Let’s play. Don’t try to master this life or make yourself perfect. Just play along. For our practice is not about getting it right. If you approach your practice by trying to do it all correctly, you betray the spirit of play behind all creation. For in the mythology of yoga, the gods produce the world out of play. You may have heard the story of how the gods got bored with their own transcendence and so created humankind for their own delight and amusement called lila. Thus it is divine play that makes the seasons, animates the breath, and activates the law of karma. That is, the whole living world is a product of the art—and artifice—of the gods.
But in this life, so many of us feel obligated to have to get things right. If you aim for correctness, you will become fearful to make a mistake. And when you neglect the spirit of play, you divide the world into right and wrong, good and bad, success and failure. But playfulness goes against the mind that tries to succeed. In play acting and play-making, there are no mistakes. In fact, play requires that you leave your executive functioning at the door. In play, we are not legitimizing the ego and its demands. Rather play is done by letting go of the self consciousness that falsely assumes it must stay in control.
