When Was The Last Time You Really Played With Yourself?
Gotcha. No, this isn’t about sex. But it is about playing with yourself.
Why is it that we work so hard to encourage and inspire young children’s imaginations only to later allow society to painfully and methodically sever their connections and access to them?
If you want to reconnect and remember who you really are, spend as much time as you can in the presence of children. And if you can, play with them, laugh with them, be silly with them. It is there that you will remember the truth of your own heart.
And when you remember that part of you, probably so long ago abandoned, you may feel sad. If that sadness comes, embrace it with gratitude for being given the opportunity to reclaim that freedom you lost, because it is STILL attainable.
Simply stop being a “grown up” and remember. Turn off all the media. Put down your phone. Go outside. Allow your own mind to be self-generative, and to have ideas come from within you , rather than having all of your imagination and creativity shut down because you’ve become just a receiver of external ideas, instead of the generator of your own.
Other people’s thoughts and ideas in this age of information are constantly permeating our being, our minds, and our hearts; movies, the Internet, TV, billboards, magazines, podcasts, webcasts. The list is endless. And while some of it can be beneficial, I feel so much of it is heart-numbing and overly stimulating our minds in unhealthy ways.
When we don’t play in our bodies with connection, or we use them with the robotic qualities that are often present when we exercise or do many other physical things, and when we are constantly absorbing impulses from outside of us, we can’t commune with our own original, intuitive, inspired self. We don’t have access to that small child that knew love and laughter and joy and every emotion with pure, uncensored 100% authenticity.
Society tells you which emotions are OK these days, and which ones aren’t. And now there are so many pills to make sure that your emotions conform to what is socially acceptable and politically correct. If you don’t express your emotions within that range, you get some kind of psychiatric diagnosis, a stigma and a pill to get you back in the box.
We don’t play when we live in that box. It’s a coffin,
Our lives have become about which pill do you choose? And there’s a lot more than blue and red. From my observations, most of them are anesthetizing us into conformity and robbing us of our our capacity to play, to feel, to connect to our authentic selves.
What was that thing you loved to do as a child that you don’t do anymore because someone told you that you had to grow up and act like an adult? Or being told that being a certain age meant you couldn’t do those things you loved anymore? Can you remember?
After we’ve had all the joy and the imagination and the unselfconsciousness that comes with being a child removed from us, we then begin the journey of trying to remember what we knew and to try to retrieve all of that make-believe. We feel empty and KNOW something is missing. The workshops, the self-help, the therapy, all of it designed to help us get back to this part of ourselves. And it works, in large part. That’s why the industry is so huge.
But I believe that if we played more, with ourselves and with others, there wouldn’t be so much need for the self-help industry. The answer is simple. Achieving it has become complicated.
Children “make-believe.” Isn’t that the same as what “grown-ups” try to do with affirmations and “living as if”? The difference is that when we are children, it’s not make-believe, we know it’s all possible because no one has told us it isn’t. WE BELIEVE. And isn’t that the key to affirmations and manifestation tools?
We are kings and queens and princes and princesses in foreign lands. We join the circus. We become unicorns. We make silly faces at each other and talk in made up languages, We laugh when we fart and when we burp. We make up and sing silly songs. We are unselfconscious and so real, so authentic. We jump on the bed and play dress up. We eat the raindrops and the mud.
And we laugh and we laugh and we laugh
Laughter is one of the most potent heart openers. When we play, we administer medicine to our souls, and our lives heal in the places we need it most.
My mother was a kindergarten teacher for 30 years. Because she was surrounded by little children all the time, she retained that silly, playful, lightheartedness. There were times after I had become an adult where I thought she was being too silly. But that was social conformity penetrating my mind. I now realize what a gift it was to her to be surrounded by five-year-olds for 30 years.
As a mother, I remember those early days with my own daughter. She’s 21 now and as I watch her in her struggle to find the belief in herself that she had as a child, I realize the damage that our society and even our schools, which are “mental institutions,” have done to diminish her access to this part of herself. I know that many of you who are parents can relate to this.
So go and find some children, they’re all around us. Smile at them, make faces at them as you drive, Let them help you tear down the walls and doors of your internal prisons. Let the love that they radiate permeate your being until you find your own inner child smiling and tugging at your leg for a playdate.
And then play with yourself. Find other playmates and make playdates. Support each other in silliness.
Here’s one of my playmates, my dear friend Christina Afentoulis, being silly with me in a public place at a “grown up” event. Yes, people will frown at you and give you dirty looks. BUT WHO CARES??? Just play.
I hope my words here leave you feeling something. I hope you’re feeling a bit unsettled because these words landed in a place inside you that is longing to be rediscovered. Follow the breadcrumbs…they’ll lead you back to you.
I invite you now to reflect on what it was you used to do as a child that you truly loved, that made you laugh until you would almost wet your pants, and just go do it!!! No excuses, no adult reasons why it’s not possible anymore, because I know that if we were never told that we couldn’t or shouldn’t, we would be capable of realizing all of our dreams, because our belief in ourselves and in the magic in the Universe would have remained in tact.
The heart and the mind should be lovers and best of friends. Without the heart to lead, the mind becomes a tyrant.
So hop, skip, jump on the bed, do something that you would’ve gotten in trouble for doing as a kid. Misbehave the way you would have as a child, knowing there’s no one to stop you now. Well, maybe the police if you take it too far, but I think you get the idea.
If you like what I share and feel it would benefit others, please hit the share button or post this somewhere. And if you’d like to know more or read more rantings from the madness of my errant mind, I have many, many posts on many topics.
And please let me hear from you. Leave a comment below, message me, like my GinaCology FaceBook page. I do what I do because I want to make a difference in your life, A REAL DIFFERENCE. If this touches you in some way, then my heart is happy.
With a heart full of love and silliness,
Gina Cloud