The Power of Now

[Griff]

I'm thinking on the page here so feel free to correct...


A lot of work has been done on that. We're talking about at least two different states. If I remember correctly, Tolle is focused more on the narrative in our heads. We don't suppress that voice, we acknowledge it, accept it, and stop playing with it. It's that obsessive play with unproductive thoughts where pain resides. I'd call it a meditative state that we carry into the active world. It is still raining but we don't obsess about it.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/release...0319210631.htm

A new study suggests that nondirective meditation yields more marked changes in electrical brain wave activity associated with wakeful, relaxed attention than just resting without any specific mental technique.

The other state is flow, which is where Toad is when he is laying down that sweet bass line. This is a fully activated task focused brain.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/b...and-creativity

Technically, flow is defined as an “optimal state of consciousness where we feel our best and perform our best.” It’s also a strange state of consciousness. In flow, concentration becomes so laser-focused that everything else falls away. Action and awareness merge. Our sense of self and our sense of self consciousness completely disappear. Time dilates—meaning it slows down (like the freeze frame of a car crash) or speeds up (and five hours pass by in five minutes). And throughout, all aspects of performance are incredibly heightened—and that includes creative performance.

How this all works comes down to neurobiology. Flow is the product of profound changes in standard brain function. In the state, our brainwaves move from the fast-moving beta wave of normal waking consciousness down to the far slower borderline between alpha and theta waves. Alpha is associated with day-dreaming mode—when we can slip from thought to thought without much internal resistance. Theta, meanwhile, only shows up during REM or just before we fall asleep, in that hypnogogic gap where ideas combine in truly radical ways. Since creativity is always recombinatory—the product of novel information bumping into old thoughts to create something startling new—being able to slip between thoughts quickly and combine them wildly enhances creativity at a very fundamental level.