I was going to respond with this on the nirvana via gardening thread, but fits here too, the whole idea of the "flow" experience. (Cziksentmihalyi?? Weird name.) Doing something challenging, and succeeding, and getting immediate feedback on that success. For example, doing an easy puzzle is not a flow experience. Taking a difficult test is not a flow experience until you know how you did (if you know you did well, that is different, and can be a flow experience.)
I have experienced that in both art (every brush stroke going just where it should, a too-rare experience) and precisely the sort of situation you describe, when you explain something and lo and behold, it is clear! Metaphors are often a lovely way to do that. But I think that the euphoria part is the struggle, the challenge, you see their cloudy, confused eyes, you try this tactic, no, you try the other, no, and then aha! They get it! It is obvious they get it! That is flow for the explainer.
For the explainee, I think it IS a brain thing, maybe even synapses, taking an existing one and stretching it out a bit, attaching it to something else, creating pathways, letting the neurons go zooming on their merry way.
I remember a classical lesson about how the mechanics for causing low angle "glide faults" happen. these are faults that , like grandfather mountain, can take a stretch of land aND SLIDE IT 100 miles or more over top the original land surface.
No one could come up with a conceptual model and had no idea about the math.
so two young geologists were drnking beer. They kept laying the empties on this old slate top lab table that had a slight pitch on either side of the sink to allow water to flow to the drain.
Well , many beers resulted in many more empties . Some of them were not fully empty so some beer spilled and formed a wet sheet atop the table. Some of the beer cans began to slide toward the sink.
This is how w e came up with the concept to always crush the can against your head to keep them from falling into the sink.
No, not really
Actually, the two geologists noted that cans that were upside down with the hole on the table top would become slightly heated and rise on the water layer. The concept of gravity gliding atop a water filled formation was conceived.
When these guys sobered up, they wrote a paper and then came up with the math and a proposal to do filed work to find the saturated rock formation on which the gravity glide fault was propogated.
It was said that Akfred Wegener came up with the idea of continental drift by watching soup boil. Wegner was a very lonely guy who rarely got laid , so his evenings were spent watching soup. I cant attest to the veracity of Wegners lack of a social life because i just made that up, so if its not true , it ought to be.
heeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheeheehee . . .
Can't beat the image of ol' Archimedes runnin' nekkid through the street shouting "Eureka," an' everyone scratchin' their heads, 'cause vacuum cleaners hadn't been invented yet, and they hadn't a clue what he was on about . . .
Now - THAT was an epiphany! Bertrand Russell is said to have had a similar one, when he suddenly realised that the ontologocal argument for the existence of god is valid (it isn't, so he soon came down) - the same thing happened to me with the ontological argument, too - AND I was in the bath!
Soze - I think the aha is there for the metaphorizor, too - when just the right one comes to mind - or, in the therapy example, synthesises itself in the room, as you struggle with what a client has given you - doubtless for the teacher, too?
Soz - I just had a thought. It was you, I believe, who talked about "chunking" of ideas on a belief thread? You know, how a whole world view becomes chunked in our minds, as a convenience, so we do not need to thik of it anew each time, or somesuch.
Perhaps the thrill and entrancement is the unchunking - and the synthesising of a whole new world view? Seismic plates indeed.
Where would the world have been without alcohol, she asks digressively...
Yes, I was going on and on about chunking for a while. (I just love the concept! It makes sense!) The unchunking idea is interesting.
And certainly, aha is for the metaphorizer too.
I love the use of metaphor, and honestly feel, I tend to think and speak in metaphor. It may sound absurd but when learning something new, I often have to turn it around in my own mind. I've had that aha! moment while teaching something to someone, or telling a story, it becomes clearer in the re-telling, in the description. Or most often, as Set said, while reading a book, an explanation - a comparisson, a humerous anecdot will have caused my mind to whirl, to race through the possiblities and it doesn't end 'til I've worked out the details.
I think some metaphors fit, and fit is satisfying, clarifying.
Yes making an artwork that works is almost sexually satisfying, and even is within the process as you can see it, er, come together.
This may make no sense re what anyone else said as I am suddenly really tired and plan to get back to this topic tomorrow. Just couldn't not post though, so I skipped everyone's thoughts and typed out these..
Ha! Read something, quite by accident, about "aha" experiences. It said we produce lots of sudden theta brainwaves when we have one of 'em.
Off to look up more about theta waves....
Hmmmmmm...
"Theta Waves ( 3.5 hz to 7.0 hz )
This is the frequency range associated with a hypnotic, deeply relaxed states of consciousness. Lucid Dreams are more prone to occur in theta. The mind is in a twilight state and is prone to free association resulting in amazing mental images."
"Theta Waves
Theta waves are slow high amplitude waves. There are only 4 - 7 cycles (Hz) per second, hence they are described as slow. They are present during sleep. Brain waves that are slower than 3 Hz are called Delta waves and they are found in coma.
Theta waves are abnormal in awake adults. They are implicated in anxiety, and in neurological conditions such as epilepsy, traumatic brain injury, and Attention Deficit Disorders (ADD/ ADHD)."
Saw a piece on the TV about a guy with one or another (very rare) epileptic condition who elected not to treat it because he found the experiences so impossibly beautiful. He had the full beatific vision -- seeing everything as connected (metaphor!), everything bound together, and if only everybody else could just see this everything would be fine.
I think (with absolutely no basis) that we're hardwired to see these connections, that our minds are always seeking to look for order in chaos and for similarity in diversity.
Yes indeedy.
I think of my daughter doing a puzzle when I think of metaphors (a metaphor for metaphors...) There is this idea, and we try to fit it in that puzzle gap. No. Does it fit in this one? No. Maybe THIS one... aha! It fits.
It seems like a matter of finding the right nodules in the right number and right placement to overlay an existing idea and thereby lend the existant chunking to the new idea.
Ooooooh! I had a vision of everything connected - it was sort of like an impossibly beautiful and complex Persian carpet, unrolling over a sort of rod thing - the piece of the carpet moving over the rod was the "present" - but the whole pattern of past and future was there, but no individual "tuft" could really see the interconnections, except the ones closest to them, or the patterns . It was very lovely and comforting. Happened when I was first reading Moby Dick, which I found quite mind-blowing - literally, it seems!
I gather it is a very common sort of vision to have - though the epileptic's aura sounds far more stable!
