The Journey to and from Flow

Erin Brajou

I study Liberal Arts and I took the Applied Imagination module in my third year. I wrote my SDA on the concept of the flow state. Exploring it through poetry and attempting to understand it was fascinating as I have experienced it writing too.

Project Summary

Imagination takes us someplace where we experience the sources of what inspires us to be creative. This space, also called the ‘flow state,’ is identified as transcending time and consciousness. Research has focused on flow as our source of creativity therefore exploring how to implement more flow-state conditions in our daily lives. I identified the dangers of increasing flow states, and focused on what and where the flow state is and how our consciousness translates the experience back into art. I argue that imagination is our journey to and from flow where we access individual authenticity otherwise inaccessible. I used Jung’s ‘collective unconscious’ as a theoretical framework to position the flow state as another layer distinct from the unconscious. I built on personal experience of flow through poetry writing, leading to the conclusion that creative productions from our imaginative journeys may never fully capture the authenticity of their abstract forms as experienced in the flow zone. The limits of our conscientisation prevent us from expressing the abstractedness of flow state experiences, thus ever knowing our true authenticity other than in a flow state. This leaves us wondering why self-quests for authenticity are so important if our own consciousness cannot comprehend it. It also raises the question of why we feel the need to understand everything about ourselves, making it difficult to leave parts of ourselves unknown. Finally, further research could explore whether we ever will obtain a perfect rendition of our flow experiences perhaps looking at other mediums than art.