On playful reverence
"Overall, we try to make our living in ways that are in harmony with our convictions"
One of the places I met self-loathing was on the meditation cushion.
Really, it was just an old pillow because that’s what I had.
Really, really, it was met while I was standing in the doorway, staring at the pillow, feeling the repelling force between us.
This was about ten years ago: I had very narrow ideas of the things I needed to do in order to thrive—it had to be ‘spiritual’, whatever default idea that meant to me at the time, and it had to happen on a daily basis, ideally first thing in the morning or evening.
One of these ideas was a meditation practice where I would sit at attention at the same minute every morning. If I was a few minutes late, I already messed up. Once I made it to the pillow to sit, I expected my thoughts to be still and silent.
Grand, unhelpful expectations.
Instead, when I pushed my way through resistance and finally sat down, I always felt itchy and agitated. I resented this practice, and I resented that I resented it.
My thoughts circled around three questions:
Why do I resist what makes me feel whole?
Why is it so hard to be disciplined?
How is it that I want something so badly and rebel against it, crashing into habits that cause suffering?
These are important questions... and I asked them with impatience and judgment.
I was fully convinced that having resistance meant there was something wrong with me—that it was a sign that I didn't care enough or wasn't capable.
(This is not true.)
From this stuck place came the concept of playful reverence…
playful - giving or expressing pleasure and amusement.
reverence - deep respect for someone or something.
Playful reverence became a practice of enormous permission: to be bold, to be receptive, to be in choice, to center joy…
Giving more time and energy to joy, play, and fun—both in small and bold ways—instead of ruminating on what was ‘wrong’ with me, led to fundamental shifts in my life, ones that hadn’t budged for years.
When it comes to this idea of playful reverence, think deep care + non-attachment. This is about approaching something—your day, a conversation, a co-worker, a recurring pattern, a wish, a habit or changing of a habit, a daily task or challenge—with a depth of heart and a lightness to your approach.
Playful reverence isn't the way to approach it all. But it can be a silver thread to consider in more circumstances than would seem obvious at first.
The process of becoming more fully yourself gets to be fun. Evolving can be a source of pleasure. You can catch your ‘shoulds’ about what something should look like or should be like or should feel like, or even on what timeline it ‘should’ happen, and question that belief.
If this idea is landing for you but there are questions about how it feels or looks in practice, it’s revealing to explore what the opposite of playful reverence might be in order to feel into it more... for me, it looks like trying to regiment practices instead of experience them as dynamic (like I used to do with meditation), manage instead of engage, and overly focus on the outcome while missing the potential for what the present moment is offering.
We get into this in Pivoting Toward Wholeness.
Out of a slew of standout sentiments in Grace Lee Boggs’ book The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, I really love that, when she writes about revolutionary living, it comes down to this:
Overall, we try to make our living in ways that are in harmony with our convictions.
How can we apply playful reverence to the practice of living in harmony with our convictions?
How do the questions we ask ourselves shift?
What is *your way* of trying something?
Follow your enthusiasm—it knows.
If playful reverence resonates for you, I made a video about it last year:
What does playful reverence look like in your life? What does thinking along these lines up for you? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
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