What's The Zone Of Peak Performance? [applied TSK] 2009.07.24 Steve Randall: Rich Murray 2010.08.15

[Rich Murray]

What's The Zone Of Peak Performance? [applied TSK] 2009.07.24 Steve Randall:
Rich Murray 2010.08.15

http://stevrandal.wordpress.com/2009/07/24/whats-the-zone-of-peak-performance/

[ Steve Randall ]
What's The Zone Of Peak Performance?
Posted on July 24, 2009.
Filed under:
Peak Experience/Performance,Time, Space, and Knowledge
[ excerpts ]

...Although these statements are useful descriptions of peak experience,
they are basically just a restatement of the definition of peak experience
as "the best moments of the human being." From these generalizations it's
not clear what these people's mental states were, nor how they differed from
ordinary experience.

Because of this lack of understanding, for most of us, the zone is a nearly
magical state of supernormal performance that, at best, we might 'fall into',
almost accidentally. Precisely what this state is, and how we might foster
its more regular appearance, is largely a mystery....

...Here's a report from a Japanese swordsman: "When the identity is
realized, I as swordsman see no opponent confronting me . . . . I seem to
transform myself into the opponent, and every movement he makes as well as
every thought he conceives are felt as if they were all my own . . . . (ITZ,
p. 130)   This swordsman in the zone feels identified with his opponent,
losing his ordinary identity.  With my 'normal' sense of myself, I feel like
an independent individual who is separate from other people, rather than
identified in some way; and an opponent usually seems even more separate,
more 'different' from 'me'.  Perhaps even more remarkable, the swordsman
seems aware of "the other's experience,"-- which usually is private,
internal, or unknown -- as if his own.

A judo teaching manual has a similar statement about changes in our normal
identity: "When judo is practiced properly, 'there will be no curtain to
separate you from your opponent. 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 . . . .'" (ITZ, p. 32)    Maslow reported that during
peak experience, a person "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)  In the zone
there is a kind of merging or fusion or unity.

...From these statements we see that several strictures, or somewhat stable
structural features of experience are not part of these zone experiences:
the feeling of being a continuously existing individual separate and
distinct from other individuals (this stricture is often called self, or
identity), the sense of being here rather than there (the here-there
duality), the feeling of having a private inside realm of experience
contrasted with a public area where we coexist (inside-outside), and the
feeling of distance or separation between physically separate bodies (felt
distance).   In the latter stricture, we're not talking about physical
distance or separation, but the feeling of separation, which can change
considerably, leading us to say we feel closer or more distant from another.

Now we can return to the statement by weightlifter Yuri Vlasov: "Everything
seems clearer and whiter than ever before, as if great spotlights had been
turned on." (ITZ, p. 119) Let's compare this to Tarthang Tulku's description
of what happened with his 'knowledge' as he discovered a new vision of
reality: "The conventional limitation that confines observation to a single
'point of view' situated in space and time had less hold. Knowledge itself
seemed to be opening, like a light that had previously been obscured by now
was radiating from all directions. This knowledge was . . . Less a
possession to be obtained than a luminous, transparent 'attribute' of
experience and mental activity." (Tarthang Tulku, Love of Knowledge, LOK,
1987, p. xlv) The latter statement contrasts our usual way of knowing and
observing things from a single point-of-view (the 'knower' pole of the
knower-known stricture), with a more open way of knowing or being aware
involving a multidimensional or -- perhaps equivalently -- nondimensional
luminosity. This luminosity or unpositioned knowing could be what
weightlifter Vlasov said was "clearer and whiter than ever before."...
_______________________________________________


Rich Murray, MA
Boston University Graduate School 1967 psychology,
BS MIT 1964, history and physics,
1943 Otowi Road, Santa Fe, New Mexico 87505
505-501-2298 [hidden email]

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