spontaneous processing & flow:

"But, I must hastily add, we shouldn’t confuse the spontaneous processing mode with the flow experience solely because both are unconscious. ... flow is a third type of creativity mode that emanates, unlike the deliberate and spontaneous modes, from the implicit system. The spontaneous creativity mode must be considered as part of the explicit system. It can draw on the omnidirectional knowledge representation of the explicit system, use a scaffold to a goal representation projected into the hypothetical future, and, most importantly, represent its final product in working memory in the form of an insight. The flow mode, which emanates from the simpler, concrete-operational implicit system can do none of that."

Arne Dietrich

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"Flow emanates from the implicit system, the deliberate and spontaneous modes emanate from the explicit system."

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"The spontaneous creativity mode and the experience of flow are similar in that they both operate in the mind’s unconscious hinterland. But this is also where the similarities end. We shouldn’t forget that neuroscientists still know little of the goings-on in there, but several considerations should give us much confidence to presuppose that the spontaneous mode stems from the explicit system. Much of the power of the deliberate mode is certainly taken out, but one thing we know for certain is that scaffolding takes place during incubation. The scaffold itself doesn’t make it to consciousness; it falls away, like a Wittgensteinian ladder, before the aha moment occurs. But the feeling of discontinuity, the fact that the solution is several steps removed from the problem constellation, leaves no doubt of a scaffolding process."