Heaven and Earth: Flow, Synchronicity, and Thin Places

I sometimes have unusual conversations that do not readily fit into any one certain category, yet they are interesting no less. What I have taken as my topic this week may very well fall into that category: it may serve no immediate or practical relevance, yet it is too interesting to pass by. At the very least, I hope that something of inspiration or encouragement will be transmitted throughout and that what I write will be greeted by an open and curious mind not too quick to either dismiss or embrace, but content to stew and reflect over these lesser understood aspects of our universe. My topic is a hodge-podge of ideas all related to the concept of “flow” that is perhaps most familiar to us through many so-called New Age ideas, has some interesting connections with Jungian psychology, and which ultimately comes to us from Eastern thinkers whose conception of the universe we will briefly explore, at least in part.

To put a frame around our conversation today, a friend and I have talked about those somewhat odd and unusual experiences that happen to us at times as human beings: experiences that seem perhaps to have a spiritual dimension but are not apparently limited to any one particular spiritual tradition, belief, or practice: the complete non-believer as much as the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Native American or any other other human being may experience them. We were also hypothesizing about intuition and apparent foreknowledge and from whence we believe it derives. Specifically, there are times in which I seem to have an accurate intuition of some immediately present event: I pull up to the drive-through lanes at the bank and sometimes I know—I simply know—which lane is going to move first. That does not always happen of course: it does not even often happen (and it almost never happens anymore primarily because I almost never go to the drive-through for my banking needs these days since we have a bank on campus). But it has happened to me more than once and at least one time in which the line that would move the fastest actually appeared longer than several of the others. Yet it was indeed the first line to clear, and I got in and out without much hassle while those who trusted their eyes instead, pulling up behind the shorter lines, were left to suffer it out.

Several weeks ago a friend called and asked if I would like to grab a bite to eat. On my way down to the car, I had a premonition that before the evening was over, we would not only eat but also stop in and catch a movie. And we did, though neither of us had planned it. But our story does not end there. My friend had the idea earlier that day for no apparent reason how interesting it was that for all the many movies we may see in a year, just how rarely one ever goes wrong and develops technical complications. Yet movies are strung on mechanical reels and mechanical reels are hardly infallible. He had read the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer and wanted to see the new movie of the same name based on this true account. Thinking of how rarely movies go wrong, he drove up and attempted to purchase a ticket. He was told that the movie had been canceled because of technical difficulties. The reason we ended up going and seeing the movie Into the Wild, then, was because he was not able to buy a ticket earlier, and, on a whim as we happened to be driving by the movie theater, decided to try again. Seated in our plush seats, we watched the first two thirds of the movie—and then suddenly everything on the screen turned upside down and the voices were playing backward. It turns out that the movie came on three reels, and the final reel had accidentally been threaded on backward (which upon reflection must mean that it was flipped outward rather than inward: that is, the wrong surface facing out like a slide inserted backward into a projector). How did I know that we were going to see a movie? Why did my friend suddenly, and for no apparent reason, begin thinking how rare it is for movies to go wrong even before his first try at purchasing tickets?

There are lots of other apparent coincidences, some apparently flukes and others that cause one to scratch one’s head in puzzlement. (In fact, a new member just posted a link in the last day or two on the forum that may or may not involve such oddities: see Narrow is the road....) I had not been going to tell my friend of my premonition at all, but later there was a part of the conversation where it seemed it just needed to be said: a very organic moment, one might say. My friend, of course, was curious what my explanation might be for this somewhat unusual intuition: why did it happen or what did it mean? In this instance, at least, I felt I had a certain answer: I had been praying for direction and guidance in two areas of my life: in one area, I was praying for guidance about what to do for my upcoming schooling. I am soon to be graduating again and the time to apply for Ph.D. programs is January or February, a deadline fast approaching. Yet this semester has been one of the busiest ever—good, but busy—with little extra time for anything. What direction should I take? The time to act is now! The other query was about my mouth. As it turns out, I have only seventeen teeth in my head and many of those that remain are in rather sorry shape. My visit to the dentist recently revealed that it would cost five- to six-thousand dollars to bring my mouth back up to speed with permanent bridges and several caps. This time, the question was about dental insurance: most plans have a waiting period for pre-existing conditions, so the sooner that I could find the right plan, the sooner I could get my teeth fixed and be restored to full health. Or, should I forgo dental insurance altogether? What should I do?

