Play and the Present Moment

Before I go any further, let me apologize for my lack of blogging for the past month.  I have been furiously trying to get our new website up and running.  With much help I finally succeeded -- please visit it at http://www.fscaston.org.  I also have my blog on the Franciscan Spiritual Center Blog as well.  Come visit us there.  When you go to the site be sure to visit multiple tabs.  There is much to see and some are really fun.

Now for today's blog ---

A friend of mine gave me an old issue of the magazine Spirituality and Health (May-June, 2011) and in it there was an article entitled “Your Soul Needs Playtime” by Emma Seppala, PhD (p. 52-53).    Dr. Seppala says that the root of the word “enthusiasm” is Greek and means to be inspired or possessed by divinity, it literally means “inside God”.  Playing makes us like children who are fully present – a state which is often equated with being one with divinity.  She suggests that when our mind stays in the past, it usually dwells on negative emotions, such as anger or regret.  When it is in the future, anxiety and fear arise.  One of the reasons children are filled with extraordinary amounts of energy and enthusiasm may be that they are in the present moment.  Play, more than any activity, allows us to inhabit the present or another word she uses for describing play is the “state of flow”.  Flow occurs when we are completely immersed in an activity—the state of being 100 percent in the present moment.—and it is a state of great pleasure. 

I have a friend who has had a long time battle with Cancer.  At one point she was very sick to the point of appearing terminal and she relayed this story to me and I never forgot it. In talking about her state of mind during a stage when she certainly was appearing terminal she said: “Whenever I would think about not growing old with my husband or not seeing my grand-children I would become extremely anxious and afraid.”  But she would tell herself, “I have today; I can enjoy today.”  She reported that she felt great peace at that point.  As she pondered this she said the lesson she learned was that God only gives us the grace for today.  When she moved into worries about the future she didn’t have that grace yet.  . 

I think that’s a bit of what Dr. Seppala is also saying   Flow or play, whether in work or relaxation, is only found in the present moment.  It si a state we all find when we are fully engaged in what we are doing without drifting to the past or the future.  The present becomes play.  Play, like meditation, brings the mind back to the present moment.  Dr. Seppala uses a quote from Darshan Diaries in which an Indian spiritual teacher Osho writes, “Playfulness is as sacred as any prayer or maybe more sacred than any prayer, because playfulness, laughter, singing, dancing, will relax you.  And the truth is possible only in a relaxed state of being.  When you are totally relaxed, in a state of let-go, the impossible starts happening, the miracle starts happening.  Let-go is the secret of meditation….in play, the mind dissolves and relaxes.”

So, let’s play more.  Play, the ability to laugh and let go, to inhabit the present, and to be immersed in mirth and lightness of being – can be the ultimate act of love and belongingness.  When we can laugh and joke, we are remembering our joint humanity, our mutual desire for happiness and love, and our fundamental interconnectedness.