We talk a lot about flow (Pravaha). What do we mean with that? Flow, abundance is the natural state of human beings, of the earth, of everything that lives. To feel flow (Pravaha) means letting yourself be carried by the flow of life, no longer struggling and letting yourself flow freely along the current of life (in stead of swimming against it) and it means easily having acces to an openness of mind and of consciousness and feeling and seeing the connection between all things. It means simply letting life do what it does naturally.
Easy, no? Well, in reality, this has become one of the most difficult things to do for human beings: letting go, without wanting to control and accepting that we can’t foresee what is going to happen. We all have a number of catalysts and obstacles of flow in life and to go back to abundance is a question of limiting the number of obstacles and introducing a maximum of catalysts of flow in your life.
Below you can find some examples to illustrate in what consists an obstacle or a catalyst of flow:
The obstacles of fluidity
An obstacle of fluidity is anything that blocks, limits, controls the flow of life. Everything that can be considered as a prohibition or an obligation. It’s everything that moves a subject away from it’s own truth, from it’s own being, to impose an exterior truth on the subject.
Examples:
Too much protocol/ rules: Rules (no matter if the intention of the rule was good) are often a truth that is being imposed upon one, or many, subject(s). Seldom does a rule come out of consensus (and out of a “democratic” process) and more often rules are the result of the truth of a minority (part of government, lobbies, board of direction, parents) that is being imposed upon a majority. The rule blocks flow and installs a mechanical way of doing things of which austerity can be the only outcome. Often the cause of this “neuroses” of rules is a lack of confidence and the energy of these rules is fear.
When we look at what is happening in Europe today, we see exactly that: Our lives and economy have completely lost their fluidity and we begin to feel austerity and lack. Our societies are more and more mechanical and to remedy this rigidity the European governments invents more laws and rules and restrictions, which is the exact opposite of what they should be doing to recover a certain flow.
Borders: physical and moral borders are always powerful energy barriers. It’s easy to detect at the borders of countries: there are long waiting lines to get in or out of a country, you have to fill out paperwork, you have to get a visa, you can’t transport what you wish to... they are all limitations that are imposed upon a majority of people and a pretty obvious waste of time.
The same thing also occurs when you separate yourself from society and when you start to form groups that are hermetically closed to anything that is “different”. The danger of groups like countryclubs, religions, nationalities, professional associations, is that the individual starts to confuse his identity with the group. The result being that he closes himself off from part of reality (voluntarily or involuntarily) and that he no longer has access to part of the information and inspiration that circulates in the world. He misses out: there are ideas he no longer can conceive, realities he no longer has access to...
Imbalance
Poverty-ugliness: Poverty often keeps people from attaining an elevated level of consciousness. Here’s an example of something we saw: We passed through a part of La Paz (more like a city within the city) that’s called El Alto. Living there is no gift, this town is of unimaginable ugliness. The reality of the people that live there can be summarized in 3 words: dust, pollution, dirt. If you’re born there, ugliness is all you see from a very young age. It becomes the reality you identify with and that you adopt as your truth. These people are no longer capable of seeing the beauty of life because they’re in survival mode. Ugliness is, in the majority of the cases, what they’ll create next: ugly buildings, ugly behavior... Their vision of themselves has been reduced to a fraction of what they could be. They don’t entirely respect themselves which makes them incapable of respecting anything outside themselves (animals, nature, other human beings). There is an intimate relationship between our self-esteem, the way we treat our body and ourselves and the way we treat the world outside ourselves.
Wealth – Boredom Too much wealth can lead to decadence if we feel the need to distinguish ourselves from other people with the possessions we own. Little by little we build our golden cage that disconnects us from reality and in the end from ourselves. This dynamic has been explained well in the book “Siddartha” by Herman Hesse: the wise man Siddartha gains wealth during his life time and little by little he slips into a lethargic state among his many possessions up till the point where his soul and spirit fall asleep. He flees from the emptiness of his life in entertainment, he seeks thrills in games to feel alive, when in reality he feels less and less.
This story is very significant to what is happening with the ultra-rich celebrities in the world who act liked bored children, trying to stimulate their 5 senses while their soul is slowly falling asleep.
