Playing with self-concepts to open to more love 🧌

When my son asks me to be “Spidey” or “Green Goblin” these characters become real in the sense that my actions change, and the world corresponding changes. I pretend to shoot webs or Goblin Goo instead of playing hide and seek. But I don’t confuse myself that I’ve truly become these characters, or assume that they’re real outside of how they inform our play.

Similarly, if you ask me, “what age are you right now?” I will find an age and let it inform how we play together. We’ll get insight if we look for it, but because we looked. 

Everything is connected to everything and we create frames (maps, concepts, worlds) to live as individual beings. Their unreality means I don’t need to deny them: Freedom is not just seeing the frames (the illusion), it’s being free to inhabit them.

Ages, Spidey characters, parts from IFS, developmental stages—I am all and none of them right now. If one helps me be more compassionate with myself or loving with my family, I use it! If I end up becoming overly self-interested with my inner psychic choir, or forgetting the map isn’t the territory, I let the frame go! 

Here’s a frame I like: The love that motivates these kinds of questions is more “real”, than the frames they rest on. So I say yes to love and play.

With love, Jordan