10th perspective second view

A cycle of the breath becomes part of my personal meditation. I meditate on the sound of creation using my breath as a focusing of attention. I reflect on the potential contained in each breath of any human being. Everything created or destroyed accompanies breathing. This includes the most exquisite joy to the worst invented horror. As we breathe, we breathe through. Literally through our lips, and also in the cycle that emotion comes and goes.

When ready, we can run back into the playfulness of our lives. We can be thankful for each breath and feel generous in what that breath accomplishes in service to our individual community.

Perspective Exercise #1: Breathing Meditation

As we play and then take a break, imagine creative energy flowing through our hands and right out through our fingertips. Through nine spheres of experience, through eight organs, through seven chakras, through six ages, through 5 unspoken truths, through four directions, through three eyes, through twin selves and through one divine breath. Or another other playful rendition.

We honor the creative energy that created us. We honor our ancestors, our families, and our friends who create us We honor all the objects with which we have come in contact and all we haven’t discovered yet. We, part of a universal organism, all exist as part of one universe, and we can honor the interconnection and release resistance. As a universal organism, we already have it all. So with our intent, we can wish for whatever we have truly longed. List as many wishes here as matter just now. Just hold the intent to receive them. Let us open our sense of being worthy to receive everything for which we wish. Once if not now, we knew we were worthy of everything for which we wish. Wrap up in that knowing.

As we breathe, consider listening to the world with an open compassionate heart. A listening love attaches no expectation; we can imagine that everything is as we wish already. We can savor how that feels. It, like the breathing cycle, shifts to receive awareness of what happens and accepts what happens next. Nothing really changes or remains fixed. Something heard meets something listened to. Listen to the world in this loving way. Listen with a type of fully engaged appreciation. The listening occurs. Remain open hearted. Breathing becomes the meditation on creative potential, the meditation on the breath of creation. It holds sounds to which we can always return.

Now let go; detach from what happens. Let time shift our awareness to some unfolding sensation. The playing occurs in this open potential field where much of anything can occur next. We can await whatever occurs and make it our next experience playfully. We play with all our heart and comfortably share everything that we receive. We won’t need to hold or covet anything because more continues flowing toward us, filling us with this great sense of playfulness. Ah, breathe.

10th perspective first view

“I’m not playing!” Ever heard that? Ever felt that? It represents a very important aspect of play that of stopping playing. To quit playing fundamentally belongs as part of playing. In so doing, we redefine our role. The role changes our behavior. Now we will explore not playing.

The first aspect of stopping gives us a break to catch our breath. We can reflect on the fun part; maybe notice we played with only part of our heart. Maybe we need to put our self in time out because we need to rearrange our breathing.

I like to think about breathing. Taking time out to savor our breath positively accentuates our experience. While we attend to breathing, we heal from any hurts we accumulate since our last break. The positive play of words and phrases like “taking time out,” and ”going out for a special time” use language to help us notice a change of perspective. Psychologically time out gives us an opportunity to take a break from any struggles we have inadvertently taken on. It seems typical that we think of time out as reserved for children: whereas, time out can serve as a deep reminder of our safety. From a safe perspective we value our own cadence. In renewing that sense of safety, we find comfort in a way that only we can give to ourselves. This place of comfort requires persistent daily cultivation.

Perspective Exercise #!: Breathe

Take a break from all the playing by taking a breath with awareness; center with breathing. I think we fear our breath and need to reclaim our breath through another type of play. Our breath clearly reminds us of the basic creative force of life. First let’s pay attention to how we normally breath. Do we favor the inspiration? Does the drawing in of the breath give us a sense of safety or security? What do we notice about the expiration? Can we savor a part of it? Did we notice the give and take as we switched from inspiration to expiration? Come to it with the next breath. The transition from expiration to inspiration gives us another perspective to savor.

9th circuit seventh star door Unexpected Elaboration

Na nag nab nap nay nab


Playfully approach more endeavors, break them down into lengths. Engage in the parts that really inspire. Do the parts that require making up new ways to accomplish them. Try those new methods. Invite a friend along. Everything flows in some grand motion. Dust off the best thing that could happen. Let’s see what is happening. Let’s use imagination and live each small moment as fully as we can, down to the inspiration and the almost unnoticed pause before the next breath. We can be amused when we pass through a final door and find we are back out on the street under the street lamp where we started. Come with me down the chute to... [dear reader: Send me my reference to coming out in the street again, please.]


Does power flow from simple truths? If someone notices our behavior and we sense they would like to ask what we are doing, consider telling them that we are having fun playing. Leave it at that and see if they ask other questions. Being gently truthful about play can bring it back into our lives where it belongs. We have a lot of unexpected playful elaboration to engage in over this stage of our life.

