Play as an Integral Life Practice

I really enjoyed reading the recent article by Gwen Gordon and Sean Esbjorn-Hargens called Integral Play: An exploration of the playground and the evolution of the player.

Their developmental hypothesis on the evolution of the player rings in loud resonance with my experience of growing through play-forms. I feel it quite accurately accounts/describes notions of play that I have discarded and longed for at different points on my road.

The hypothesis also made me ponder how my relationship to experiences at my edge of development completely transform when framed as play. In particular, I can take spiritual practice so seriously at times that it becomes a form of burden and toil. Seeing Gwen and Sean frame the exploratory nature of practice as a form of play brings a bright new constellation to my relationship with it.

Here's a wonderful excerpt from the paper:

"The Eight Play Selves are based on Susanne Cook-Greuter's and William Torbert's full spectrum Action-Inquiry research on postautonomous ego development. Their research represents the most sophisticated and extensive full-spectrum (prepersonal, personal, postpersonal, and post- postpersonal) research available… Each play self has a unique way of relating to itself, other playmates, and the playground. In brief:

1. The impulsive self is a Magical Player who connects with the cosmos by balancing dichotomous forces such as good and evil. They have a strong concern for creating safety and satisfying basic needs. The Magical Player has a sense of unlimited power combined with superstitious and magical notions. Their play is often highly repetitive. They view other people primarily as a source of self-gratification and feel confused and anxious by the complexity of the world.
   
2. The self-protective self is an Aggressive Player who is self-serving. Their play often takes the form of heroic acts. They identify the self in terms of its will, ideas, and wishes. Self- preservation is central. They project all their feelings and rarely self-reflect. They think globally with many judgments and simple ideas. They see other people as competitors for space, goods, and dominance and have little capacity for insight into self and others. They often cross other's boundaries in a crusade of low trust and hyper-vigilance. They experience the world as a dangerous place filled with perilous risk.
   
3. The conformist self is an Ordered Player who is rule-oriented and concerned with group membership. They define themselves through others. They have no stable and clear boundaries between the self and the group. Projection and introjection are their common defenses. They suppress negative feelings and overemphasize positive ones. They have a strong need to be accepted and to reject those who do not conform to the group. They view their world through a concrete-literal lens.
   
4. The conscientious self is a Status Player who is defined by their orientation toward linear causality, objective (third-person) thinking, and a newly emerging separate self-identity, which lends itself to competition for status. The self has greater independence and confidence. They have an interest in their emotional life, though rationality is emphasized. They associate with others with similar goals and desires in life. They are drawn to achievement and accomplishing goals by being concise, efficient, and effective. They have a genuine interest in others, independent of their own needs and values. The world is experienced as predictable and measurable.
   
5. The individualistic self is a Sensitive Player who emphasizes connectivity between people, especially by sharing experiences, acknowledging contextual aspects of play (e.g., gender, class, race), and systemic dynamics of reality. They are aware of the observer and multiple viewpoints. They abandon objectivity and logic in favor of more holistic and organismic approaches. They value feelings and express them. They are aware of the conditioning dynamics of culture and context. They have the capacity to empathize with others and take their perspective. They understand their world is filled with diverse perspectives and competing truth claims.
   
6. The autonomous self is a Complex Player who welcomes chaos and multiple variables in service of self-development. The Complex Player understands the self as embedded in many contexts and dimensions. They accept many aspects of self through a complex psychology that integrates shadow material. They tolerate others in spite of their negative traits and differences of opinions or values. They experience their world as multidimensional with overlapping contexts and systems.
   
7. The construct-aware self is a Dynamic Player who integrates multimodal and multidimensional elements across contexts in service of humanity. They are aware of the subtle ways the ego filters experience. The Dynamic Player recognizes paradox and the limits of "mapping." They desire to work through their own limits and blind spots and increase their capacity to witness themselves in the moment. They understand others in developmental terms and encounter them without judgment. They have a profound understanding of other's complex and dynamic personalities. They experience the world as a place full of potential and paradox.
8. The ego-aware self is a Unitive Player who is a transparent manifestation of Being, completely spontaneous and open. They have stable access to transpersonal realities such as the capacity to witness all experience and keep their boundaries open. They view others as manifestations of Being. They experience the world as an immanent expression of timeless Spirit (see figure 6 below)".
   

Fig 6

Ctr. Of Identity	Play Selves	Style of Play	Examples
Pneumacentric	Unitive Player Play as Lila	Spontaneous, Witnessing, highly creative, Original, and open	Identification with the play of the world. Improv. at psychospiritual levels, Crazy wisdom, Tantra, and playing with luminosity. Unites determinisitic and free, structured and open chaos and order
Kosmocenttric	Dynamic Player Play as transformative	Multimodal and multidimensional	Improvisation with transformation, Meditation, holotropic breathwork, inquiry
Worldcentric	Complex Player Play as chaos	Fast and unpredictable	Improvisation with the world, improv. Movement and theater, multidimensional simulations, virtual reality
Worldcentric	Sensitive Player Play as cooperation	Connecting and sharing	Name games, ropes courses, New Games, team building exercises
Sociocentric	Status Player Play as competitions	Winning and Losing	Video games, gambling, poker, competitive sports, games at fairs and carnivals, ropes courses (trans.)
Ethnocentric	Ordered Player Play as structure	Following the rules	Board games, collections, hobbies, card games, intellectual games
Egocentric	Aggressive Player Play as conquest	Acts of heroism	Survivor, war games, chicken, drinking games, boxing/fights
Egocentric	Magical Player Play as connection to cosmos	Balancing good and evil	Dungeons and Dragons, fantasy games, divination: Runes, Tarot, magic tricks, charms, rituals