Seeking the Simurgh in a Flooded World: A Sufi Reading of Flow

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There’s a cat.

There’s no dialogue.

There are no humans.

That’s how Flow begins; quietly, like a breath held underwater. A world submerged, not just in water, but in silence, memory, and what’s left when the Anthropocene folds in on itself. The cat doesn’t meow for help. It doesn’t explain. It moves: hesitant, curious, sometimes afraid. We follow.

And perhaps, like me, you start seeing yourself in the cat. Not in some mystical reincarnation way, but in the way it stares at a collapsing world and keeps moving forward. Alone. Until it isn’t.

Flight Time, Liminal Time

It’s not the first time a film has gripped me midair. Something about that altitude - between departure and arrival, held in suspension - tunes the soul to a different frequency.

Last time, it was Mother, Couch and Lost Lake Confessions during a layover that stirred meditations on mortality and the tragic absurdity of family (as I wrote in “Under the Weight of Absurdity”). This time, it was Flow: silent, surreal, more furred than fraught, that nudged me inward.

I’m beginning to think these moments are less about the movies themselves, and more about the clarity afforded by liminal spaces. The films just act as catalysts: mirrors held up in cabins at 35,000 feet, where ego thins, time warps, and stories settle deeper than they might on solid ground.

Wu Wei: Be Like Water – The Way of Flow

The movie moved with a kind of stillness-in-motion that reminded me of Wu Wei,  a Taoist principle often translated as “effortless action” or, more viscerally, “being like water.”

It felt strangely personal etched into my own skin as a quiet reminder, “Be like water. Flexible yet forceful. Yielding yet persistent.”

The cat doesn’t force its journey; neither do the others. They pause, adapt, flow; responding to what is, rather than fighting for what was. In this way, Flow isn't just about surviving a world undone. It is about embodying it. Letting go of control. Trusting movement, stillness, and something deeper to carry you.

I explored this further in my piece “The Power of Wu Wei”, where I reflected on how yielding, paradoxically, can be a form of strength, especially in turbulent times.

The Uncarved Block: Wonder Without Why

Watching Flow, I was reminded of another Taoist symbol close to my heart: the uncarved block or pu. It represents the childlike state of being before the world teaches judgment, fear, or control. The cat doesn’t analyze the floodwaters. It doesn’t seek meaning in the sea creature’s form. It simply is: curious, open, attuned.

In my piece “The Power of the Uncarved Block”, I reflected on this need to return to childlike wonder - not to be naive, but to be receptive. The cat embodies this. As do the lemur’s wide eyes, the capybara’s stillness, the bird’s calm grace. Together, they move not with strategy, but with trust. Flow’s world, strange and sublime, is navigated best not with intellect, but with presence.

A Wordless World Where Animals Speak in Truth

Unlike the animated creatures we’re used to, overly chatty and anthropomorphic, Flow’s animals behave as animals might if left to their own devices. A Labrador, a lemur, a capybara, and eventually, a secretary bird. They don't fall into character tropes. They negotiate space, test boundaries, sleep when tired, flee when threatened, chase when challenged.

In the absence of humans, the world doesn't fall apart - it reshapes. There’s realism in their behavior, but the setting? That’s where the surreal creeps in. Floating furniture, gravity-defying flights, portals of light, and a sea creature whose origin we never quite grasp. Is it a whale? A mutated leviathan? Or just the shadow of everything unresolved?

Climate Grief in a Fantasy Cloak

Beneath its dreamy surface, Flow whispers of climate grief. Not through slogans or speeches, but through flooded cities, half-buried spires, and once-bustling spaces now eerily still. And in that stillness, something sacred stirs. It's hard not to read this as elegy: for Earth, for us. But also, for something more ephemeral: our belief that we – us humans - were central to the story.

Sufism, Attar, and the Cat That Keeps Walking

About halfway through the film, when the secretary bird appears and lifts the cat into an otherworldly sky, I felt a shift. This wasn’t just survival; it was ascent. The dreamlike sequences that follow - fleeting, luminous, impossible - feel like moments of miʿrāj, the Sufi notion of spiritual ascension.

It reminded me viscerally of The Conference of the Birds. In Attar’s tale, a group of birds, led by the hoopoe, journeys through seven valleys in search of the Simurgh, a mythical being. After trials and ego-shedding, thirty birds remain. They arrive… and see their own reflections. Simurgh is Si (thirty) Murgh (birds).

There is no Great Other. The divine is within.

Flow ends like that too. The cat and its companions stare into a pond: four survivors. No treasure. No destination. Just… reflection. The mythical is not out there. It’s right here. In stillness. In communion. In looking at the self, not with pride or fear, but recognition.

Seen through a Sufi lens, the film becomes a quiet parable of Fanāʾ (dissolution of ego), Baqāʾ (enduring self), and Tawḥīd (unity with all that lives). Even the wordless bonds between the animals shimmer with a kind of Ishq - a love that is devotional without needing definition.

It’s not the Ishq of longing ballads or grand proclamations, but the kind found in presence: staying close without clinging, witnessing without demanding. The cat doesn’t look back for gratitude. The lemur doesn’t speak. The bird doesn’t boast. This is Ishq as silent fidelity: echoing the Sufi understanding of love not as possession, but as dissolution.

Like the birds who found the Simurgh in themselves, the cat’s journey isn’t toward something, but into something: a state where love, survival, and surrender are indistinguishable. 

Equally present is Tawakkul - the trust that movement itself is guided, even when its destination is unseen. The animals do not clutch at certainty; they walk, float, and fly with a quiet reliance that what is needed will unfold.

A Quiet Surrender

There is no triumph in Flow. No battle won. No world saved.

And yet, I left the film lighter. Perhaps because it doesn’t ask us to fix. It asks us to witness.

And somewhere between witnessing and surrender, the sacred emerges.

Not with grand gestures, but in the glint of reflected fur, the lilt of bird wings, the slow retreat of floodwaters, and a cat that no longer walks alone.

 from Rambling of an Itinernt and Conference of the Birds


In acknowledgment: Co-piloted with GenAI, nudged by memory, meaning, and 35,000 feet of stillness.


References

1.    Mian A. (May 2022). https://tribune.com.pk/story/2356726/the-power-of-wu-wei

2.    Mian A. (June 2022). https://tribune.com.pk/story/2361088/the-power-of-the-uncarved-block-and-the-need-to-be-childlike-now-more-than-ever

3.    Mian A. (December 2024). https://tribune.com.pk/story/2512963/under-the-weight-of-absurdity

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