RISKY SHARES HIS FAVORITE MOQ IMPLEMENTATION MANUAL
The central theme of Lila is not redefining reality into the four levels, or
exploring the DQ/sq interrelationship, or slaying errant platypi. Nope, the
MOQ is primarily a prescription to embrace everyday experience. The
following Rich Pretti quote captures the essence of the MOQ as well as
anything I have read in this forum::
"We need to see rather than look,
Feel rather than touch,
Savour rather than taste,
Listen rather than hear."
Mihaly Csiikszentmihalyi (hereafter known as MC for obvious reasons) wrote a
book titled "Flow -- The Psychology of Optimal Experience" . MC is a
psychologist who broke ranks from his peers and chose to study happiness
rather than problems and disorders. After 25 years and thousands of
subjects, MC captured his prescriptions for living in optimal experience.
Incredibly, apparently without knowing any of Pirsig's metaphysics or
philosophy, MC wrote what reads to me as an implementation manual for the
pursuit of DQ.
Like Pirsig, MC found happiness isn't correlated with such static values as
status, wealth, knowledge, pleasure or liesure. It is correlated with
'Flow'. This is the term people worldwide tend to give to describe the state
of intense awareness. It is "the state in which people are so involved in an
activity or an experience that nothing else seems to matter."
MC describes the usual components of Flow as control, concentration, clear
goals and feedback, worry-free awareness, selflessness and a loss of any
sense of time. You all know the feeling -- the flow you get in when lost in
a challenging sport or a great book or a task that you can just accomplish.
He then discusses how to transform your entire life into optimal experience.
Though he warns, " It is a circuitous route that begins with achieving
control over the contents of our consciousness.".... "It is by being fully
involved in every detail of our lives, whether good or bad, that we find
happiness, not by looking for it directly."
MC shows that control of consciousness and attention is a skill that people
can learn. They can restructure activities, and even their entire life to
get flow. "When experience is intrinsically rewarding," MC writes, "life is
justified in the present, instead of being held hostage to a hypothetical
future gain." I am probably not doing justice to MC's work, but the tone of
experience that MC prescribes is remarkably similar to the Dynamic Experience
that Pirsig's Narrator embraces at the end of both novels.
But the similarities go way beyond this focus on Direct Experience. As in
the MOQ, Flow is defined via 'events' that balance between DQ and sq, or
between 'experience' and 'interpretation' as MC calls them. Without the
MOQ's terminology, MC does a remarkable job of showing how we need to avoid
stale static patterns in life and continuously pursue DQ.
"It is this dynamic feature that explains why flow
activities lead to growth and discovery. One
cannot enjoy doing the same thing at the same
level for long. We grow either bored or frustrated;
and then the desire to enjoy ourselves again
pushes us to stretch our skills, or to discover
new opportunities for using them."
But MC also emphasizes the static side of Flow, its "ability to make order
out of chaos". He stresses that "All forms of mental flow depend on memory,
either directly or indirectly." Quoting Bunuel, MC writes "Life without
memory is no life at all." Throughout Flow, MC stresses the interplay
between Dynamic advance and static latching. Between experience and memory.
Between creation and preservation.
MC highlights the central difficulty in the journey toward mystical
awareness:
"The kind of knowledge -- or wisdom -- one needs
for emancipating consciousness is not cumulative.
It cannot be condensed into a formula; it cannot be
memorized and then routinely applied...it must be
earned through trial and error experience by each
individual , generation after generation."
In addition it must be reformulated every time the cultural contexts change
or "the path to freedom gets overgrown by brambles of meaningless mumbo
jumbo. Ritual form wins over substance, and the seeker is back where he
started." Sound familiar? Every page of Flow has similarly synchronous
concepts with the MOQ.
Without going into excessive detail, the book gives three necessary
ingredients for Flow in life.
The first is Unselfconsciousness. This parallels the death of the self in
Lila that RMP equates with pursuit of DQ. MC explains that when we are "in
Flow", our concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically we emerge
stronger, or more enriched than ever after the experience. MC writes; "Loss
of self consciousness does not involve a loss of self, and certainly not a
loss of consciousness, but rather, only a loss of consciousness of the self."
(As a side note, John Beasely and others occasionally attack the MOQ for
its loneliness. I interpret the MOQ in the above light and see it as the
antithesis of loneliness. Is there any state more self-conscious than
loneliness?.)
The second part of the recipe for flow is Focused Attention. Flow results
from attention to Direct Experience. The entire book is loaded with examples
of common people that have been able to transform their lives by focusing on
the awareness of daily experience. Like Pirsig, they do it without becoming
stoners or ascetic monks. (Again a side note ..... the path to mystical
awareness is not somewhere else. It is right here, right now....Just touch
it. See? I am sure none of us have reached the end of the road, assuming
there is one, but all of us have begun the journey.)
The third ingredient for a life of Flow is to constantly search for new
solutions. "Write the script for your actions out of personal experience and
choice." In MOQ terms, MC encourages everyone to pursue higher quality
patterns by focusing on DQ.
In summary, I find that Flow and Lila can be used as companion books in our
quest for Dynamic Quality. I often have one or the other at my bedside for
insight and inspiration (along with the Kama Sutra ....... just kidding). I
recommend it as one of the handful of 'must reads' for the serious Quality
Metaphysician.
Anyone else out there read it?
Any comments or questions by those that might be interested?
Any other 'must reads' anyone wanna share?
Risky Rog
PS -- The fact that so many unrelated fields of study stumble upon concepts
in synchronicity with the MOQ reinforces the remakable quality of Pirsig's
achievement.
PPs -- Before sending this I wanted to warn that there are many dangerous
traps in the pursuit of Flow/DQ that we need to be aware of that are covered
in MC's writings. Nazi's and alcoholics have their own perverse versions of
Flow.
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