its best display.

Caffeine may help a person achieve flow. It's a stimulant, two cups of coffee, and I'm good.

Cannabis may help some people achieve flow. Cannabis slows down some people, who procrastinate while high. I've met those rare exceptions of people who get amped up after consuming cannabis and dive deeper into their project.

You don't have to use drugs to reach your highest and best consciousness. In fact, you might perform better without them.

I believe consciousness is a decentralized system of nerves, muscles, cells, memory, blood flow throughout the body, all contributing to intuition, sentience, thought, self and feeling. This is an idea developed by Pollan in his book.

Self-awareness is a key ingredient for achieving flow, says Dane Broussard, a longtime business leader and CEO. He often comes up with his best ideas while working. Sometimes he generates ideas while running.

I once was riding my bicycle at night on a highway, stars were abundant, not much traffic, I was approaching a tight curve, I was afraid of getting caught at the curve with two cars coming and going. So I pulled into a driveway. And sure enough, two cars from different directions entered the curve at the same time, which would have squeezed me out had I been there. My sight, my body, my brain, the stars told me to pull into that driveway. Saved my life.

Pay attention to your instincts, your inner wildness, which is sensing all around you and in you. Your inner voice will say Yes or No. Listen carefully.

An artist can get into the flow state by simply turning off all sound, music, distractions, picking up a pencil and drawing. As you draw, your left brain gives up trying to control everything and assigns the task to the right brain. It is in this right brain where you achieve intuitive consciousness, spatial awareness, a sense of proportion and color and its complements.

For my painting Forest, I rode my bicycle into the forest, riding on a bumpy trail with my Surly mountain bike. I took pictures looking directly into the forest. I drew a picture and painted furiously to capture the different shades of green. This painting reminds me of my moments sitting quietly on the road in the forest, listening and watching everything from the ants on the ground to the squirrels in the trees, the light trickling in from the canopy above.

I believe I touched flow while painting Forest, but I only had that moment for a short time, maybe two or three days and then it was gone. I'm left with a great memory.