Recapturing FLOW

John Vincent Shrader
8 min readNov 22, 2022
Photo by Dustin Humes on Unsplash

We are meant to Flow

We literally have infinity flowing through us. Nothing less than flow states will allow this energy to move uninhibited through our being. However, actual flow requires boundaries to really awaken. Flow can only happen when the parameters are set. But we must be ready to break all the rules and just let it fly. And let the dust settle later.

Rules and parameters, and technical assists in the age of distraction help bring back the primordial beast of original mind creativity. I wrote this article on an app called ‘Flow State’ that deletes all of your writing if you stop touching the keyboard for more than 5 seconds. Of course, it went through a round of rough editing, but let’s be honest, this is an effort to break through into spontaneous and unhindered, though hopefully not toooo unhinged, writing.

To unleash the floodgates from the sea of torrential potential that lies in the base of our spine. The great Kundalini, the dancing serpent, the eternally intelligent Shakti. This is the latent energy the Yogis say lie sleeping in the base of our spine. Shakti is the life force that is constantly dancing everywhere around us. She is referred to as the feminine principle; as the emanation of the eternally still and changeless Masculine principle of the ground of being.

Shakti has a prowess of potential that we are all eternally endowed with. Can creativity ever be limited if the entire universe constantly creates and recreates itself in every nanosecond?

Activation of Spiritual Energy is Refining Base Energy.

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To be born in this age is to activate the potential for spiritual evolution. A matter of refining, redistributing and transferring, sublimating, and transmuting the coarse elements’ base energy into the fine-tuned network of neural connections to make something completely new. We are the most ‘evolved’ species on the planet because of our complexity. The evolution of the neocortex and its subtle and complex relationship to the rest of the nervous system gives us an altitude of thought, reflection, and creative insight to see the world ever fresh. Does this make sense? Evolution is reorganizing mud and shaping clay. Moulding matter. But what is it that does the shaping? Some higher and refined sense has a hidden vision of what could be.

And what are we to create?

The New Energy Emerges from the Jungle of Doubt

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It has to be brand-spanking new.

We get bored easily.

Consumer economies know this.

Big tech knows this.

You know this.

And when we don’t create something new to fill the void of boredom, the demons of distraction lunge for the jugular.

Something strikingly and appallingly new.

So much that it has never been seen before.

An entirely new and subtle world that is distilled – one that bleeds through the relics of the mind of the editor and critic and socially afraid to fail ego – to become a new world creation. When we don’t ride the wave of light-speed creative energy, then we are prey. Distraction and doubt are like black panthers that lie in the path, hissing with mane upturned and fangs shining through the shadows. Our hair stands on end, and we falter, our heart skips a beat, we sweat, and the fear entangles us so much that our vision is no longer clear. Cortisol courses through our veins, and the mantra ‘oh shit’ is queued to repeat.

But YOU, Mighty warrior, have been prepared for this.

Like a highly trained zen master, the ability to strike through all doubt and answer with fearless impunity. The mighty jungle houses the fiercest beasts and deadly vipers bloodthirsty for stupidity. At the same time, the palm trees sway in a peaceful and sublime indifference. What is the answer to the great question?

KATZ!!!

Shouts the old man, clad in black and brown robes, sitting cross-legged in the old wooden hut. His piercing eyes unrelenting in their gaze, cutting like a Japanese steel knife through the veil of confusion and self-doubt, seething with the loving and fierce immediacy of the NOW.

THE SACRED NOW.

FUCK!!!! When will we FEEl it!!

So much that it shatters your cobwebs of thinking and the comfortable sanctuary of your false ego. So much that your entire being is illumined in a transcendent revelation of the immensity and boundless potential of your true heart.

And then move from it with joy and ease and trust?

THE NOW IS THE UNDEFINABLE DIMENSION OF GOD, WHERE THERE IS NO ESCAPE!!!!

How can one deny this???

How can one define this???

ANNICA, or the law of perpetual change, is the eternal truth. No matter what, all things are changing, passing and flowing away into an endless abyss, only to return again in another form at another time.

And so.

Frozen in fear as the panther stares your down.

You have to ACT.

And act from that raw and primal place of pure motivation.

With its trillions of unnamable galaxies, the entire universe is coursing through your veins, and it KNOWS. And this tremendous hidden knowing starts to flow. Smiles at the Jaguar, hops over the viper, grabs a loose vine and swings across the crocodile-infested river to have a beer at the jungle bar and write a haiku.

