I’ve been at this gate in my life before but this is the farthest I’ve ever stepped through. I’ve never published my words before (without ripping everything down), or shared some of my creative work. I’ve never been so totally and wholly committed to achieving the life that I want to live where I feel almost detached from life altogether. I’m closer to embodying what I call “wonderment” than ever before.
I want to talk about something that has come up every time I’ve approached this gate before that has gotten me to turn back. It is irritatingly effective. Primarily this “gatekeeper” manifests in arguments from The Other, but I can’t blame the Other for continually buying it. I’ve certainly talked myself out of passing this gate before with the same argument. I’m making it a point to put it here so I know there’s no excuses.
It concerns the nature of work & play.
We often think that work is “anything we need to do, but don’t want to do.”
And we often think that play is “anything we want to do, but don’t need to do.”
You may already see the problem if you’re clever, but let’s continue.
When we are on “the path” (as I call Ex Inanis), we are attempting to sculpt our lives into something holistic, or organic. We are ruthlessly looking for pockets of resistance and blockages to remove. We are seeking to remove all the “divides” within ourselves. That is, we are attempting to create an environment for ourselves to live in that effortlessly produces the life (the consciousness) that we want to embody.
Our holy grail is a state of effortless 24/7 flow.
We do not want to keep having to put “effort” into maintaining a particular stand of mind or life. It should automate itself.
This absolutely means we cannot continue participating in practices that actually run contrary to what we are trying to do. That seems obvious. Yet, if it was so obvious, we would not so often compromise with ourselves.
So, what is the the justification that has so often turned me back from doing the things that I want to do? What has created more complacency than anything else?
“You need to relax. No one can work all the time. You’ll burn out. You need to unwind. Enjoy life.“
This is a good example of mixing truth and lies. Ex Inanis would never tell you not to enjoy yourself. Ex Inanis is about achieving the ultimate joy.
I never needed a break from gaming – I could game until my eyes bled. So why do I need a break from “work” that I want to do?
The problem is obvious – perceiving the work as ‘work’ and perceiving the ‘play’ as ‘play’ (as we have defined above.) Don’t understand?
I have many goals I want to achieve in life but I will just give one example: I want to become a professional artist. So, the argument always goes: “Well, you can’t draw all the time. Everyone needs time off.”
Every time my heart has just gone “Huh? That doesn’t make any sense. Why can’t I draw all the time? Why would I burn out?”
I perceived the art as “work”, so it was something that I needed to do, but didn’t want to do (even though I did).
I perceived the games as “play.” I never thought I would burn out on video games – so I didn’t. So what is stopping us from applying the same perception to ANY ACTIVITY IN LIFE? Nothing. Nothing at all. Except this whole “work/play” polarity. That’s the trap.
Work drives you into the arms of play and play abuses you until you need to work. Should we glorify this as “balance” or a clever ruse to keep you running in circles?
We remove the divide. We merge work and play. Then it becomes – “anything we need to do, we want to do” and its inverse is implied – “anything we want to do, we need to do.”
Now there is no blockage.
Balance emerges when we are living Authentically, or in concert with the heart. We can’t necessarily predict what that balance will look like – we just trust that it will arise.
There are complications here, of course – the primary fault of gaming, in my opinion, is the sense of satisfaction / achievement it creates. Removing our hunger from our heart’s desires or self improvement is a recipe – for you guessed it – Nonsense/complacency/entropy. So gaming was always a “double whammy”, but gaming could just as well have been any human vice.
But that is the gist. Now we practice removing any idea of work & play from our lives, transmute this into just “being” or “doing” and start enjoying the activities that embody the life that we want to live.