“Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child.” ~ Heraclitus
So, let’s start our adventures with a little analogy which I hope will give us a better idea of the scale of the reality I am attempting to describe and our place within it.
Imagine if you will a park. A magnificent park sitting in the heart of a great city. The park is separated and protected from the surrounding metropolis by a high stone wall and imposing metal gates, from dawn to dusk the city’s inhabitants stream through the gates into a green oasis. They are drawn to its cool leafy spaces, soft green grass and the shade of the park’s many trees. They come to escape, to relax, to explore, to play and to have fun.
Meandering footpaths, cycle routes, and jogging trails, criss-cross the park’s many acres connecting its many attractions among which it boasts a putting green, tennis courts, trampolines and even a bandstand. At the very heart of the park lies its jewel in the crown, the lake. A beautiful blue-green expanse of shimmering fresh water, teeming with fauna and the kind of location of many a kid’s first seafaring adventures.
The lake is large enough to allow both humans and the local wildlife to live in relative harmony. There’s enough cover for the ducks to scurry away from the clumsy kids if their waving oars and sharp sticks got too close. It's deep enough to allow some gentle ‘messing about on the water’ style boating. It has well maintained banks of short green grass which slope gently down to the water’s edge perfect for sunbathers and picnickers. Thick tall reeds line the banks along with large weeping willow trees spill out over the water providing cool shading to those who need it.
On the northern shore just by the park’s massive main gate sits another important park facility.
The playground
The playground is separated from rest of the park by gental chains link fence. Entrance to it is by a rickety turn-style gate, one in, one out!
In this park is the ever-popular monkey bars, various swings, some rusty climbing frames, and a wobbly wooden rope walk. There’s even a wooden pirate ship complete with decks and rigging for the kids to scramble up and tumble back down. Most days life inside the park is a whirlwind of noise and activity with kids of all ages running and screaming, climbing and jumping. They whoop and holler, laugh and cry, dream and scheme. Entire worlds are created and destroyed in an afternoon. Who knows what seeds are sown in this fertile world of desire, fear and unfettered imagination.
And amid all this excitement tucked away in a shaded corner, up against the back fence, lies another popular area.
The Sandpit
About half the size of a tennis court and surrounded by a small white picket fence about 3 ft in height (easily steeped over by an adult) lies a sandpit. Life inside the sandpit is far more sedate than in the surrounding playgrounds. Apart from a large plastic slide sitting in the center of the soft white expanse of sand, the space is relatively clear. No monkey bars or swings, just a few plastic animals and some left behind buckets and spades. Wooden benches for the children’s parents to sit on and watch. Large oaks and beeches form a canopy over the sandpit creating a dark area along the back fence which most of the kids, baring the bravest of them tend to avoid.
Play in the sandpit is far less regulated and free flowing than the games the older children play outside in the main playground, the rules are fewer. Kids play alone a lot more here content to react to whatever comes their way. Things are simpler as options are fewer. The basics are being learned here, they are only concerned with the now, with getting their immediate needs met, nothing beyond that.
The games being played in here are far less sophisticated than those outside. In fact, there is very little awareness of the world outside at all. The best of them can see it, sense it. But to most it remains a mystery. The kids in here have no agendas to be met, no timetables, no elaborate plans to execute. Very little is needed to thrive in the sandpit except a willing heart, a little encouragement from supportive guardians, a small dose of personal courage and a large amount of imagination.
Time is virtually meaningless, to those sitting on the park benches or peering through the fence, the scene inside may seem chaotic and meaningless but sit awhile and look a little closer and you will sense the energy of the different areas. You will feel the rhythm and reason behind the children’s play.
The Purpose
Focus in even closer and the intentions of the whooping children and the digging infants becomes clear. Slowly but surely through the games they play and the worlds they create in their minds they grow and learn. Naturally evolving and becoming what they are meant to be, what they always were.
Safe within the confines of the playground, they are free to let their imaginations run wild. Secure enough to make mistakes, develop skills, test their boundaries and gain the experience they will need to survive outside in the larger park itself and to eventually the worlds that lie beyond.
Fuelled by their desires, whole worlds are created and destroyed in an afternoon, waxing and waning in time with their quick moods and surging emotions. They dream of success, they imagine monsters. And what if you asked them what they were doing and why? Most would say- ‘I’m playing!’.
They need no other reason. It’s very easy to underestimate the importance and power of play, play is the art of creation. When you are at ‘play’ your intention is to create something new. A new version of reality, not for profit, not for any reason except the love and the joy of creating.
“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.” ~ Alan Wilson Watts (1915-1973), English Philosopher
And it doesn’t even have to be real physical play, play in your head counts too.
“Without this playing with fantasy, no creative work has ever yet come to birth. The debt we owe to the play of the imagination is incalculable.” ~ Carl Jung
It is in this state that we are as close to our true selves that we can ever be in this reality.
“We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.” ~ George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), Irish Playwright
“To stimulate creativity, one must develop the childlike inclination for play and the childlike desire for recognition.” ~ Albert Einstein (1879-1955), Theoretical Physicist
“Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.” ~ Heraclitus
Keep Off the Grass!
The kids in the sandpit have free will of course, as do those in the surrounding realities. They can choose to play or not but that is not to say that there are no rules. The Sandpit, The Playground and The Green Park including whatever lies beyond are all communal, consensual realities. As such there are certain dos and don’ts, agreed boundaries, conventions and social restraints in operation that allow the smooth running of each system while still allowing each individual as much personal freedom to grow as possible within it.
It is these matters these ‘rules’ and constraints that we are going to discuss in the following chapters. Where do we fit in the larger scheme of things. You may have guessed by now we are in the sandpit, hopefully quickly learning that it’s not cool to dump a bucket of wet sand on top of our playmates heads, and the rest.
'The human race is a stage through which various forms of consciousness travel. Before you can be allowed into systems of reality that are more extensive and open, you must first learn to handle energy and see through physical materialisation and the concrete result of thought and emotion. As a child forms mud pies from dirt, so you form your civilisations out of thoughts and emotions and then find what you have created.
You are in physical existence to learn and understand that your energy translated into feelings, thoughts and emotions are the causes of all experience. There are no exceptions...' - The Seth Material, Jane Roberts & Robert Butts
