Lately I’ve heard references to “go with the flow” everywhere from in commercials to politics, where I recently heard it used synonymously with the word apathy—or worse, giving in to manipulation.
Years ago, when I began my martial arts training, my sensei noticed that my movements were stiff as a scarecrow’s.He came over to me and softly said, “Be like water.” It seemed that so much of what I had learned, thought, and imitated previously told me to muscle life, to make it do what I wanted it to do.So, as a result, I had to re-learn how to do many things—even simple things like the way I breathed and the way I moved my body.
Be like water became one of my most memorable training anthems.My sensei was trying to teach me to be fluid, that is:to go with the flow.
Water makes up more than 70% of the Earth’s surface.In many world traditions, water has been used as a symbol of purity, power, birth, and re-birth.In fact, the Tao Te Ching—Taoist philosophical text and underlying philosophy for many martial arts systems as well as other holistic disciplines—uses water as its climactic metaphor for how to live:Just be like water. These traditions hold that all you need to do to find your focus, whether on-the-fly or in a moment of reflection, is in the phrase, be like water.The depth in this simplicity is terrific.Just ask:What are the qualities of water?Which of these qualities applies to the situation I am in?
When you embody the characteristics of water you are going with the flow. You fill every moment with living, you force nothing, you experience, you interrelate.
Ideally, in going with the flow you strive to always be like water—remembering that water is gentle, and yet it is powerful.It can be still or in motion.It can absorb.It can go over, under, around, and through things.It can dissolve things, float them, or float atop them.It can become hot, cold, heavy, light, invisible, and solid—it can even vaporize.It is formless, and it can adapt to any container.
Recently I had a discussion with a friend and colleague of mine who lives in the same woodlands of New York State as do my family and I.We were talking cells—stem cells, his expertise.As he explains it, our first cells can become anything they want, from an eye to a heart valve. They know what to do by paying attention to everything that is going on around them.They are, in effect, in constant communication with each other, activating certain information and suppressing other.
Going with the flow isn’t about hanging back while life happens around you.
My colleague gives a dramatic example:When cells sustain genetic damage, they perform the ultimate sacrifice for the “overall good” by suiciding rather than passing on this faulty DNA to other cells through cellular division. Consider all the systems of the body and we observe the ultimate level of teamwork with many different cell types taking on different roles and taking on many different functions for the greater good of the whole being.
To be sure, going with the flow is imbedded deep in our nature. It’s about interrelating with life at the highest possible level and putting your attention on those things that fuel your deepest Self in a world that is ever-changing. Martial arts teach that the water-mind is boundless.It can’t be nailed down as long as you can maintain it.
(Image from NASA)
