Flow – Perfect Moments

I used to love running. I *really* loved running. Before illness limited what I could do physically, I ran every day and competed in road and fell races.

One of the best feelings I’ve ever had in life is the feeling of ‘flow’ while running. When it was going really well, and I was very fit, I’d be running at a good pace for long periods of time, but with an ecstatic feeling of effortlessness, of harmoniousness. I miss that feeling.

And when I think back to a ‘perfect moment’ that moment was while running. What happened was seemingly inconsequential and trivial – but I was totally 'in the zone'.

I was living in Portugal and out running. I ran towards a football pitch with a game in progress and a very high fence to stop balls going onto the road. I was running well and ‘flowing’ already. Someone kicked a ball up high and it was clearly going to go over the fence.

I could see from some way off that my direction of travel and the bottom of the ball’s trajectory would coincide.

As my right arm swung back the football looped straight into it and I caught it. The arm then swung forward – part of the natural running motion, no course correction at all – and propelled the ball back over the high fence (which normally would have been impossible for me).

It was almost as if the ball threw itself with me at the bottom of the ball's penduluming parabolas.

Yes, a trivial event (probably a “you had to be there”) but for a fairly clumsy person the action I performed was effortless, seemed like slow motion, and perfect – as near to poetry in motion as I’ve ever been! Afterwards I wondered how I’d managed it. And that feeling of elation remains a vivid memory.

A single moment when everything converged on perfection. 

Quite a few years later – I‘m starting to recapture the feeling of effortless flow.

I’ve been practicing meditation now for a year and half – every day for an hour.

I’ve recently reached a stage where – when it’s going well – everything is effortless. I can stay with the meditation object for the whole hour without losing focus, but there’s no effort.

In fact it’s not like I’m meditating - but I’m being meditated. When that happens there’s a feeling of bliss and being 'in the zone'

I suppose an ideal would be for all of life to be like that.

Rather that it being as if we’re wading up stream – life a force in opposition to be battled.

It’d be like turning round, diving into the stream and flowing with it

becoming it.

...and what if every moment were a perfect moment.

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