Creative Play

Play is a state in which your optimal development takes place naturally, but before being able to have fun and to play within an environment actually allowing it in real life, we have to get to know the game and ourselves as players, and how to perform the maneuvers to get us through each level. And sometimes it seems like there is tremendous loads of practice ahead of us, before entering the real game.

It is not a game for wimps. Some have described neurohacking as ‘The Hero’s Journey’. You will need to develop your own skills of attention, curiosity, awareness, flexibility, open-mindedness, interaction, humor and willingness to “boldly go”. Play is a "state" of body and mind free from the boundaries, limitations and categories imposed by harmful conditioning. Our innate curiosity, flexibility, humor, trust, feeling of place and belonging keep us free and keep growing our intelligence, and people don’t find that out until they are brave enough to try it.

As a matter of fact, most people who genuinely engage on the path to discover what really lies beneath their skull very often reach a point where they come to realize the kind of "tremendous loads" I'm referring to, in a very practical and very personal "inner-viewing" way. How we see this depends on our perspective. For some people, the game landscape they see may take the "inner shape" of a huge mountain to be climbed that suddenly appears to their "mind's eye", for others it might be a bit freakier like an abyss crossing their path or some terrible monster to fight. Whatever shape it may take, it's - quite often - sufficiently “unknown” (eg frightening or confusing) to stop people from going any further.

So, knowing right from the start that you are very likely to reach such a point if you intend to genuinely dig all the information stored in this place, maybe - and I mean maybe - you will be more prepared to face it with the proper perspective. And if your outlook includes ‘the big picture’, you’ll see that we have to go all the way in order for our societies (groups of people in competition and dysfunctional decline) – to become cultures (groups of people in cooperation and healthy growth). Only real life interaction will create such an environment, that allows having fun and playing to be our major tools for learning new abilities and growing together as well as individuals.

We know it sounds far-fetched to claim such a thing today, with our societies as they are, but still we do. And we tend to think that those inner pictures of mountains to be climbed, abysses to leap over, monsters to override, and so on, are simply mental images built by our brains to represent the colossal quantity of individual and collective work we now know IS to be done if we want the human species to remain intelligent (and indeed, alive) in the long term... Those are messages from the unconscious layers of our mind to tell us: "Yeah, dude! That's the challenge we have to overcome in order to become who we really are".

And... the truth IS out there, but if we don't know what to look for, the truth can be invisible; sense drowned under nonsense. We have been misinformed for so long and so frequently, not only by an anxiety-based society, but as anxiety-based individuals, to believe that fight/flight, survival of the fittest and competition is the only way to be. The challenge here is for us to explore a different way of being (the healthy way) and share truths which most people think don't exist.

Just to give you a hint of the spirit (because we'll get back to this more thouroughly later on), here are the rules of the game:

• Anyone can play.
• The object of the game is to keep playing. We are seeking the development and ongoing experience of optimal intelligence. This is the easy part; the difficult part is that in order to find it, we must not be afraid of the truth.
• We play to cooperate, not to compete, and in doing so create authentic play spaces of safety and love, where everyone is included.
• We are all newbies, allowing ourselves to touch and be touched by the wonder and mystery of reality.
• Playing well is an ability requiring both knowledge and practice.
• Play is not a thing to be contrived, but a thing to be loved.
• Play is the fulfillment of our optimal potential; the creation of what we are meant to be; the path of entelechy.
• In real play everybody wins.
• Play enables the union of biology’s intent (unconscious intelligence) through interaction, with conscious intelligence, in situations clearly perceived and competently performed.
• We play determinedly; interacting wholeheartedly in a situation, refusing numbness and anxiety in favor of love, honesty and trust, hacking the fears, judgments and boundaries in which we live our everyday lives. This is the path of mastery.
• This game is not a fairy tale and it's not idealistic, rather, it is absolutely essential and absolutely real.

You most probably wonder how we intend to use this to change anything in that "fucked up situation in which we're living", right? But you know... first that situation is not so fucked up as we usually tend to think - it's above all a question of point of view, and second, our environment is only the outcome of each and every one's interactions with each other, and (as you will learn in this place) it feeds back to us and makes us "more like what we are surrounded by". That's the principle you can consider as the "engine" of the change we aim for.

There is no clear decision center in the social environment - now that it has become "global", but there IS one in each and every one of us. That's why WE have to take responsibility for our own futures (not waiting for governments or institutions on that one) and make the decision on our own individual basis. Once we firmly decide to progress and improve ourselves and our surroundings, we just have to take the first step for the game to start and keep on, cause it will come halfway to meet us.

So, well... Here we are, one step short of "ultimate grooviness". We believe we are living through one of the greatest periods of human history, we're looking forward to seeing how the potential of intelligence will continue to unfold, and we hope to give you all the vital tools you'll need to navigate this age of discovery with confidence, competence, humor and lightheartedness.

Okay, my dear companions, that's it. Now... we have a better reality to create together. Let's do it! And don't even think about trying...