ecomZera Blog

In peak performance we move toward the 'zone', which can be broken into twelve dimensions:

1. Flow
   • [golfer Bobby Jones:] I had to make no special effort to do anything. (p. 86, ITZ)
   • He is no longer wasting effort fighting and restraining himself; muscles are no longer fighting muscles. (Maslow, TPB, p. 105-6)
2. Creativity
   • We are not creatures, products of Space and Time. . . . We are all being newly born within Space and Time, second by second. (p. 300, Tarthang Tulku, TSK)
3. Accomplishment
   • The person in the peak-experiences usually feels himself to be at the peak of his powers, using all his capacities at the best and fullest. . . . He is at his best . . . . This is not only felt subjectively but can be seen by the observer. (pp. 105-6, TPB)
   • The more eager we are to make a diagnosis and a plan of action, the less helpful do we become. The more eager we are to cure, the longer it takes. (pp. 184, TPB)
4. Objective Space
   • [golfer Jack Fleck:] As I looked at the putt, the hole looked as big as a wash tub. (p. 38, In the Zone, Murphy)
   • Everything is made of emptiness and form is condensed emptiness. (Einstein)
5. Mental Space
   • He is more able to fuse with the world, with what was formerly not-self, e.g., the lovers come closer to forming a unit rather than two people, . . . the creator becomes one with his work being created, . . . the appreciator becomes the music . . . . (p. 105, TPB)
   • We completely transcend a self-centered orientation and become fully with everyone and everything else. Locations and attitudes, problems and confusions, no longer bind us. (p. 113-114, TSK)
6. Identity
   • [When judo is practiced properly,] You will become one with him. You and your opponent will no longer be two bodies separated physically from each other but a single entity . . . . (p. 32, ITZ)
   • [auto racer Jimmy Clark:] The car happens to be under me and I'm controlling it, but it's as much a part of me as I am of it. (p. 32, ITZ)
7. Locus of Knowing
   • We can develop a mode of 'seeing' which is not limited to a particular position or 'point of view' at all. (p. 27, TSK)
8. Content of Knowing
   • It is not simply a content of knowledge, for it involves no sense of a subject-object duality. (p. 219, TSK)
   • [Soccer player Pelé:] Intuitively, at any instant, he seemed to know the position of all the other players on the field, and to sense just what each man was going to do next. (p. 38, ITZ)
   • It is not a meaning....It is unlearned or nonlearned learnedness. (p. 253, TSK)
9. Well-being
   • [climber Rob Schultheis:] I felt . . . bliss, a joy beyond comprehension . . . a feeling that all ills were healed, everything was all right, always had been, really, and always would be. There was nothing wanting in all of creation. (p. 124, ITZ)
10. Need and Fulfillment
    • Fulfillment is available within all situations, thoughts, and emotions, whether convention labels them as 'positive' or 'negative'. (p. 271, TSK)
    • We participate in an uncontrived intimacy. We are also absolutely self-sufficient in a nonegoistic sense. We can draw nourishment and energy directly from our own being, directly from Space and Time. (p. 287, TSK)
11. Feeling of Time
    • [football player John Brodie:] Time seems to slow way down . . . . It seems as if I had all the time in the world . . . and yet I know the defensive line is coming at me just as fast as ever. (p. 42, ITZ)
    • [Tom Seaver:] As Rod Gaspar's front foot stretched out and touched home plate, in the fraction of a second before I leaped out of the dugout . . . my whole baseball life flashed in front of me . . . . (p. 47, ITZ)
    • There is a common experience in Tai Chi . . . . Awareness of the passage of time completely stops. (p. 47, ITZ)
    • Without confirming division, it [time] allows for the conceptual separation into past and present and future. (p. 162, DTS)
12. Feeling of Reality
    • [Charles Lindbergh:] All sense of substance leaves. There's no longer weight to my body, no longer hardness to the stick. The feeling of flesh is gone. (p. 116, ITZ)
    • [runner Ian Jackson:] My body seemed insubstantial like some ethereal vehicle of awareness. (p. 135, ITZ)

How can these ideas about peak experience be applied to the workplace?

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