Death by striking snake

Cosmic wisdom guides the way

Free from fear drink beer

Time is the convention that keeps us on teleological train tracks

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

Ok, my haiku skills are a bit rusty, but maybe you had a giggle. Now, back on track. You see how this works. Moving forward is inevitable as long as we are embodied beings on planet earth, bound by the laws of time and space. The background is unchanging, forever still and luminous and full. Our bodies and minds, though, are bound to the time that we all constantly co-create.

And time is only a perceptional quirk in the end. Something that man creates to give a sense of continuity, get to class on time, and open the doughnut shop before the first train departs. Gliding along the tracks, smooth, fast, whoosh, the train silently surges into a foggy future. The other train passes, going in the opposite direction. Hundreds of faces, mostly dark, mostly sad, mostly tired and not ready for another day, sit with downcast eyes. Grey and black suits, black leather shoes, a certain heaviness, a palpable discontent. A feeling of nowhere to go and deep resignation to the overwhelming apprehensiveness of it all. What will happen next? We don’t think about it, but somehow this anxiety-riddled lo-fi soundtrack is playing in the back of our minds.

The sheer inescapability of the status quo, of the iron cage of mental projection and social obligations and financial considerations that man has created over the thousands of years of oppression and calls for freedom and shallow ideas of liberty and democracy that serve only as a thin veneer to satiate the man who is not thirsty enough to look beyond to what really supports the perpetuation of the slavery of our energy. Did you follow that line? Or should I write more like a fifth grader? This is an interactive article that is defying rules by the way, so leave your comments below ;)

Back on the train…

Why is our heart not free? Why is happiness not a measure of a nation’s success, of a man’s success? What standard are we living for if it is all a sacrifice of our own well-being? Are we to believe that our personal sacrifices of the contentment and joy-fulfilling work of our soul somehow serve to make others happy??

Let me rephrase. We sacrifice our own joy and happiness for the MAN. Doing work we primarily find unfulfilling. Is this the way to make others happy? To contribute to society by working hard but also working heartlessly?

Or are we all tacitly supporting a system that systematically supports the oppression of our true inner spark of creativity and the unleashing of the inner, secret, hidden gift that lies in the core of our soul?

The sacred pact that we, as feint, not yet incarnated, beings swore to fulfil before descending down to this dense plane of existence. Ostensibly for our spiritual evolution?? What, then, can we truly and fully contribute to relieving of suffering on planet earth? Of our fellow man and all the animals and swathes of nature and ocean that are dying because of our un-thought through actions and policies and addiction to consumption caused.

(BTW, dear reader, Grammarly says this is a ‘ possibly wordy sentence’.. To which I say, well, of course… But did you feel it had more impact by condensing our predicament into one sentence?)

How is our life structured, and how do our actions, or the policies we secretly support, perpetuate the suffering of other beings, of the very environment that birthed us and supports us and whose entire existence is, in reality, nothing but an extension of.

How blind can we be to stop honouring the very source of abundance that feeds us, clothes us, and shelters us. Gaia is genuinely our Mother in the most evident and most practical sense, as well as the most profound and mysterious esoteric sense. We owe it to ourselves, our innate intelligence that we seem to be so proud of as a species, to awaken to the obvious, the scientific, the rational and simultaneously to the mysterious intuition and secret sensibility that lie in the core of our hearts.

CONCLUSION

The point is we are being called to awaken. No one or no-thing is calling us. The call is coming from within. We know that it affects everything else and connects to everything else, including the creation of a new earth that is born of happiness and contentment, wild creativity, and a higher order of harmony with the natural world.

This awakening, though, must be born from the depths of our soul, from the primordial brightness and intelligence that sees things fresh and new and from that clear seeing yearns to create. In surrendering to this creativity, we are injecting something of light and wholeness into the mundane and stale world of repetition and mechanical movement.

When we create from this space, we are subsuming the old, digesting all that doesn’t serve and all that seeks to pull us down to a lower plane of distraction and doubt. In doing so, we become superhuman, and our source of strength comes from a new and untainted place deep within and is unaffected by the environment of noise and mediocrity. From this place, we see more clearly, move with more joy and light, and hopefully, spark a little bit of that same flame in others.

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John Vincent Shrader

John is a yogi, visionary and author residing in India. He has dedicated his life to the eternal search for truth .