Risky Rog -- I have been a "lurker" (terrible term, but...) in moq_discuss for some time, and this is my favorite note yet. Thank you! I haven't read MC's work, but I've read several other things that sound like it. One of my favorites (beyond ZAMM/Lila) is "The Inner Game of Tennis," which is a guide to "flow" in the tennis context, but which presents flow-generating techniques applicable to all aspects of life. It seems to me that I was into "flow" and the pursuit of dynamic quality much more when I was young -- say, in my late teens and early twenties. Now I'm 41, married, with two kids and a job about to expire next year. For a while I've been much more focused on static quality -- security/money, etc.. Intellectually, I know I should keep pursuing dynamic quality and "flow". But it seems like I'm drawn, increasingly, to the static -- wanting to make sure I have my financial and other basic foundations of life set, rather than going out and trying really different, new things. For one thing, it seems that I'm so busy working, paying bills, changing diapers and taking out the garbage, that there just isn't time to worry about trying radically new things. My sense is that this is a typical pattern. And while, of course, many older people are still doing new, exciting things (and we all probably should continue to seek such experiences), it seems that people tend to shift from a dynamic to a static focus as they age. One manifestation of this may be the apparent pattern of becoming more conservative politically as we get older. My questions for the forum are whether this shift in focus from dynamic to static quality as we age is 1) really a pattern and, if so, 2) good. Bruce King
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. MOQ Online Homepage - http://www.moq.org Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/ Unsubscribe - http://www.moq.org/md/index.html MD Queries - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
