I recently facilitated a home cleansing and blessing with the most delightful family, and it was so much fun! If you know me, I always bring my intuition into my work, so when I was fashioning this customized blessing, I sifted through various teachings and techniques from over 21 years of my career, knowing there were many approaches I could employ here. Something that became very clear, very quickly: I am going to make this fun!  For a moment, I questioned my intuition even though I knew adding play in would be impactful, I thought to make it more serious so the work I was doing would be taken more seriously by those I was doing it for, and maybe it would be even more healing.  But I quickly remembered the healing power of play because I am done with, “If something has deep meaning, is spiritual and is going to really work, it has to be serious and hard work.”

In various spiritual circles I see this all too often, where people have somehow confused being spiritual, with being serious. That if you work harder at being spiritual, you’ll somehow get somewhere faster and heal faster. Perhaps it gives you a sense of safety that good things will happen to you.  Maybe it gives you a sense of protection from feeling difficult feelings. Maybe it gives you a sense of self worth based on how others see you because you look like a seriously spiritual person.  Maybe you feel spiritually good and it will fast track to your healed place.  Here is the thing and it’s not an insult, it’s a critical observation: Every group, has a vibe, a way it moves, a set of signals that reinforce it’s existence that we buy into to make us feel like we have our place in it if we identify with it. It’s actually quite natural to emulate so I’m not knocking that, it’s human nature but it’s also in our nature to continue to grow and redefine ourselves and the group, as we grow.

Let’s use 1980’s high school culture as an example because it has very stark contrasts: The jocks are aggressive, the nerds are shy, the rebels don’t care…now back to our present day, the spiritual people are serious about healing.  What is the point of engaging in any of the spiritual and healing practices at all?  Isn’t it to enjoy your life more?  I don’t think it’s to be on some never ending path of prostration and healing.  When do you think you are allowed to have fun?  How much wisdom do you need first to have fun later?  How much healing do you need to do first before you have fun?  How serious do you have to be in order to move your life forward before you have fun?  How serious does your healing modality need to be to give deep value?  Do you think fun is for the silly ones, the irresponsible, the ineffective ones?  Or is having fun the actual point of everything?

What if you overcomplicate your life to the point where you suck all the fun out of it, and for what?  Where are you trying to get to?  Where are you trying to get to where you genuinely feel that you can’t have any fun in order to get there?  When did fun become this wicked, stupid thing that gets in the way and gets you nowhere?  This kind of belief makes you feel like you are doing something to move forward, but it’s actually keeping you stuck.  Never ending healing is a distraction to you and your life, why?  Because it can feel easier to stay where you are than to let go and enjoy.  Letting go can feel painful, but so is suffering.  Yes we still have responsibility, and all the challenges that come along with life, but it is not void of fun and playfulness.  If it is, that is your doing. I’m not saying have fun all the time and everything is fun.  I’m saying you choose what you value and how you live your life.

I value many things: reverence, sacred spaces, gentle ways of being, soft moments, fire and passion, integrity, courage and fun – as often as I can.  When I have more fun in my life, I am more lit up, have more energy, I am more creative, I am more fun to be around, I have more love to give, my body feels more alive and is healthier, I make better decisions, I trust myself more, I enforce boundaries easier, I engage in my community more, I am a better teacher and facilitator, I’m more bold and more relaxed, I laugh more and I love more, I could go on.

If you are finding yourself defending other ways of being, feel free do so and explore, to live and create and exist how you see fit.  Though if you are wanting to give yourself radical permission to have more fun, well then take this and run with it.  It just might be the smartest thing you could do for the life you’ve been dreaming.  Your life is now. If you spend your life preparing to get somewhere, when will you actually arrive and live it?  This is not a choice between having goals and having fun; it’s both as they enliven each other.  This indicates you being more in tune with your soul, because when you are expressing your soul more freely, your goals can feel fun to you.

The funny thing is, what I’m saying here isn’t new at all, but then why don’t we allow more fun?  Perhaps instead of getting stuck in the rabbit hole of, “why”, feel the “yes” in you to do it and allow it.  Each day is your opportunity and you will find ways every single day if you want to.  It’s easy to have fun when you’ve reached your goal or got the thing, or finished the thing, or are on vacation or are retired, but enjoying yourself, having fun while you can, in ways you can, is a choice.