Frolic and Frisbees in Place of Fear

Playing and laughing together, especially when we play and laugh in public, for no reason, is a profound, and, oddly enough, political act.

Political, because when we play or dance or just laugh in public, people think there’s something wrong with us. It’s rude, they think. Childish. A disturbance of the peace.

Normally, they’d be right. Except now. Now, the peace has been deeply disturbed – everywhere, globally. And what those grown-ups are doing, playing, dancing, laughing in public is not an act of childish discourtesy, but a political act – a declaration of freedom, a demonstration that we are not terrorized, that terror has not won.

A Frisbee, in the hands of people in business dress in a public park, is a weapon against fear; a basketball dribbled along a downtown sidewalk, a guided missile aimed at the heart of war. Playing with a yo-yo, a top, a kite, a loop of yarn in a game of cats’ cradle, all and each a victory against intimidation. Playing openly, in places of business, in places where we gather to eat or travel or wait, is a gift of hope, an invitation to sanity in a time when we are on the brink of global madness.

Yes, I admit, I am a professional advocate of public frolic. I am a teacher in the art of fun.

Bernie de Koven

Innocent Intimacy

I’m especially interested in the innocent, intimate, safe, funny, profound kind of fun that we can achieve as adults. Unlike the innocence of childhood, this innocent, adult fun is based not on ignorance, but on informed openness. It’s an intimacy that goes beyond sexuality to create moments of physical, emotional and spiritual union that make us larger than life. The kind of intimacy that is built on trust, respect, on our abilities to keep each other safe, to make each other laugh, to hold each other close, to touch each other gently and deep.

Bernie de Koven

Release the Inner Adult

When we were children, we could only play as children. We couldn’t really choose to be childlike, to be playful, to have fun, because it was what we did whenever we could, with or without permission or even intention. We didn’t even know, let alone think of what we were doing as being particularly playful. But as adults, given the opportunity, finding the permission to come out and play together – we can bring all those years of power, experience, compassion, all those competencies and strengths, all the stories and histories, all our sophistication and post-pubescent powers into play. We can release the inner-adult. We can set it free to weave its majestically playful path into the fabric of the daily game.

Bernie de Koven

If you want to read more of this wonderful stuff, go to aplayfulpath.com to download the book for free.

Crowd Funding

My quest here is for a system that recognizes and supports intrinsic reward. Recognizes it by providing the conditions for playful interaction, supports it by providing a reasonable salary for the fruits of those interactions.

Far too few of us are actually getting paid to play. Far too many of us are getting rewarded for joyless, self- and other-destructive “work”.

Where are there systems of reward that are effective in recognizing and supporting the productive power of play? What systems reach beyond the fortunate few to create a generalized state of affirmation of personal happiness?

If we can find no precedent, may we be able to create our own.

Bernie de Koven

The True Cure

Suppression is a lack of acceptance,
An attempt to nullify what is natural.

The treatment of symptoms
Does not cure the disease.

Effects vanish when
Causes are removed,
Not when they are suppressed.

Wu Hsin

Interpretative Dance

What is natural
Follows no laws nor
Requires any.

Can there be a rule for
The beating of the heart or
The blackness of the raven?

There is a natural rhythm to
The workings of the world.
Some are discernable
While others cannot be discerned.
It is the dance
Between the two that
Creates action.

Wu Hsin

Going Coastal

Ebbing begins when

Tides are at their highest.

When the unbearable is recognized

To be bearable,

Profound transformation occurs.

Wu Hsin

Tablets

There are two kinds of intelligence: One acquired,
as a child in school memorizes facts and concepts
from books and from what the teacher says,
collecting information from the traditional sciences
as well as from the new sciences.

With such intelligence you rise in the world.

You get ranked ahead or behind others

in regard to your competence in retaining
information. You stroll with this intelligence
in and out of fields of knowledge, getting always more
marks on your preserving tablets.

There is another kind of tablet, one
already completed and preserved inside you.

This is a spring overflowing. A freshness
in the centre of the chest. This other intelligence
does not turn yellow or stagnate. It's fluid,
and it doesn't move from outside to inside
through the conduits of plumbing-learning.

This second knowing is a fountainhead
from within you, moving out.

Rumi

No Title

A common misconception is
That thought
Is personal property.

Rather, it is
The reception of thought from
A source which has no name and
From a place that cannot be found.

Since you neither decide to think
Nor decide
Thought’s contents,
Why do you
Claim ownership?

Is a sound yours because
You hear it?

Wu Hsin

Always Complete

It's fun to play dead. But when some living, loving thing really dies, or leaves you, right in the middle of the game, right where it used to be so much fun to play together; you discover that you don't feel like playing any more. Not right then. You don't have to get off the path entirely. But you do have to stop playing, to take it in. You have to let the grief in. You might even have to let the anger in, the depression, the tears, the screams. Because, player that you are, you understand that you have to give your self over, completely, as totally and freely as a child might: to the grief like to the game, to the pain like to the fun. Player that you are, you embrace it and let it embrace you, naked, without protection. Because when you are completely grieving, like when you are completely playing, you are still complete.

Bernie de Koven

All of It

The Source and Substance of everything
Has no name.
When It is named:
The Eternal or The Infinite or What-Is or
That or The Mystery or The Absolute,
It is merely pointed to.

Make a list of
All your pains,
Your sorrows,
Your hurts and disappointments.
This, too, is Part of It.

Wu Hsin

Auto Play

On the one hand there's nobody there but you. On the other, for example, when you're just sitting there thinking about nothing in particular, there's the distinct impression that there's at least one other you there: the you you think is doing the thinking, and the you you think you're thinking about.

This is not such a profound revelation. It's quite common knowledge. Inside your head there are at least two completely equal, and only somewhat fictional selves. And each of your selves is you.

Playing for real.

We all talk about it. We surprise our selves. Love our selves. Beat our selves up. We fool our selves, laugh with our selves. Laugh at our selves.

We talk to our selves. Sing with our selves. We remind our selves.

We don't let our selves forget. We drive our selves harder. And we drive our selves crazy.

We punish our selves, arouse our selves, abuse our selves, delight our selves.

We stop our selves, deny our selves, reward our selves, deprive our selves.

We are proud of our selves, ashamed of our selves.

And all the time we are just playing that there's somebody else there. Each of us. This is what I refer to as the Inner Playground, where everything we can think of can happen, where any of our selves can be pretended into being or not. This is where we find our selves playing when there is no there there.

Where there's nobody there but us, our Self.

from The Playful Path, by Bernie de Koven

Let's Pretend

Now is always new. Never then. Step back into it. Pretend something. Pretend that you are a camera, everything you see, every movement of your eyes, every saccade part of the recording, everything you hear captured. In real time. Pretend you are the director, framing and focusing on each moment, each effect, each change in light, each shadow. Pretend you are in a theatre, and you are watching it all in iMax 3D. The camera pans down. You see the sidewalk sparkling in the sun, moving at the edge of a shadow, framing a single scintillation. It is your shadow. Wonder of wonders, it is yours.

Bernie de Koven