In the first year after my abrupt awakening, when people asked me to define this crazy enlightenment shift, I had my answer all wrapped up with a pretty bow.

It was sleek and simple, the perfect true response: “It’s the death of the self you thought you were, the knowing of what you really are and as a result, the end of suffering.”

That is more or less still true. Suffering created by believing my thoughts, for instance, has largely been replaced by what I called “The Death of the Narrator.” This simply means that the inner critic and nattering commentator has been dealt a fatal blow.

Add to this mental shift, the new reality of emotional fluidity. Emotions are so mobile that even the difficult feelings are welcome to come and go as they please. Anger, frustration, sadness and fear wander through the house of awareness, mingle a bit, and then leave.

Why? Because post awakening, these reactive emotional states are not offered up a buffet of regrets and angst to feast on. Emotional reactions feed off the past and have little purchase in a now-centric consciousness.

The New Sub Clause

Now, deep in the forest of altered-state living, I’ve got a new addition to the description of awakening. (And let’s face it, a real awakening, at least at the start, feels like a cross between a brain-damaging stroke and a psychedelic trip–yep, we’re not in Kansas anymore Toto).

Five years into this awakening gig my pithy response to the ‘what is enlightenment?’ question has a magical tail-end.

“It’s the death of the self you thought you were, the knowing of what you really are, and as a result the end of suffering. And it is the eventual emergence of flow magic, a high synchronicity state of grace.”

It’s kind of like living in a lucid dream. You suddenly get that the whole play is yours to act out while at the same time you are the script writer and director.

Yet this is a far cry from the “I control reality” manifestation literature, which feeds the ego a five course meal of “I am master of my destiny” and caters to the inner child’s endless wants and needs.

Flow Magic is a sweet spot between surrender to life as it unfolds and participating full on at the same time. There IS agency. For those enlightened folks stuck in the witness vastness, zen-sick with no-self, this post will not make sense right now. (I suggest you just give your enlightenment time to ripen and come back to read this another day.)

The Agency of Consciousness

Physicist John Wheeler was famous and somewhat notorious for his assertion that the universe is indeed a participation game. “We are participants in bringing into being not only the near and here, but the far away and long ago.”

Wheeler created a thought experiment called a delayed choice experiment that eventually was first tested in a real lab in 1984. The results suggested that that nothing happens without human observation  (or you could say, observers’ consciousness is required to bring the universe into existence.)

While much debate exists still on how to interpret an experiment that suggests reality is pliable and depends on the participation of consciousness, the fact is an awakened state becomes an on-going delayed choice experiment. You live this experiment daily.

You begin to notice that your point of view is everything. You begin to observe that your life is playing out without you and with you, and the midline between full agency and zero agency, it that Flow Magic state of grace.

You begin to remember the future. You notice there is barely a delay between the wish and the wish-fullfilled when those wishes are borne from your True Self. Physicist Amit Goswami calls this your Quantum Self and the process of true wishes flowing into being, Quantum Creativity.

I am not saying that if I wish to be a multi-millionaire or a famous rockstar, that wish will unfold tomorrow or ever. Wishes like that come from the pleasure-seeking and pain-avoiding mind.

There is a different well from which you can draw your bucket of wishes.

If wishes drawn from the well of being are allowed to rise into conscious awareness unobstructed, then these wishes come to manifest in 3-D reality with astounding speed and grace.

And this speedy grace requires the signal to noise ratio to be super low. A solid awakening helps reduce the noise when the narrator dies and the personality’s emotional complex calms enough to let that signal through without distortion.

This is what the manifestation literature is pointing at—but with the wrong finger. It is not the finger of your ego-mind that will readily create outcomes with ease and flow. Rather, it is the finger of God, your very own divine awareness that will spark into being reality configurations that truly uplift you and the collective—and that come into being somewhat effortlessly.

Some Awakened Teachers Agree 

In his book, The End of Your World, spiritual teacher Adyashanti writes that when you get out of the drivers seat, life “can drive itself so much easier—it can flow in ways you never imagined. Life becomes almost magical. The illusion of the “me” is no longer in the way. Life begins to flow.”

Osho goes further, to define this flow magic state as one of total relaxation: “Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand ~ relax. If you relax it comes, if you relax it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.”

And Nisargadatta Maharaj wrote, “Whatever happens, happens to you by you, through you; you are the creator, enjoyer and destroyer of all you perceive.”

The Catch

But let’s face it. If we are reality creators of this magnitude post awakening, why don’t we have non-stop miracles and endless perfect flow?

Because there are still obstructions.

When this Flow Magic part of awakening begins to emerge in your life, there can be surprising resistance. The remnants of your personality will oppose this flow if there are any scripts still running in the background that have traction and run counter to the direction your divine intelligence wishes to flow.

How does this interference look? Like a lot of static disrupting that clear signal. Here’s an example from my own life.

About a  year ago I was feeling financially anxious and so decided to build an online business based on this fear-impulse of not enough money. As I began the business planning, nothing flowed. Everything was obstructed. Yet I persisted until I hit a trajectory correcting wall three months into my mis-direction.

The remnant of my fictional self that was driving the bus for those three months was able to turn up the radio full blast and drown out the signal of my awareness. In this cessation of flow and ease, you would think I’d notice I’d veered way off track. But the remnant part of my personality overshadowed my awareness to the point that the off-track journey required a concussive head injury to knock me back to my senses.(I don’t suggest this as the best way to re-establish the signal!)

Next post, I’m going to go deeper into the 4 Most Common Ways Your Flow Magic Signal Gets Blocked.

Until then, Awareness is here, flowing.

PS: Amazing image, Psychedelic Buddha by artist Roberlan.

PPS: Did you know I created a free twenty minute guided meditation called Enter the Synchronicity Portal?  Over 500 people have tried it and loved the flow magic it unleashed in their lives. Curious? Click HERE to for your free mp3 download.