When you are in a flow state or doing deep work, you have given yourself fully to what you are doing. You’re not checking email or texts or your social media feeds. You’re not browsing streaming services for new content. You’re not snagging the best deal on Amazon. You’re simply doing one thing, whether that is performing a piano concerto, writing a fine paragraph, helping your third-grader with her math, or getting the ignition timing properly set. You have, to borrow a phrase from Thomas Merton, forgotten yourself on purpose. Like Mary, you are truly and fully attentive to the one thing needful, rather than busy with the ten thousand things, like Martha. If approached with intention, such states can indeed be forms of prayer: deep, open attentiveness to the present moment, in which our own egos are emptied out so we have room to be filled with the divine.
—from the book Making Room: Soul-Deep Satisfaction through Simple Living
by Kyle Kramer
