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I find myself in a bind. I am at my best when I play, yet I can't force myself to play. The more I try to force play the further I move away from it. I may develop elaborate tricks to delude myself into thinking I'm playing, but deep down I see through it and life feels wasted.
Instead, perhaps I tell myself to grow up! Not everything can be play and I should just power through, work harder! But this is still a forcing that misses the point of life. Nature doesn't force anything, yet everything gets done. So I force and still don't find 'it'.
One day I wonder if I've been going about the whole thing backwards. I see through the folly of forcing, that the way out is to stop forcing, and I resolve to do that instead. And so I'm a bind once again. I end up forcing the not forcing and find myself in the same place.
How frustrating! Everything I do to escape the cycle just embeds me more deeply within it! Fortunately there is a way, but it's much too simple for the likes of me, who has been conditioned since the beginning how to act, how to feel, how to achieve.
The way out is simply to stop all of that. The thing I am looking for cannot be looked for, and looking for it hides it further, yet it's always immediately available wherever I am. Like play, it appears the moment I stop looking for it.
How? Right now, notice how much effort you're putting into understanding these words. You don't need to do any of it, you don't even know HOW you do it, it happens by itself. Let go of that extra effort and notice that you can still read and understand
Notice the sounds around you. Notice also how you TRY to listen, as if sending your awareness outside your body to get the sounds. Notice how you try to label and make sense of them. Let go of all that. The sounds will make their own way to you and you will make sense of them.
This is where play can be found. In this place a natural enjoyment can come up. You won't find yourself lying motionless on the floor, in the same way as a child playing can't help but run around until they can't run any more. But this can be scary for adults!
Who will I be if I stop forcing? What will happen if I finally let myself admit that I don't really want the thing I've long tried to convince myself that I want? It's only scary at first as the old held structures start to loosen and then break away. And then there is play.
Meta] If you've come across this thread in isolation and want to go deeper then you might be interested in my 'thread of threads' on the topic. https://t.co/pppidMHSzH
Meta] Also, if you want to dive much deeper into this stuff, I have built what I believe is the only asynchronous online course that explores Alexander Technique from a first principles perspective. You can find out more and stay up to date by going here: https://t.co/GHzsyr4ILq