Now these two areas of prayer may seem comparative trifles and perhaps they are. Likely 95% of the things we fret and fuss over amount to comparative trifles. Nevertheless, I felt a sense of urgency, a total lack of direction and focus, and was praying with fervency, yet receiving no clear answer.

My friend asked me why it was I thought that I experienced a correct premonition—a correct “knowing”—that we would see a movie that was not planned. The answer I gave him, I still believe. The premonition was God’s way of reassuring me: “Things will turn out okay, as they ought. I know where you live: you are in the palm of my hand. I even know something as apparently insignificant as the fact that you and your friend will be seeing a movie tonight though neither of you planned it. I know all things; nothing escapes my notice. Have no fear: you have asked and I will provide, even if you do not yet know how.” Not in so many words, of course, but it was to me not only an answer to prayer, but brought a deep sense of assurance of the grace and provision of God in all areas of life, including the little things: I might even say especially the little things, as the little things are almost always what make or break us even though we have noble thoughts and delusions of grandeur that we are somehow above and beyond the little things of life.

I would supply the same interpretation as to why, in my days of cashing checks at the drive-through, I sometimes was shown which line would move fastest: it was a tiny act of grace: God smiling down on me for no other reason than because he is gracious and sought to reassure his sometimes prodigal son. (And if you are curious about the answers to my earlier prayers, in both cases, I felt an answer was right under my nose and so simple as almost not to be an answer: for my schooling, I was to relax and take a semester or two off, teaching on a per course basis: this way, I could focus on my last semester and comprehensive exams without the added stress and gain further teaching experience while I was at it. A lifetime may not be long, but there is no hurry. For my teeth, none of the insurance plans worked out for one reason or another, but I was able to take out a subsidized student loan: not ideal, but at least interest free and it will help me get my mouth back again sooner rather than later.)

My intuitions are not so uncommon. At least according to conventional wisdom, women tend to experience such things much more often than men, or at least seem more perceptive of such things. One is tempted to say on this accounting that it is merely a biological or physical phenomenon. Yet even here it all depends on how we answer the question “what is a human being?” To explain something as “merely” biological or physical may not be at all to explain it away as something that is any less spiritual. It sounds trite sometimes to say, but I am convinced that life itself is a miracle and grace has as much to do with each next breath, each morsel that nourishes my body, each drop that cools my tongue, each refreshing hour of rest that replenishing my spirit as it does with rescuing me from myself: grace is a total package.

Now I have spoken about “flow.” It has been my experience at certain times in my life to have an overwhelming sense that I am exactly where I need to be, doing exactly what I need to be doing, saying exactly what needs to be said at that instant. Not always, of course. But often when I start feeling this way, I have this strange sense of somehow being connected not only to God but by extension to all of the created world, as though I am literally working in harmony with the universe, as though the universe is flowing through me and I it, at that rare intersection of time and space some call the Eternal Now. And it is precisely during such times that I am most likely to have intuitions and premonitions that are accurate and trustworthy (for like all of us, I have certainly had intuitions and premonitions that, for whatever reason, proved to be patently false as well). Such experiences are well described by the catch-word “flow,” the basis behind now popular concepts like feng shui and qu’i (also spelled qi and ki and pronounced “key”). And the key to such experiences appears to be humility.

I am reminded of Father Ken’s homily from two Sundays ago. I was instantly interested when I heard the first two sentences pass through his lips: “The ancient Christians of Ireland, Scotland, and Wales used to talk about thin places. These were places where heaven and earth, the Divine and the human were one.” My mind sprang to legends and stories I have heard in which it is said that at one time a magic veil lay close to the earth and the miraculous was as common as the air we breathe. Yet something happened and the veil began to pull away, leaving the world of magic and the world of mortals separated. Yet here and there it still connects in “cracks,” “small pockets,” or “thin places” where the barrier has not become entirely impenetrable. Those legends have their origins in part in Celtic Christianity with this very idea of just such thin places where “heaven and earth are one.”

