S3:E147 - Make-Believe as Magic: How Play Connects Us to the Otherworld and Why Adults Need It

Make-believe is...

An entrance into a non-ordinary state of consciousness, a non-ordinary reality.

I'm sure this is not a novel idea, but to me it was novel.

It was this sudden moment of like, oh my goodness, when children play, when they are completely lost in a different realm, in a place where the people they're speaking to and interacting with are so real in their minds, even if those of us on the outside looking in can't see them.

Is that not similar to when we use the drum or our breath or the pace of our walking feet to drop into a trance-like state and access these non-ordinary states of reality, this connection to the other world? And so I thought that was a really interesting moment of recognition for me as to why it is that, A, we are so drawn to make-believe, as children, as we play, but also as adults when we escape to the realm of a book, when we fantasize in our heads about a different potential reality.

when we are drawn to things like dungeons and dragons and getting into a different world but also why play is so important i've talked about play on this podcast before and the value of play in our development and our ability to interact with one another in our well-being It's not just valuable for children, it's very much valuable for adults.

But one of the things that isn't in the research, because how could it be at this point, is this sense that I got that play is a means of accessing non-ordinary reality, of connecting to or touching the other world.

And how beautiful is that? Because when we play, we have to suspend that critical, rational, reality-based world.

We suspend our disbelief.

We let go of that critical reasoning and we get to just create and float and touch these glimmers of inspiration that otherwise might not come through.

And so how beautiful is it to think that when we make-believe, We are touching the other world.

We're opening our hearts and our minds to receive the wisdom and the glimmers that can come from that world that is a mirror and yet so different from our own.

The way that the Celtic other world is understood in mythology and Celtic tradition is that it is upon our world it's it is in the same place as our world and yet not right so we have all this mythology of people walking through the mists and their feet don't stop treading the ground but suddenly they are not in the same world despite being in the same place as they were a breath ago There's a different sense of time.

The seasons are different.

It's almost like it's overlaid on the world.

And when we talk about the thinning of the veil between the worlds, which is coming up soon, that thinning is beginning very soon as we start to move towards Samhain in the dark half of the year.

there's that sense of like it becomes easier to shift between this world and that other world and so is make-believe also a little easier in these dark months when the veil becomes thin when it's easier to connect with and touch the mysteries on the other side of our conscious waking physical lived reality So this was just something that sprang to my mind and I really wanted to share.

And as I was sitting down to record today, I recognized that it wasn't probably going to be a full episode's worth of material to speak to.

And just looking at my timer, we're at six minutes.

We could have a six minute episode, but that feels a little bit short.

And so I would love for us, before we shift a little bit and I go off in a different direction, to simply be with this idea for a minute, not rush through it.

When was the last time you played make-believe? When was the last time you dressed up? In this healing that I did, there was this imagery of Like, I don't know if when you were a kid, you ever used to play like royalty or whatever, but you'd take your parents duvet or comforter, the biggest blanket you had, you wrap it around your shoulders and it would be like your cloak or your cape, right? The royal cape, the robes, that feeling of being ensconced or enveloped in yards of material and how luscious and rich that made you feel.

Yeah.

and I know for me if you're watching this on YouTube you'll see me I keep closing my eyes and moving my arms around but that sense of being transported just by throwing a blanket over your shoulders is so magical and so potent and that immediate kind of shift from I am no longer the me that has to go to school every day or get up and go to work every day now I'm I don't know a beautiful princess locked in a tower or something and so just like tapping into that feeling that memory of making believe of playing of allowing your imagination to run completely wild when was the last time you let yourself do that and maybe you have children and they've invited you into those spaces and you've gone along with it and pretended for their sake but did you allow yourself to really pretend I know for me, I play Dungeons and Dragons a few times a month, usually kind of on and off, at least once a month we get together.

And I struggle as an adult to allow myself to slip into that character.