Life is all about happiness, meaning, and fulfillment. But how do we achieve this optimal state of being? Decades of research on thousands of creative individuals have led to the discovery that they all experience the same feeling when they’re engaged in their art form – a sense of joy and immersion. This prompted further studies to understand how the creative process evokes universal human conditions of optimal satisfaction and fulfillment that continue even after the act of creating is over.

The leading researcher, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, used this evidence to develop a theory called flow. Flow theory provides a scientific framework for understanding the positive states of consciousness that are experienced through acts of creative immersion, and identifies the conditions necessary to engage in these optimal experiences. According to flow theory, the optimal experience of life is not in passive leisure or outside of our control, but something that we make happen. By gaining control and creating order in our inner experience, we can engage in flow states and improve our quality of life.

Interestingly, this concept of flow states is not just for artists and athletes. Thanks to the frameworks identified in flow theory, every person has the capacity to improve their life quality by directing their attention into immersive creative activities. Through this immersion, there is a total loss of self-consciousness, linear time, and the need to be in control of efforted action. These flow experiences are where we discover ourselves and our source of optimal happiness.

Long before flow was coined, ancient Daoist philosophy identified this state of profound concentration called Wu Wei. Wu Wei can be called the state of effortless action, similar to flow and the feeling of “being in the zone.” Ancient Daoists suggested that by shutting down the conscious mind and mental perception, the spirit flowed into action. Similar to flow, there is a total loss of self-consciousness and time through the absorption into an activity.

Modern science is just beginning to understand the power of spontaneity and the importance of shutting down the conscious mind. The field of cognitive science called Embodied Cognition says that the way that we think is inextricably connected with our embodiment; we think in images and metaphors, we think with our bodily knowledge. We are not just intellect. We are integrated mind-body systems.

All of this scientific evidence with its increasing focus on the multifaceted functions of the embodied mind-body wisdom is simply studying what every artist has always intuitively known. Our greatest human capacity is not in the limited knowledge of the brain and is not produced by the exertion of effort to achieve a planned outcome. Our greatest capacity is in our ability to shift away from our consciousness.

As every artist also knows, the act of creating cannot be forced, coaxed, or achieved. It is not to make a pretty picture or draw the object we see in front of us. As humans we have the ability to use our consciousness; first to know our true Self as a means to go beyond.

True creativity is a connection, a communion with a source greater than the individual artist. This source is what guides the artist’s media; her brush, her knife, her body, her spirit. On this divine creative adventure, obstacles on the path are welcomed as opportunities for redirection. Imagine living life this way.

Perhaps AI will catch up soon, but for now it’s solely our human superpower to use our consciousness to tap into the infinite wisdom of the collective unconscious. Those of us who are willing to go on the adventure inward can get beyond this reality, beyond the suffering cycle of life and death and achieve limitless freedom. Suffering is connected to the nature of life; we are born, we exist, we die. Beyond this pattern bound to natural law is boundlessness that flows freely. Is-ness beyond I-ness. When we learn to tap into it we find beauty in the struggle along the way; both in the process of making art and in the process of living life.

Making Art is your most accessible training ground to find your true Self and to go beyond the attachment to Self. Freedom from the cycle of suffering and contentment within this life will not be far away.

Liberation awaits.