Don’t Resist the River: Flow
- Eric Wieringa
- 3 minutes ago
- 6 min read
“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
— Thomas Merton
There are moments in the studio when I look up and realize the light has changed.
Not because I noticed it shifting, but because hours have passed without my awareness.
The self fades.
The brush keeps moving.
Time disappears.
Every now and then, someone drops by while I’m deep in this altered state of consciousness, and it takes me a moment to remember that I’m a real person with a name. They stare. I blink. I offer some reflexive apology as my brain slowly reboots.
This strange loss of time is often associated with artists, maybe because creative work harnesses attention in such a concentrated way. But the experience isn’t limited to the arts. Athletes, surgeons, musicians, climbers, writers, and dancers across cultures describe the same strange and familiar state.
It has a name.
It’s called flow.
Psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi defined flow as a state of total absorption in which action and awareness merge and self-consciousness disappears. In his book Flow, he identifies several conditions that tend to invite it: a balance between challenge and skill, clear goals paired with immediate feedback, and activities that are autotelic (done for their own sake rather than for an external reward).
Any one of these ideas could lead to a worthwhile discussion. But here, I want to focus on one particular aspect of flow that feels especially relevant for creative seekers:
The sensation of losing yourself.
The Self That Disappears
Csikszentmihalyi found that during flow, people become so absorbed in what they are doing that the boundaries of the self begin to dissolve. Time recedes. Self-consciousness diminishes, and for a while, the person and the activity seem to become one.
Painter Philip Guston described the experience from inside the studio:
“When you start working, everybody is in your studio—the past, your friends, your enemies, the art world, and, above all, your own ideas. But as you continue painting, they begin leaving one by one until you are completely alone. Then, if you’re lucky, even you leave.”
I love this quote because it makes flow feel lived rather than defined. It describes the gradual clearing of an inner room, the slow departure of comparison, judgment, expectation, and self-consciousness until only the work remains.
Flow isn’t always a surge of inspiration.
Sometimes it is an evacuation.
Self-doubt leaves first. After all, it’s difficult to doubt something you are already doing.
Rumination follows, drifting away while repeating old stories to an empty room.
Anxiety lingers a little longer, pacing the floor before realizing there is nothing left to manage.
Pride storms out with its arms crossed, unwilling to remain where no one is watching.
Fear holds on the longest, pausing at the door to remind you that it will be nearby, just in case.
These protective voices are part of us, but they are not the whole of us. Fighting them only creates another war within ourselves. Instead, we can acknowledge them with compassion, thank them for trying to protect us, and let them step aside.
What disappears in flow is not the deepest self, but the carefully managed identity we have mistaken for it.
This may be why flow can feel sacred, even to people who don’t use religious language. It is not merely an experience of productivity, but of participation. Not achievement, but communion. The self that measures its worth through outcomes grows silent, perception sharpens, and wonder returns.
For a moment, we awaken to a reality that has been here all along. We stop observing life from a distance and become part of it again. Time loosens its hold, and we enter an inner kingdom that cannot be earned, defended, or forced, only received.
In these moments, we drink from a river of living water that wells up from within us.
The Self That Is Found
After flow, something subtle but profound occurs.
We feel more alive.
Csikszentmihalyi observed that people often emerge from flow with a strengthened sense of self, not a weakened one. The ego returns less defensive, and more proportionate; no longer inflated by success or devastated by criticism.
Flow leaves behind a residue: a refined confidence, a settled clarity, and the memory of having belonged to something larger than ourselves. We return softer around the edges, more grounded, and less reactive.
This is the paradox at the heart of flow: by briefly releasing the identity we work so hard to maintain, we return more fully ourselves.
The self shaped by attention learns how to listen, how to remain present, and how to surrender without disappearing. It can return to the work more freely, not as an escape from life, but as a more integrated way of inhabiting it.
For You, The Artist
Flow has many practical benefits. Research connects it with improved learning, cognition, creativity, and problem-solving.
But for you, the artist, its deepest value goes beyond the practical.
It’s ontological.
It changes not only what you make, but how you experience your own being.
When you stay with the work long enough, the rapids begin to soften into a current. Effort becomes intuition. Control releases into trust. And if you are willing to be carried, you may find yourself entering something larger than the task at hand, something that feels, for a moment, like eternity.
When it is over, you don’t simply have a finished piece.
You have briefly remembered who you are.
So, if you’re struggling to find the current,
hear this:
You may not be stuck because you lack discipline.
It's likely you are stuck because the false-self is paddling.
You are not blocked because your ideas are bad or impossible.
You’re blocked because you’re swimming upstream.
Flow does not ask you to disappear forever. It asks the constructed self, the part of you that performs, protects, and controls, to stand down long enough for something deeper to be found: by the work, by the moment, by the unseen undertow already moving beneath your effort.
There is a wisdom here that predates psychology, one artists have encountered in the studio long before they had language for it:
“Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it.”
Flow offers a glimpse of what this might look like in practice.
The more desperately we try to preserve our image, protect our competence, or prove our worth, the more life seems to slip through our fingers. But when we risk letting go, when we give ourselves completely to something worthy of our attention, we discover a deeper and truer life waiting beneath the one we have been trying so hard to manage.
Flow happens when we stop resisting the current of life and allow it to carry us where we need to go.
Stop fighting the river.
let go.
Let it wash away what you no longer need, and return you to who you have always been.
Try This:
Choose something you want to make for the simple joy of making it. It should challenge you without reaching too far beyond your current abilities.
Set aside an uninterrupted stretch of time. ideally an hour or more. Silence distractions, gather what you need, and begin.
Concentrate fully on what is happening and let the work give you immediate feedback.
Move naturally between making, observing, and responding. Let each decision suggest the next.
Stay with the process long enough to become fully immersed.
When you notice your attention returning to the clock, step away.
When you complete this exercise, notice what happened. Did time move differently? Did your actions become more intuitive? Did your awareness of yourself begin to fade?
Flow may come, or it may not. The invitation is simply to create the conditions, enter the work, and stay long enough to see whether the current finds you.
I’d love to hear what you experienced. Leave a comment or send me a message and tell me what helped you enter the current, or what kept pulling you back to shore.
If you’re feeling blocked and want more guidance on finding your creative flow, The Painted Path offers personalized mentorship to help you quiet the noise, move through resistance, and return to the work.