On the face of our bulletins in prominent letters was printed the so-called “Jesus Prayer” from the ancient Orthodox tradition: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the only living God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” Recalling the parable of the tax collector and the Pharisee, Father Ken anticipates this prayer, which he references in closing:

The element that interests us most in this account is humility: “Humility is the difference between that Pharisee and the tax collector. In humility, that thin place, heaven and earth, God and the human meet in that happy union of God, the Lover, and you and me, the Beloved.” Indeed, flow happens in that thin place of humility. And even those who do not use such terms describe flow in terms like “complete focus, forgetfulness of self, fusion of work and play.” Those descriptions sound a lot like humility to me.

It has been my experience in the past that sometimes when my faith is floundering and nothing spiritual seems likely or even possible, sometimes “chancing” on a website relating to alternative spirituality was the very thing God was pleased to use to “unstick” me. I am not exactly certain how many years ago I chanced upon a site that talked about flow and about spatial order (as is the subject matter of feng shui), but it was a site that had just such an “unsticking” effect on me. In fact, it has been long enough ago now that the site no longer exists. However, the two paragraphs that caught my attention were “scribbled in my notebook”: that is, I cut and pasted the relevant paragraphs into a text document that I saved to the computer and soon forgot about. Three computers later and the repeated transfer of untold files and this text file suddenly turns up again—again, apparently by chance—shortly after my friend and I watch two thirds of Into The Wild and I am again thinking about “flow.” In fact, the file showed up a week or so ago and on a day I was particularly feeling the need for a little unsticking in spite of my fascinating conversations as of late. Here is the first paragraph:

The talk of “magic” may not appeal to us, but the idea itself well describes exactly what we were talking about. And notice the word “synchronicity”: not only did I take the liberty of correcting the spelling of this word (it was spelled with an “i” rather than a “y” in the original), but this paragraph claims that synchronicity “is born of flow.”

What is synchronicity? It is a concept named by the Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, a contemporary of Freud’s, who was interested in precisely the strange sorts of intuitions and seemingly coincidental pairings of ideas that happen to us all at times. A rather trite example of “synchronicity” is the fact that in a short story we read for class on Wednesday, the professor talked about the poet Yeates, as apparently there was a literary allusion recalling one of his poems. I don’t often think about Yeates and have read little of his work. Yet when I arrived home, I noticed a business card of a friend’s wife sitting on my desk next to the computer. She has cut hair for years now, and her card has been lying there for what seems forever. But for some reason, I noticed it lying there and picked it up. On its back was written “Dialogue of Self and Soul: Yeates.” Some time ago I had written the name of poem and poet, long since forgotten. Why did I notice it that day and pick it up? It’s probably nothing, but it is an example of “synchronicity.”

While my example of Yeates is most definitely bordering on trivial, nevertheless synchronicity is indeed born of “flow” and intimately connected to that idea. The idea in brief is that we, as part of the natural world, share with it certain correspondences that are apparently non-linear (not based on any obvious cause-and-effect relationship) but nevertheless synchronous: that is “occurring at the same time” or, in this specialized sense, occurring within a very short time span of one another—occurring in the same or similar frame of consciousness before the particular reflection departs—and apparently connected in some kind of analogous way as well: a professor’s comment about Yeates and a business card with Yeates scrawled on its back. One could hardly say that the professor’s comment caused the business card, or that the business card was the effect of the professor’s comments. Yet Jung sees reason to believe that at least some of these events really are connected in a way that is non-linear, but no less parts of single whole. And, depending on how we look at it, I am inclined to agree.

Not only is it literally true that all things interconnect, but I have had one too many experiences with flow and its often resultant synchronicity not to believe that whether due to God working in our consciousness or some other means, there really is a state of perception we experience at times that seems to arrange, or be arranged by, the “physical” universe in some way. I do not look at “flow” as being the sign of spirituality—the end of spirituality is God no matter how we may feel or what we may experience from moment to moment. Yet I do take such experiences as an indication or sign that I am in the center of God’s will for my life and that he is working, guiding, and leading in spite of myself. For that matter, the idea of “flow” is not about an end anyway but a description of the process, path, or journey. Put differently, walking across the room is not the destination: the destination is my arrival to the other side. Yet it is possible for me to talk about “motion,” for if there is one thing that certainly accompanies walking across a room, it is motion. Motion is what walking “looks like” from step to step, but motion is not the destination of walking. So too, flow is sometimes what our lives may “look like” as we journey through life, but it is not the destination, goal, or end of the spiritual pursuit. It is also not the only thing a spiritual pursuit “looks like,” but when and where it does exist, one can be reasonably certain that there is something happening beneath the surface. And really, what I am driving at here is that flow is to large degree a perception of something or a frame of mind. Let’s explore that idea further.

