There is something in western psychology known as Flow State, wich came out in a previous thread.

I've experienced something like that in my life, as most of us did. I remember that,after having red that thread, I got in something like that while pealing a grapefruit. Then, today Ihad to do a long, boring manual task, and I realized at one point that it kind of happened again. However, this gave me the possibility to vipassanize it, and that's, basically, the origin of this post.

What I noticed is that, basically, while I am in a state like that, conscious intentions seems to be missing. In other words, the sensations that usually would seem to imply a subject making volitional acts during the process where not there.

Now, defining the flow state like that, we can concieve the usual human functioning and the pure flow state as two extremes of a continuum: so, for example, let's say that you need to use a shred to dry a floor-flood (there is an uncanny lack of imagination here, since that's whatI had to do today); usually, there would be intentions all over theplace, basically arising everytime I need to move a part of my body; on the other hand, there is the perfect flow state, where the action goes on by itself; ["by itself" here is not meant in an insight sense, it just mean that there are not sensations building up intentions arising]. In between, there is what I'm trying to do since a few hours, wich is trying to live closer and closer to that.

Another thing that I noticed is that, when the state is quite deep, the facoulty of knowing what's going on is not there as well; meaning, thoose sensations that, from an insight point of view, seems to imply an entity knowing what's going on are not there.

Now, obviously these sensations arise and pass away like everything else, wich also mean that, in a way or another, we spend most of our time in a flux state, 'cause thoose sensations arenot with us all the time. So, an interesting thing thatI'm trying to do is to incline themind toward thoose moment, and then hoping that they will happen by virtue of the resolution, without me knowing that, 'cause if that would happen that woundn't be it by definition.

Another interesting thing is that both sensations implying knowing and intentions are very much related with the third eye, so, an inibition of the flow of energies toward that chakra spot seem to be a charateristic of that state.

Another thing that seems to be inherent in this state is what I'll call "Singlemindedness"; my definition of it is something like this: the more the whole of one's intentional activity is aimed at one purpose, the more there is singlemindedness; this obviously is somewhat problematic; however in my teo-hours-long-still-going-on experiment, I noticed thatin some reasonably flowing state of being there would be thoughts, wich obviously arise in a way thatis dependent upon some kind of intentional activity, soit might be useful in this context to assume the existence of intentions underneath the theshold of awareness. The more these intentions not arising in awareness, are focused, the more there is singlemindedness.

So, these three factors, -absence ofconscious intentions, absence of the knowing of what's going on and singlemindedness- might be used to define how much we are close to an hipothetical perfect state of flow.

[disclaimer: not saying that this is the final word on the topic, just that seems to me to be a good start for trying to define it]

Others considerations:
-being relaxed is compulsory, because if there are tensions or general unplaesent things going on there will also be the intention to do something about it, and the levels of singlemindedness will decrease
-so, in a sense, it has to be plaesent by it's own definition; however, I'm going to guess that the more the experience is relaxed and plaesent, the more the odds are that flow will happen
-in relation to the list of symptoms of flow quoted by Simon T in the previous thread, one doesn't really match with my take, wich is "a sense of personal control or agency over the situation or activity"; the others do, though things like "merging of action and awareness" seems to be not well defined; present moment awareness is usually not well defined in psychology, but it might just be that they mean what happens by default when thoughts are not there, wich might be what they mean by "loss of self reflective consiousness", wich is also a word that might mean the same of what I mean with "absence of knowing", and the fact that "the experience is intrisecally rewarding" and "alterated subjectibe experience of time" are consequence of the general plaesentness of the thing, wich as I mentioned above has to be there for intentions not to be there
-the more complex a task is, the harder it is to make it flowing, because of many intentions going on at once that are, basically, the very definition of "complex task"

PS: this post has been written in a mildly-flowing state; I'm not going to read it again, I'm totally scared at reading it again, 'cause most of the time I wasn't really knowing what I was writing, so please forgive me for every horror and nonsense that might be there...