During these rare moments, we enter a state of mind—a state of being—that Weil calls “extreme attention” and psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow.” When in a state of flow, you shed any semblance of self-consciousness, and experience an altered perception of time and a heightened sense of reality. Everything seems more real than real. Unlike so much in life, flow is “a condition so rewarding as to be sought out for its own sake,” says Csikszentmihalyi. People immersed in flow are not self-absorbed, for there is no self to be absorbed. No musician, only music. No dancer, only
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