I say that “flow” is to large degree a perception of something: presumably if I close my eyes, the words on the page in front of me continue to exist. I must open and focus my eyes to perceive the words, but they do nevertheless exist even when I am not focusing on them. So too, at any given moment on our spiritual journeys, we experience a special grace and provision, but we do not always perceive it: we are not always consciously aware of its existence and must believe it on faith if we are to apprehend it at all. It is no less true for all of that. So flow, to me, is a sort of special grace or spiritual perception in which I become consciously aware of something that has existed all along. My life is unfolding according to a plan, or, if not according to a plan per se, then at least at any moment God knows my name, where I am at, and whether or not I am going to go see a movie even when doing so is not a part of my plans. As I mentioned to my parents recently while visiting, I believe that we all lead charmed lives—at least most of the time—though we are not always consciously aware that we do. Hardships do come and there are times where our struggles seem more like those of Job’s than Jacob’s, perhaps eventually ending in blessing, though not simply come next morning—and even Jacob walked around with a limp. For all of that, most of the time we lead charmed lives.

However, returning to our example of the text on the page, there is another sense in which, that though closing my eyes does not make the words go away, nevertheless nothing of their meaning or essence is imparted to me. For that, I must perceive them. Likewise, the goodness of God always exists and in that sense, we lead charmed lives: all of us. But in order to fully experience a charmed life, we have to have a change in perception that enables us to see this goodness. To me, “flow” is a sort of special grace given for that purpose: a special testament to the fact of God’s goodness, our interconnection, and the sheer wonder, vastness, and mystery of the universe. It is not the end and further, often when we seek it as though it were the end, it evades our grasp, just as wind may be experienced but never caught and held in the palm of one’s hand. It is possible to harness the wind in other ways, but in order to harness the wind, we cannot hold it: instead, we must let it pass us by and convert some of its essence into energy, as we have for centuries untold with our windmills and (alas) our Don Quixotes.

The now defunct site on alternative spirituality had a second quotation that I copied and pasted as well, and this idea is more familiar to those who know of feng shui, or the theory of geometric space and its ideal and efficacious arrangement:

Most of us have had the experience of feeling a little blue and then perking up after we have taken the time to tidy up the house. And of course, while we may not agree with everything in the quotation above, we can all surely see some of the practical wisdom in it. What is more, the idea of “this order means something different to each person” reflects some of my recent reading in both Aristotle and Confucius in which both talk about a universal ethic, yet recognize that all universals must be appropriated in the concrete. Put differently, Jesus and others who advocate “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” are expressing a universal principle, but there are hundreds of thousands of variations in the way this teaching can be, and actually is, applied in real life: there are as many ways to apply that concept as there are life circumstances, and that is precisely the point: it will necessarily mean “something different to each person” from moment to moment, depending on the circumstances and other factors. Flow is about liquidity; conforming to the contours of life is the essence of liquidity, personified by the exploits of a river traveling between its earthen banks. Just like liquid in motion, flow retains its essence while infinitely varying its shape. As philosopher Alfred North Whitehead is reported to have said and to the point, “We think in generalities, but we live in details.”

