SERIOUSLY PLAYING 

End of trying to get things done

Most people desire to enjoy life and have fun, yet most people are not enjoying life or having fun.  Yes perhaps people occasionally permission themselves to play on the weekends or to take a vacation, but few people play all day long.  Rather people are quite serious and methodical in their day to day operations and routines.  Where did we learn this methodically serious attitude about life?  Even more importantly how are you operating inside certain boxes, containers and ideas that keep you from enjoying your life fully?

The human mind is funny.  It thinks it wants certain things and so it gets you to work seriously hard in order to get or achieve those things.  When I say things I am not only talking about material things, but including all relational and spiritual aspirations as well.  There is often a general undercurrent in our psyche that runs the program that we must get things done or that we need to get something or get somewhere so that we can be happy, relax and enjoy ourselves.  This mindset keeps us somewhat constricted, limited and inside of a box of what we think we want our lives to look like in order for us to be really joyful.  There is also often some fear that if we enjoy ourselves now before we get the thing or arrive at the place that we desire that we won’t get the thing or arrive where we think we want too.  So we postpone the joy until we achieve or arrive.  This is incredibly common and I would bet most of you do this several times in any given day.  

The place where we learned that seriousness goes along with getting things done is an interesting place indeed.  We tend to think the more serious we take something means the more we care about it, and therefore the higher likelihood that we will achieve the outcome of our desire.  It probably rarely, if ever, crosses your mind to ask yourself the question, how could I play harder in order to achieve the outcome that I desire.  This question contradicts everything we have ever learned about accomplishment and achievement.  

The first thing to really understand is that its not ever ever ever the outcome that brings us the joy, happiness, rest or the resolution we think it will bring us. Instead it is us that brings the joy to the outcome.  So why not have the joy now, bring the joy now to what it is you are engaged in and with rather than waiting on the outcome to come into fruition.  It can be a long wait.  Sometimes you will wait your entire life.  Would you want to wait your entire life in order to experience the joy and happiness that you desire now?  Many people do because they don’t see any other choice.  They don’t see that than can create, permission and generate what they desire to feel right here, right now regardless of what is here inside of their experience.   

WHY PLAY? 

You radiate & serve in play

Some people rather enjoy being serious, which is perfect.  If there is enjoyment in the seriousness than there is play even if it looks serious.  However what I see more often than not is that seriousness is part of people’s personas and who they think they need to be rather than what they naturally desire to be or are.  Let’s take the one who is on a healing path or a spiritual seeker for example.  Often people are very serious about their healing journey and their path to self-realization or enlightenment.  They take all the courses, go to all the workshops, do all the programs and journeys, and see all of their practitioners and healers, yet they continue to month after month, year after year, not enjoy themselves or their life.  They feel like the have to keep working hard and that they are never going to arrive fully healed or self-realized.  They keep trying to get somewhere and keep coming up short.  They see failure and feel like the path has no end in sight so they get more serious about it, thinking that will be the ticket.

You might wonder, why isn’t that the ticket?  I mean doesn’t that mean I care and am committed because I keep showing up.  To some degree yes it does show desire and care, but the attitude or disposition from where you come from inside your seeking is of prime importance.  It makes all the difference in the world.  If your attitude is one of trying to get it over or figure it out than you’ve already lost.  There is no where to get and so you won’t ever arrive.  You can’t “arrive” until you realize that there is no where to get.  Get that.  The journey is the destination.  There isn’t an actual destination different from it.  Even if you get what you want, accomplish or achieve your goals, become healed or self-realized, get the relationship or thing that you want, that doesn’t mean you have arrived at any destination.  It simply means your mind has a check box that it can check off, that’s it.  

Why play then?  Play brings with it lightness, levity, and joy.  When you play, even if there is work and effort, its fun.  You are not attached when you play.  You create and dismantle without so much as a thought.  There is no thinking of when the moment will be over and done, instead you are present.  When you play you abundantly radiate and naturally overflow.  This abundant, radiating, overflowing yumminess is service.  You serve by being joyfully.  You can’t not help it.  It is a natural side effect.  You don’t have to figure out what to do, how to serve or what your purpose is because you are being your purpose.  

Since this is what most people actually desire you must ask yourself the question as to what you are waiting for and be willing to stop waiting.  Realize that it is not in the arriving or getting that you experience the joy of being.  You are the source of joyful being.  You are the chooser of your state of being.  You choose joy or not joy.  You therefore choose to serve through sharing your natural radiating self or to not serve.  You get to decide if you want to feel good now or if you want to postpone it until you get something you think you want or check a box off of your to do list.  Joy can sometimes feel like worlds away, but its not.  Its right here.  You simply need to choose it.  

Dr. Amanda Love, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado