SHIFTING INTO THE "TAO (WAY) OF PLAY"

SHIFTING INTO THE TAO OF PLAY


Making Joy, Vitality, Originality & Connection A Way of Life

by Marcia Witrogen-Singer, M.S.W.



"Play is the pattern that connects all living creatures. . .The trust of play is a natural wisdom." –.Fred O. Donaldson



International play specialist Fred Donaldson teaches in his remarkable book, Playing By Heart: The Vision and Practice of Belonging, that play is a "universal language." It cuts across humanity's ethnic, social and gender differences, continues across species, melts time and space considerations, and may be ultimately the intergalactic dance. The question arises, why then do so few of us remember how to play authentically? How did we forget to take our playing seriously, both as joyful enterprise, and as a subject for study and research?



Like most of you, I spent most of my adult life aware that something was often missing from my sense of fulfillment. No matter how intelligent or accomplished I knew myself to be, or how diligently I tried to be spiritual, compassionate and responsible, I spent long years in a depression, a dark night of the soul that became a cauldron on fire during my menopausal years. Hindsight reveals these years to have been initiatory ones, bringing me home at last to my soul skin, my deep heart, and the consciousness of the state of being called "play," a state too seldom entered into, and if entered, often by happenstance rather than conscious choosing My body of work called The Tao of Play strives to bridge the gap.



Naturalist author Diane Ackerman in Deep Play remarks that play is "fundamental to evolution." Likewise, in Going on Being Dr. Mark Epstein asserts that play, like dreaming, may seem "superfluous," yet we cannot live without it. Says Epstein, "Like breathing and dreaming, play serves a homeostatic function. . . to help bring things internally into balance emotionally, how we "breathe air into our emotions and how we find out what we are feeling." Researchers on physical health and healing, too speak of the value of play states, noting that the laughter often associated with play states has a beneficial effect on our immune systems, releasing endorphins. Playful recreation is related to reducing stress and its potential ravages, potentially increasing fuller breath and vital energy, along with calmer nerves.



While health research yields good reasons to indulge in playing, perhaps the most well understood benefits are attributed to its relationship to creativity. Clarissa Pinkola Estes, noted Jungian analyst (Women Who Run With The Wolves, Creative Fire) has stated that play is a "central core of creative life," an "instinct" without which no creative life unfolds. She tells us that when this instinct is injured, violent tendencies are "normalized," addictive and compulsive behaviors substituted, and our "wildish" selves stunted.



Apparently "play" is not mere distraction from responsibilities, or solely the domain of small children. Authentic play at all stages of life is far more important than we had previously assumed. My own study reveals that the ‘deadly serious’ states of being that we humans experience as ‘normal’ are themselves distractions ---departures from the deeply soulful and highly spirited states of Being to which many of us aspire. Indeed, during play, while we are having fun, en”joy”ing ourselves, wholly, innocently engaged in the moment, we’re the essence of Ram Dass-ian "being here now with full access to Eckhart Tolle’s "power of now." During genuine ‘re-creation-al’ activity, thoroughly ‘be-mused,’ we iterate the creative legacy of the gods, the inspired “lila”energy states told of in ancient Sanscrit texts; Lila and Divine Play are one and the same.



The Tao of Play then, teaches that anything that prevents us from being wholly present, from embodying our inspirations, from utterly trusting the “play of the moment" removes us from experiencing our divine origins. “Not play” means not experiencing connection—within or without. It is a state of pain. The Tao of Play points to the work of consciousness ahead of us, the challenge of creating true "commune-ity," of befriending life itself. Says Donaldson in another of my favorite play quotes, "The magic circle of life includes everyone [and everything], making us face whatever we have to give up to do that."



Plato once argued, "Life must be lived as play." As a rule, we don't, yet before us stretches the opportunity to rediscover what it means to be at play: with ourselves, our psyches, with each other, with the wind, the sky, the moon, with Universal Spirit. From the vast stillness at the center of All That Is, in the heart of pure Loving Awareness, play exists as All That Stirs within that still void, and that dances out of it. Play awaits us as the altar-ed’ state of divine interaction between and among those persons, creatures, beings and elements that know no fear.



Fear may suppress our urge to play. Anger rails at being stuck without the life-giving, joyous properties that playing provides us, while grief cries out for joy’s reinstatement. Will we as a species, in our "conscious" communities create an intention then, to engage play more consistently, more consciously? Or will we continue to think of playing as a brief reward for ---or respite from ---the so-called real, hard-and-therefore- important stuff of life?



The invitation exists for you and I to create new openings to delight in the relationship of play, to experience play as tao, to make it a way of life. We’re invited to rediscover play as the ultimate relationship, the expression of both a free heart and mind ---a fearless engagement with Now. In play there is "anam cara," a Gaelic term meaning "friend of the soul." Here we’re at our most creative, resourceful, fully embodied best.



Like spiritual intentions, play exists solely for itself, for its own blessings. May we each revel in bringing play back to life, putting our Selves into play..

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