FLOW - CHAPTER 1
" The best moments of our lives, are not the passive, receptive,relaxing times - although such experiences can also be enjoyable, if we have worked hard to attain them. The best moments usually occur when a person's body or mind is stretched to its limits in a voluntary effort to accomplish something difficult and worthwhile.
Optimal experience is thus, something that we make happen ! For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far ; for a swimmer, it could be trying to best his own record ; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical pasage. For each person, there are thousand of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.
Such experience are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur. The swimmer's muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue - yet, these could have been the best moments his life !
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To achieve greater precision we developed with time, a new method for measuring the quality of subjective experience. This technique is called ' Experience Sampling Method'. This involves asking people to war an electronic paging device for a week and to write down how they feel and what they are thinking about when ever the pager signals.
( do net search on ' Experience Sampling Method' )
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Optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is ORDER in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match with the opportunities for action !
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The primary reason it is so difficult to achieve happiness centers on the faact that, contrary to the myths mankind has developed to reassure itself, the universe was NOT created to answer OUR needs ! Frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of our Life. and when ever some of our needs are temporarily met, we immediately start wishing for more ! This chronic dissatisfaction is the second obsstacle that stands in the way of contentment.
This universe was not designed - with the comfort of human beings in mind ( !!?? Whose 'mind' ?).
It is almost immeasurably huge, and most of it is hostilely empty and cold. It is the setting for great violence, as when , occasionally, a star explodes, turning to ashes - everything within billions of miles ! The rare planet whose gravity field would not crush our bones is probably swimming in lethal gases ! Even planet Earth, which can be so idyllic and picturesque, is not to be taken for granted !
To survive on earth, men and women have had to struggle for millions of years , against ice, fire, floods, wild animals, and invisible micro-organisms that appear out of nowhere and snuff us out.
( Now , where does that leave Rhonda Byrne's " Law of Attraction" ? Which tries to 'sell' us the idea that, we can get all we want by ' just sending our wish to the Universe ( with capital U ) ? )
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" The universe is not hostile towards us, nor is it unfriendly. It is simply indifferent ! " J.H.Holmes.
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Whether or not we are happy, depends on our inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the greater foreces of the Universe !
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As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they soner or later face an increasingly nagging question : " is this all there is ? "
Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing, but for most people, behind it all , there is teh expectation that, after one grows up, things will get better. During the years of early adulthood, the future still looks promosing, the hope remains that , one's goals will be realised. But inevitably the bathroom mirror shows the first white hairs, and confirms the fact that , those extra pounds are not about to leave ; inevitably, eyesight begins to fail and mysterious pains to begin to shoot through the body. Like waiters in a restaurant, starrring to place breakfast settings on the surrouding tables while one is still having dinner, these intimations of mortality plainly communicate teh message ; " your time us UP, it's time to MOVE ON ! ! When this happens, few people are ready. " Wait a minute, this can't be happening to ME ! I haven't even begun to live. Where is all that money I was supposed to have earned ? Where are all good times I was going to have ? "
A feeling of having been cheated by Life, is an understandable consequence of this realization. From childhood, we have been conditioned to believe, that a benign fate would provide for us.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Optimal experience is thus, something that we make happen ! For a child, it could be placing with trembling fingers the last block on a tower she has built, higher than any she has built so far ; for a swimmer, it could be trying to best his own record ; for a violinist, mastering an intricate musical pasage. For each person, there are thousand of opportunities, challenges to expand ourselves.
Such experience are not necessarily pleasant at the time they occur. The swimmer's muscles might have ached during his most memorable race, his lungs might have felt like exploding, and he might have been dizzy with fatigue - yet, these could have been the best moments his life !
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
To achieve greater precision we developed with time, a new method for measuring the quality of subjective experience. This technique is called ' Experience Sampling Method'. This involves asking people to war an electronic paging device for a week and to write down how they feel and what they are thinking about when ever the pager signals.
( do net search on ' Experience Sampling Method' )
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Optimal state of inner experience is one in which there is ORDER in consciousness. This happens when psychic energy is invested in realistic goals, and when skills match with the opportunities for action !
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The primary reason it is so difficult to achieve happiness centers on the faact that, contrary to the myths mankind has developed to reassure itself, the universe was NOT created to answer OUR needs ! Frustration is deeply woven into the fabric of our Life. and when ever some of our needs are temporarily met, we immediately start wishing for more ! This chronic dissatisfaction is the second obsstacle that stands in the way of contentment.
This universe was not designed - with the comfort of human beings in mind ( !!?? Whose 'mind' ?).
It is almost immeasurably huge, and most of it is hostilely empty and cold. It is the setting for great violence, as when , occasionally, a star explodes, turning to ashes - everything within billions of miles ! The rare planet whose gravity field would not crush our bones is probably swimming in lethal gases ! Even planet Earth, which can be so idyllic and picturesque, is not to be taken for granted !
To survive on earth, men and women have had to struggle for millions of years , against ice, fire, floods, wild animals, and invisible micro-organisms that appear out of nowhere and snuff us out.
( Now , where does that leave Rhonda Byrne's " Law of Attraction" ? Which tries to 'sell' us the idea that, we can get all we want by ' just sending our wish to the Universe ( with capital U ) ? )
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
" The universe is not hostile towards us, nor is it unfriendly. It is simply indifferent ! " J.H.Holmes.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whether or not we are happy, depends on our inner harmony, not on the controls we are able to exert over the greater foreces of the Universe !
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As people move through life, passing from the hopeful ignorance of youth into sobering adulthood, they soner or later face an increasingly nagging question : " is this all there is ? "
Childhood can be painful, adolescence confusing, but for most people, behind it all , there is teh expectation that, after one grows up, things will get better. During the years of early adulthood, the future still looks promosing, the hope remains that , one's goals will be realised. But inevitably the bathroom mirror shows the first white hairs, and confirms the fact that , those extra pounds are not about to leave ; inevitably, eyesight begins to fail and mysterious pains to begin to shoot through the body. Like waiters in a restaurant, starrring to place breakfast settings on the surrouding tables while one is still having dinner, these intimations of mortality plainly communicate teh message ; " your time us UP, it's time to MOVE ON ! ! When this happens, few people are ready. " Wait a minute, this can't be happening to ME ! I haven't even begun to live. Where is all that money I was supposed to have earned ? Where are all good times I was going to have ? "
A feeling of having been cheated by Life, is an understandable consequence of this realization. From childhood, we have been conditioned to believe, that a benign fate would provide for us.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
posted by Borrowed Wisdom | 5:08 AM
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