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Pretending -- It Isn't the Ending
April 10, 2009
All too often, when we start pretending, it is because the love affair, or the business affair, or the creative affair, feels like it is over. The fire has gone out, and it's winding down to a conclusion. So we merely go through the motions, pretending to love, to care, to dream, all the while keeping our eyes open for some other inspiration or opportunity to take us away. But this is no way to live, and it is a poor excuse for pretending, too.
Successful people -- in love, in business, in creativity, and in every other endeavor -- will readily admit that the opportunity to pretend is an integral part of success. Time is set aside to play, to act out, to brainstorm, to monkey around with things. Moments are set apart so that no one is just going through the motions, and everyone is encouraged to discover the inspiration and opportunity growing within. They know that if they provide the opportunity for play, for expression, without negative repercussions, their associates and companions will respond.
In the set aside moment of time, an employee can act like the boss and say just what he thinks about the company, but he is pretending. A lover can suggest whatever she wants to her companion, but she is pretending. In the pretend, we are just sending out signals, and they may not be our true thoughts or feelings at all -- they may be just ideas that popped into our heads. We are granted immunity so that we can freely play. So it is that the artist can mock even the best parts of society.
The key to conscious ritualing is that everyone is aware that in this moment, within the framework of ritual, we are free to play. And just as there are no expectations (since no one feels like playing all the time), so also there are no recriminations -- quite the contrary, we are encouraged to move beyond the boundaries.
Our expressions may fall flat and be lost to oblivion. Or they may chain throughout the group, revealing their qualiadelic power. And this is what we strive for. The buzz of living ideas. It is this that keeps everyone coming back to the ritual. Over time, as again and again we return to and play with the attractive ideas, expressions, gestures, symbols -- in short, the qualiadelia -- they evolve.
And as the qualiadelia evolves, so do we. That is the nature of the qualiadelic relationship and the goal of conscious ritualing: to grow our communities the way we want them to grow.
Casual Fridays, open marriages, performance art -- these phenomena would never have come into the culture if someone hadn't been granted the freedom to suggest them. Some ideas become traditions with staying power while others come and go. But if a tradition becomes too rigid, and allows no room for conscious ritualing, then hearts and minds can't help begin to look elsewhere.
A marriage with no room for play is a morose affair, and the children will soon lose their own natural ability to play. By the same token, it is dangerous for an artist to take himself too seriously. The same is true for businesses and every other community group. To be healthy we must make time to express the would be's and should be's of the pretend.
Be Qualiadelic. Be Conscious. Change the routine.
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