I would like to go further and comment on where the idea of “flow” originally comes from. Certainly in contemporary thought it is associated with New Age thinking and alternative spiritualities, and based on the sources I have read, Dr. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi is credited with coining (or at least popularizing) the term with the publication of his best-selling book Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. As such, flow is often associated with ideas that seem more fringe than many believers are willing to embrace. In fact, such ideas often enjoy a shady reputation in much of the Christian world. While understandable, that is unfortunate, as in their strangest forms they do not have to be regarded as anything other than curiosities about the absolutely amazing and mysterious universe in which we live and in their more recognizable forms, they can offer genuine insight and wisdom into our shared humanity. That does not mean, of course, that we have to accept at face value all the packaging that tends to accompany such ideas; as we recently kicked around on the forum, perhaps the most insidious thing about New Age ideas is not the strange theories but the narcissism that tends to accompany them. The reason I tend to have a weak stomach for New Age ideas is one in the same with why I tend to have a weak stomach for a lot of popular books on Christianity: both seem more interested in marketing a product to the American consumer than searching for that which is authentic and most important in life. Popular Christianity and the New Age both often come across as fashion trends rather than an authentic pursuit of the deeper things in life.

Where then does the idea of flow come from originally? Perhaps before I answer my own question, I should tell another story. In my Research Methods class, we were charged with the task of writing encyclopedia entries (presumably to be published, since most of what comes out of this class is publishable material and thus the point of the course). We were instructed to write about Aristotle’s idea of ēthos (where we get the word “ethics” from and a concept that may best correspond to the idea of “character” or “inner virtue”) in relation to our respective disciplinary focus. That meant that everyone in the class was allowed to choose how they approached the topic, even though the topic itself was fixed. By contrast, I was charged with another project altogether of readying an anthology of student writing for publication and thus did not have to write the “ethos” entry—or so I thought. It happens that I was indeed charged with creating the impressions for the publishing company, but it was in lieu of the next assignment and not the ethos entry as I had believed. Long story, the moral being that I found out last minute that I too had to write an entry and was not given a choice, but was assigned the topic of ethos and how it relates to Confucianism: a sort of comparison of ancient East and West.

Let me say that I am fascinated by my studies in Confucius’ thought: I could not have picked a topic that was more personally interesting to me if I tried. But what is truly ironic is that I have been planning on writing this haphazard account on “flow” for the better part of two weeks now—see, for example, A New and Ancient Ethic on the discussion forum—and my assigned topic happens to explain in great detail where the idea of the “flow” originally hails, not in so many words, of course, but in terms of conceptual equivalence. Confucius did not himself propose the idea of the Tao (道 sometimes spelled dao and pronounced “dow,” like “Dow Jones”), but it is all part of the worldview of the ancient Chinese. The word Tao is usually translated as “the Way” and may be thought of something like “the Force” in Star Wars (which is indeed the inspiration behind George Lucas’ idea); it is also the basis of one of my favorite books of Oriental wisdom, the Tao te Ching (sometimes spelled as Dao de Jing, which is how it is pronounced). According to this conception, Heaven (天 Tian), Human Beings (人 Ren), and Earth (地 Di) constitute the universe, or at least the known universe to us as human beings. According to the online lecture notes from professor Nicholar Gier’s 308 course in Confucianism:

Before I continue, let me mention that Dr. Gier’s scholarship on Confucianism is first rate and while these links represent a sort of “cliff notes” version of his research in its often somewhat messy form (as typifies lecture courses in philosophy in general where professors are notoriously absent-minded), his polished material is outstanding: see, for example, The Dancing Ru: A Confucian Aesthetic of Virtue (and if you have access to JSTOR or Project Muse, look it up in those databases instead, as the version published in Philosophy East and West has full references). In any case, the point is that heaven does at least two things according to Confucius: it provides an orderly model upon which we may pattern our lives, giving to them an ethical quality. But heaven also is part of the natural fabric of things, and in Oriental thought especially, all of nature is of one whole. There are not the sharp distinctions between mind and body and spiritual and physical that we have inherited from Greek thought. Rather, everything is in some way connected to everything else. Even the word xin which is sometimes translated as “heart” and at other times as “mind” is best translated as “heart-mind”: see Glossary of Chinese Philosophical Terms.

This idea of nature being of one whole—this idea of holistic thinking in general—well characterizes how Confucian thought differs from Aristotelian thought. As Gier writes in his lecture notes:

Note the second word used to describe this kind of thinking: synchronistic. We see in this kind of thinking not only ideas about “flow,” but also its connections to everything else, not in a causal (cause and effect) relationship, but in a synchronistic one: hence our earlier talk of synchronicity and Jung’s adaptation of it. (Jung was not only a psychologist but a mythologist as well who studied ancient texts from around the world.) In any case, this type of thinking is seen in logic as well. The Greeks gave us our idea of logic as “either/or”: either this or that is true, but not both. The Chinese, however, favor a “both/and” way of looking at things: both this and that is true: it “sees opposites as complementary” like male and female, yin and yang. It follows that for the ancient Greeks, the focus is on the parts and the method is analysis or breaking into pieces; for the ancient Chinese, the focus is on the whole and the method is synthesis or putting together.

