Flow before fire... in Paris
Excerpt from Flow Without the F*ckery
If you’re having an existential crisis, Paris is the perfect place to be. The cafes on the Left Bank have been a mecca for philosophers throughout the decades. Writers and artists would discuss the nature of human freedom, barely seeing each other through the thick fog of Gauloise cigarettes and the hallucinating effects of cheap absinthe.
Paris is called the City of Love. Of course it’s aesthetically beautiful, from the cobbled streets of Montmartre to the glorious architecture that lines the Seine, but this title has more to do with its people. Parisians are flirtatious, seductive, and not afraid to follow their passions.
The French weren’t influenced by the puritans in the same way that the British and Americans were. They elevated matters of the heart, explaining away indiscretions with a shrug and a sigh of “Ah… l’amour”. They celebrated passion, so were more likely to overlook crimes of passion.
There’s a famous photograph of Mitterand’s wife, mistress, and illegitimate daughter grieving together at his funeral. Love and passion override social norms in this city. Contrast this to the moral charade between Bill and Hilary Clinton and the cruel witch hunt of Monica Lewinsky.
If a state of Flow is achieved through passion, then it’s no wonder that Paris produced so many writers, artists, poets, fashion designers, and Michelin-starred chefs.
An open heart allows Flow to flood into our being, which is why falling in love can produce a Flow state. We feel magical, like the best version of ourselves. Synchronicities abound. Our sense of self diminishes as we merge into the other. Time stands still. We’re full of energy. Our internal chemistry radiates pure joy. We’re enthusiastic in the original sense of its meaning “en theos” or “with God”.
An open heart that is ruled by passion is unpredictable. Yes, it may produce a work of art, but fully expressing the desires of the heart can result in rejection and heartbreak. It can also cause us to hurt the people we love, which leaves us consumed by guilt and regret.
Guilt is one of the stickiest emotions. Emotions are supposed to move through us. They’re energy, and that’s what energy is designed to do. If they get stuck, it means we haven’t allowed them all the way in. And why would we?
Guilt is so abhorrent to us that we don’t want to fully experience it… that feeling of being caught with your hand in the cookie jar; revealed to be the opposite of the person you pretended to be; unmasked and suddenly naked, like Eve in the Garden, cowering before an angry God, desperately trying to find a fig leaf to hide behind.
I have always resisted the feeling of guilt. Whenever it visits, I feel it for a little while, then bat it away with mitigating circumstances. But because it never makes it all the way through, the guilt remains, as a constant reminder, blocking spontaneous expression and making it impossible to reclaim my original state of innocence.
This turns Flow from a creative force into an energy loop… feel good, remember the guilt, feel bad, self-punish via criticism and demands to be a better human, feel resentful, rebel via some form of self-indulgence (procrastination, social media, food), feel good for a short time then feel even more guilt, feel really bad, increase the volume on the self-attack etc etc. It’s a nasty vortex of energy to be trapped in.
I made my way to Notre Dame Cathedral.
As a child, I loved the drama of Catholicism… heroic martyrs, majestic cathedrals, and ancient rituals. On Saturday there was Confession, with its turmoil of emotions… shame that the priest would recognise your voice, fear of saying things out loud that had previously only lived in your head, followed by the elation of having a spotless, sin-free soul.
On Sunday there was Mass. Praying in Latin – a language I didn’t understand – allowed me to fall into the rhythm of the words, rather than their meaning, which made me feel otherworldly and slightly blissed out.
Unfortunately, once I developed an intellect, I could no longer believe in the story of a God who, although he had no female partner, did have a son… whose mother was a virgin. It all seemed suspiciously misogynistic.
Contemporary religious services, conducted in modern buildings without gothic arches, creepy crypts, or booming organs, just didn’t do it for me. When church leaders picked up guitars and sang songs in English, I noticed how sentimental and clichéd the lyrics were. I realised I was in love with the energy, not the rules of religion.
It was the energy I was longing for as I entered Notre Dame and took a seat in a pew near the back.
A group of nuns in black and white habits caught my eye and I was immediately transported back to convent school. Nuns seem to have mastered stillness and silence. They look like the penguins in nature documentaries, who stand stoically in the cold, for endless amounts of time, as they protect a solitary egg. Having chosen their monastic life, these nuns had no eggs to protect, but perhaps they protected a secret map with the coordinates to a place where no guilt could ever find you.
I wanted that map.
I needed to make sense of why I’d made so many mistakes in my life. If only there was something tangible that I could blame things on… like a brain tumour. I imagined the doctor holding up the X-ray “Ah… see that black spot there. That’s the thing that made you go crazy. We can remove that.”
But I knew otherwise. That black spot couldn’t be removed. It was the curse of the pirate who’d been found guilty. It came from the energy world… it couldn’t be taken away by the surgical instruments of the physical one.
I hated Flow now. Hated my passionate heart.
The smell of frankincense reached my nostrils and I turned, as a young priest carrying an incense holder, swished past me. He reminded me of Neo in the Matrix. I was immediately consumed with the idea of buying a long black trench coat and made a mental note to go looking in the Galleries Lafayette after I’d said my prayers.
The frankincense made me drift. I wondered what made an oil an essential oil… some kind of elevation to a higher rank. Perhaps olives have been separated from their essential nature. Their oil exists now purely to serve the demands of Focaccia.
Perhaps we’re all detached from our essential nature… all slaves to whatever we give our power to.
A crashing sound pulled me back into the present moment, as the church organist struck a power chord. I thought he was going to launch into Phantom of the Opera, which would have entirely matched my dark mood, but it turned out to be Bach, so I narrowed my focus on a stained-glass window of Joan of Arc. Joan had a passion for God and was burned at the stake for daring to suggest that he spoke directly to her. No doubt she had been in Flow. How else could she have defeated the entire English army… as a mere teenager.
And then it happened… The sweet release as my mind lost control, and I let go. Suddenly untethered, I could feel all the different parts of me dissolve – into the sound coming from the choir loft; into the cobalt blue of the stained glass; into the stones that had absorbed countless prayers and secrets; into the pillars that had supported those who had whispered them in the dark.
I was free.
It only lasted a few moments, before thoughts and feelings came rushing back in. I was stiff, cold, and lonely. I wanted to get back to the freedom… wanted to summon it back to me by sheer force of will. But it was gone, and I became aware of another part of me, who insisted I had a rather pressing engagement at Galleries Lafayette.