Radicalized elaboration, radical playfulness,
goes to the edge of what you do before you complete anything. Add and transform actions of life, changing your perspective. The material, not just material, an approach to material shifts; engage the process, repeatedly attempting to make subtlties visible. Fully played with material like an experiment you can’t observe directly, reflects some other measured mystery.
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Play for the Soul

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9th circuit sixth oval door Unexpected Elaboration

I asked a group of middle-aged volleyball players if they ever had flying dreams. Of 9 men, 3 didn’t. Two flew without being in a physical body. And each of the other four had specific ways in which they flew, using their body like a super hero, like a bird, or like a fish though through air. And then there was my skipping along realizing the side-swipes of my steps had lifted me off the ground unexpectedly, perhaps more like a fish than bird or super hero. Most of these men hadn’t had these dreams in a while. Does our dream world reflect something of our play world? We can inquire about something familiar to us of others and explore the variations, finding unexpected elaborations?


On the bookshelf
Creativity (underlined) sits unread,
a dry husk. Unfit.
While reading, hands remain unengaged.
Playfulness absent, Nails bitten,
A sign. Hands measure something:
Linked emotional well-being.


Thinking about playing, never picking up anything and playing with it, there's a rub. The degree of kinesthetic organization and learning determines a degree to which this type of play proves essential to learning. The knowing comes later. What someone says, you simultaneously “speak” through your hands. The lag in the translation favors the experience rather than the knowing.
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Play for the Soul

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9th circuit fifth nook door Unexpected Elaboration

Lah lash lath lay

Elaboration Exercise. # 3: Shrine for Totems

As we’ve moved through these various layers, we’ve created a series of play testimonials about different aspects of creative expression. Create a place for these objects on a shelf or in a corner of a room. These representations or totems can serve as reminders of aspects of playfulness. The first time we gather and set them down, don’t pay attention to how they get assembled. Come back and check on them later. Do a little sketch of how they sit. Remember we can use symbols, doodles, words or any other method of annotation. What do we notice about these objects? How do they relate to each other in this layout? Rearrange them. Do they still contain reminders of playfulness? What about the place where we place them? See what changes, if we choose a place where we pass them regularly. See if they will be in the corner of our eye frequently. If we want to we can move them around to several different locations and experience what difference location makes. We can place them in some kind of carrying container and keep them with us. Do they invite us to live more playfully?


Play with them.



Keep the elaboration process active. Have a sense of humor about this and see if you hide aspects of play literally in the way you set up a shrine. Allow the symbols to tell a story just as one relates to another. You can apply some embellishment to the shrine. Play remains available even when life gets busy. Take the detour.
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Play for the Soul

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9th circuit four rectangle door Unexpected Elaboration

Jah jag jam jaw jar jay

I’d like to do that a little more.

Elaboration Exercise # 2: More

Take an exercise of which a little more practice would seem enjoyable. Add another layer to it by combining another aspect of play discussed earlier. Borrow ideas from childhood, or ideas that might have made childhood richer. Use any references. Bring in extra materials. See what happens.

Send in the results, possibly as testimonials inscribed on odd surfaces. Send a sketch or a description or a photograph covered with personal annotations. Send a copy with additional notes in the margins spilling onto the image. Send them to anyone who will enjoy them, I will; or send them as a surprise. Let this thread elaborate into community outreach for valuing play. We could send it to someone we don’t know whom we think would do better what they do, if they valued their playful nature more fully. Reaching out to ask someone to play, our earliest social engagement skill still offers a viable and valuable proposition.

Unexpected Elaboration of play shows you how you approach playfulness. Elaboration allows you to add personal to what you have developed. It reveals what you sense at any given point in the process. In the realm of play, right ways don’t exist. You don’t get to anywhere. Equally your way represents only one way. In fact in elaborating play, as you mimic others, you knowingly and inadvertently borrow from others. We borrow from the vast experience of human community. This act of borrowing has to be washed clean of indoctrination about competition and winning outcomes to be authentically valued. The novelty of play comes from the inner experience of the individual or group.
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Play for the Soul

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9th circuit third key hole door Unexpected Elaboration

Gath gash gay gal gap

That I’d like to do.

Elaboration Exercise # 1b: Making It

We can try a similar exercise with something we always wanted to make. The short circuit: “Make it.” Consider something seen in an interior design magazine or a gift shop or a piece of art. Something that evokes in us the “Hey, I could do that” response. This time for the purpose of creative play, hold to that response. We release the attachment to how this turns out. We search after a feeling that engages a process within. Describe how it feels to do this. Make notes; maybe even on the surface or interior of the object created. Or imagine it’s a cake, how about eating it and letting the crumbs fall onto cracks on another surface as a reminder to invite unexpected elaboration. Describe the emotional map passed through in making this object. Retain a perspective of an amused observer. This may provide essential clues to our personal playful identity.

Hands can serve as a barometer of playful activity. Their activity reveals something we can’t measure with thoughts. This type of activity links the body to emotional well being. “Don’t sit still with empty hands, make things?” Playfulness exists in our body. Maybe play simply reflects kinesthetic experience.

Does play represent learning without having to know?
Could playfulness express a personal sign language?
Can we understand play as eternal wisdom coming through our hands?



Interest revolves around the enhancement of moves through layering with other ideas and behaviors, rather than with the reduction of play to a set of moves. Many times something will seem like a novel approach and later you’ll notice another's similar style or form in some other context. Synchronicity reigns. (logicum inconstantia) from

Play for the Soul

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