The idea of “flow,” then, comes to us at least from the ancient Chinese if not before. It is the belief that the universe is essentially of one whole and what happens on the macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm and vice-versa. In fact, even in Western thought through the time of Shakespeare and up until the Enlightenment reached full bloom, astrology and correspondences between the heavens and earth was standard fair, based on the dual ideas derived from both Greek and biblical thought of the Father as head over the Son, Son head over the Church, king head over the people, husband head of the house, head the seat of the intellect and ruler of the body. What put to death the idea of the ordered spheres in the West as much as anything was Copernicus and his notion that the planets orbit the sun rather than the earth as had been supposed for centuries. But I digress.

There is a natural order to the heavens and the earth and the human creatures that inhabit it. For Confucius, heaven formed a pattern; for thinkers in the West, humanity was itself constituted of both heaven and earth. And “flow” was the natural ordering of all things from top to bottom, right to left. There were connections between all things—some causal, but many correlative or synchronous. Just because they were not chained together as cause and effect, that did not mean that they did not correspond to one another. With that backdrop in mind, let’s return again to the quotation taken from the now non-existent website, culling only the parts that interest us:

The author is to some degree speaking in terms of a Western model, but for Confucius, even on the practical level order has an aesthetic quality to it. That is because, if we may reverse the idea above, “the inner should reflect the outer”: we take heaven as our template, noting its perfectly ordered form and constitution. Patterning ourselves on its aesthetic arrangement yields spiritual results and we operate in harmony with the Tao (道). To have “good morals” is also to have “good form”: there is an aesthetic quality to virtue that yields an inner beauty that shines outwardly. Virtue may not be able to raise our cheekbones or smooth out the bumps on our nose, but it can nevertheless take the physical exterior of our body and make it glow with an aesthetic inner beauty such as adorns the women in the apostle’s epistle. Thus, good form is beautiful because good form involves inner character patterned upon the ordered harmony of the heavens above.

Archive note: See also the discussion forum post Immortality and Science related to this newsletter.

And good form has to be embodied in the spirit of altruism: while we should “do nothing to others that we would not want done to ourselves” (the so-called “silver rule” as opposed to the “do unto others” of the golden one), we must each find a way that we can personally express that fact. Thus, virtue is more like a painting than a mathematical formula. A mathematical formula holds true no matter what variables are put into it, but, whereas a painting may use all the same colors and brushes, each painting is nevertheless completely unique. We often think of morality in the West as being universal—an “absolute truth”—focusing as we do on the mathematical formulas of life. By contrast, the East understands that every mathematical formula is useless unless particular variables are put into it. Thus, in a somewhat ironic twist given that the West is often seen as individualistic and the East as collectivist, the Chinese sage realizes that morality has to be realized individually. As such, he or she approaches morality as an art, his or her life seen as a painting or a poem or an ode to be lived well: to be lived beautifully. And while we may think of order as something laid out with mathematical precision of conforming to a drill sergeant’s conception of economy, no less does the artist impose (some would say “find”) a particular order on his or her craft. There is no one way to create art, yet what makes art art (and not something else) is the fact that it is ordered in some generally aesthetic way. Thus, for the Eastern person, an ordered life is important in part because a beautiful life is a moral life, a moral life beautiful, aesthetic. Since we are dealing with Eastern thought, there is a symmetry and balance to all things and a unity of ideas: Eastern thought, unlike our typically Western modes derived from the Greeks, is holistic: both/and.

So then, the idea of “flow” is at least as old as Chinese civilization, and there is a great deal we can learn from it. And isn’t it ironic that I should think to write of flow and be assigned an entry on Confucius? Seems a bit like synchronicity to me, as though there was as much an aesthetic connection between the events of the universe as a causal one, a bit like a patterned heaven and a nurturing earth.

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