Beliefs: We’re not talking about religion, political or cultural beliefs, but your personal belief system, your values and convictions. Whenever our beliefs become immovable, whenever they’re written in stone, we block reality and we don’t allow it to manifest fluidity. We prevent new things from entering our lives. When we look at life, nothing is “fixed”: we are born, we age, we gain and we lose weight, we move, people come in and out of our lives, we gain knowledge that adapts, that changes along the years... Life moves and evolves the whole time. The same way, truths and experiences evolve all the time.
Catalysts of fluidity & abundance
These are all things/experiences that bring you closer to who you are, that activate your feeling and your intuition. Everything that helps you feel and that allows you to build a bridge between your 5 senses and your feeling. Everything that opens your mind, your consciousness and that allows you to stay in movement, literally or figuratively.
Nature: Impossible to be in a beautiful natural environment or surrounded by an impressive scenery and to not feel anything. We are automatically amazed, we feel many things, we connect to our surroundings, to life and to ourselves. Often this connection is rare to the contemporary human being, we only feel it when we leave on holiday or when we take a break from our active lifestyles to refuel in nature. The more often we’re able to feel this natural state of being, the easier it will be for us to go back to fluidity in life.
Animals: Animals are still connected to their intuition, it’s their compass in life. An animal doesn’t cheat, it will show you clearly what he feels, which gives it a certain quality of innocence. Being close to an animal reassures us and allows us to break down the barriers we built around our natural way of being. The absence of judgment of the animal allows us to be completely ourselves when we’re with them and we start imitating the behaviour of the animal (for example very severe people that become soft in the presence of their pet or people that imitate monkeys in the zoo) and the other way around: animals feel our state of mind and will adapt their behaviour to it, if we are stressed the animal will show stressed behaviour: animals are at the same time a good indication of our mental state.
Art: Every work of art (painting, theatre, poetry, literature, music, movie...) that moves us, that touches us, that transports us, that makes us feel. Art has the possibility to reconnect us to ourselves, to make us feel, to reconnect us to feelings that we block out to be able to “function” (survive) in today’s society.
I was really moved by the Chagall exposition in Brussels. The artist was able to materialise his feelings, his emotions in his art. When travelling through the exposition, we travel back in time and we feel the war trauma, love, triumph, hope that the artist experienced.
Art functions as a powerful barometer of the collective as well through the thematics and the contents of the works that are produced. We can deduce if a civilisation is thriving or in decline from the place art occupies in the society. Art is one of the first things to lose a prominent place in society when it’s about to go extinct.
Beauty: Being surrounded by beautiful things and being in a beautiful environment fills us with beauty as well. You will feel more welcome in a place that is well kept and beautifully decorated. There’s nothing superficial about that, it shows you that the owner lovingly looks after the place, that he respects himself and that he respects you enough to receive you this way. There are no coincidences, the way we treat our body, our home is often a good indication of how we’re doing on the inside. It’s nice to build a house using beautiful materials, to put some lovely plants...and when we welcome someone we love we like to make something good to eat and decorate the table to surround our guest with beauty. There’s a logic behind this: when we surround ourselves with beauty, this becomes the reality we get used to, this becomes our truth and throughout our life we will look to reproduce and adapt our behaviour to the beauty we feel and see around us.
In a class of it’s own
Family and friends: In a class of one’s own because they can be both. When we’re able to sustain relationships with our loved ones in a spirit of transparency, of honesty, of respect and we accept 100% of who they are, then the exchange of words, of feelings, of emotions becomes a true catalyst of fluidity. There’s nothing that can stimulate the evolution of a human being like another human being: a real exchange in a spirit of openness can make us think, can teach us many things and can open our eyes to many things.
However: when we project our wishes, our expectations onto another person, when we put up restrictions, when we start “wanting” certain things from that person, we’re forcing our truth on someone else. We become an obstacle to the fluidity in someone else’s life. When we come to the realization that we’re doing this (mostly well intended) and it’s difficult for us to adapt our behaviour, the best thing for us to do is take a step back, create some distance and let the relationship breathe.
When you feel like someone close to you is limiting your freedom, keep in mind that they’re probably doing it with the best intentions. In the majority of cases it is not our purpose to slow down our loved ones in life and we’ve all been a catalyst and an obstacle to fluidity in someone’s life at some point.
However, it is important to keep following your own path, regardless of the opinions, objections, advice of your loved ones. The best way to make them change their minds is not to have endless discussions on the what and why of you choices, but to show them that you're happier following your heart.
Whatever you do: don’t focus on the obstacles, but strive to become the catalyst of fluidity in the lives of other people.
