Becoming a Live Player
March 27th, 2021
The course I designed with David Fuller, founder of Rebel Wisdom, has launched. It is called “Becoming a Live Player.” We will be teaching it together, along with the likes of John Vervaeke and many other awesome facilitators.
The course’s name is from Samo Burja’s “live player” idea. A live player is a player that has the ability to create something new, something that has never been seen before. Bonnitta Roy tweeted something related recently ...
Most of us have been paralyzed by the belief that we need to know how to do something before we can learn how to do it. Hence, few people get started on the world they would like to see.
Yeah. That was totally me, but then the madness came and nudged me out of my own way. When Yancy Strickler was our guest at Chapel Perilous, Rebecca Fox asked him to tell us something he does not know, and he said: I do not know how to be myself online.
I like that answer. The cool thing about people like Bonnitta and Yancey is that they are not allowing themselves to be paralyzed by the belief that they need to know what they are doing before they do it.
If we are honest with ourselves, we do not know how to be ourselves online, and that is okay, because nobody fucking knows how to be themselves online. I sense admitting this is an important move. We need live players to start playing on the internet, and step one of this play is to admit that we do not know how to play on the internet. Step two is to start playing anyway.
I like what we wrote at the beginning of the course page:
We need to play a new game, and to play it we need new players. In a world increasingly run by people and institutions following rigid scripts and uninspired stories, we need to learn how to become a “live player.”
In this course you will develop capacities to help navigate our uncertain times, communicate across political divides, and authentically co-create a new world with a sense of aliveness.
That sense of aliveness is key. It is like the spiritual litmus test to know we are on the right path. I have been doing my best to be a live player on the internet since the virus came, with this mysterious thing called The Stoa. I probably did not always do a good job, but I feel like I did a good enough job on Sunday.
We had the “Maybe the End of The Stoa Party” on Sunday, which was The Stoa’s first birthday. It was a special day. My eyes got wet, so did other eyes in the room. It made the last year worthwhile. It made the last year make sense. The regulars who attend the Stoic Hustle arranged a thank you card for me, which contained many thank you letters from people who were touched by The Stoa.
I read all of them a few days ago. A few lines in particular got me teary-eyed, and I do not know why. This one especially got me:
I am quietly amazed at this beautiful daemon you had channeled — that weaved together such a wild, improvisational cacophony of people, wisdoms and practices into the strange attractor of The Stoa. Yet the daemon only chooses a human who is worthy, and I am also struck by your Stoic virtue, your sometimes-intimidating dude-energy, your endearing dorkiness, and the way you honour beauty and truth as an everyday, living practice.
“The daemon only chooses a human who is worthy.” That is what got me. When the madness was here, I wrote a journal entry titled “Believing Beauty,” and in that entry I wrote the following: I want to say I will believe, but I do not feel worthy enough to believe. Is that why the daemon will not leave me alone? Because he knows that I know I am unworthy?
Perhaps being unworthy in the right way is what attracts the daemon to play. Reading all those letters, and seeing all the gratitude towards me was overwhelming. People said The Stoa changed their life, and their way of being. Here is a random message I just pulled up: The Stoa has taught me so much, allowed me to open up, be myself, and love one another and the world.
Wow. Seeing myself through all these grateful eyes engendered an interesting intrasubjective experience. The most salient one was not feeling worthy: oh you got the wrong guy, if only you knew me better. Beside this was an egoic sensation that said: that is right, I am fucking awesome.
That egoic part was faint enough, which allowed me to experience something else: a full-frontal receiving of the gratitude—and love—from others. I did not realize before how hard it was to receive this. I am apparently not in the right relationship with receiving this. I would rather deflect it by feeling inadequate, displaying false modesty, or engaging in egoic red herrings.
Those are easier to do. It is harder to just face the grateful music. It shines so bright, and all I do is get teary-eyed in its presence. I want to get better at receiving this. I want to get better at letting people love me.
After reading these thank you letters, and processing all of these emotions, something strange occurred: I distinctly felt like I knew myself less. Who is this person they are seeing? It does not seem like me, but it is me. It felt good, not knowing myself like this.
This kind of not knowing felt alive, and yeah, the thought that feels alive right now is this: this is how you fucking play on the internet.
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