My task is I think twofold.  First is to talk enough to give them a kind of intellectual frame so they feel a little bit safe in their intellect. And I have to create that slippage so they can actually take their body and slide in to play, gradually, so literally they don't know what happened to themselves.  They feel it.

It is much bigger than certainly coaches who come on a field and say we've got to compete to become number one at little league, or the coach of the Chicago Bulls, or Dallas Cowboys, or the President of a country. I think as human beings we have really bought into it. And it seems normal. It seems so normal and natural that to think anything else seems literally absurd. And I'm sure that I don't know how I would look at me if I had not had the experiences I've had that show me there is another out there, another way outside us.

Because I went through all this stuff. I played little league baseball, high school football, college crew, amateur ski racing, I did all that and I assumed that was all there was. I competed as a university person. That's what there is. I never knew there was an outside to that. The whole world, everything seemed that that was the nature of life itself. And when I looked at all the wildlife stuff that came on TV and in National Geographic, and they looked at baby lions and they said they were playing to learn the behaviors that they would need as predators. I said, well yeah, that makes sense. I see that. That's true.

If I had not played with wolves and cheetahs and so on, I would never understand that those animals know another kind of behavior and they know contest but there's another chink in there, that if we don't know how to see it, it's invisible. And we have been so programmed for so long, not only just within let's say an American culture, but as humans to believe that fight/flight survival of the fittest, competition is the way we need to be. That there was no other option for us. And I'm sure I would still believe that if I had not had the experiences I've had so that what happened to me is not that I have an idea that there's another thing out there, I've experienced another thing. The trouble that it's been for me is how do I take an experience that the whole, not only just the culture but the whole world says doesn't exist, and how do I talk about that? And how do I say, not only does it exist, we can do it now. It's tangible and it's real.  It's not fairytale and it's not idealistic, and brings that world into a world that says it doesn't exist. That has been extremely hard to do. But still I believe possible and relevant and important to do.

I consider everything we're doing as a revolutionary dead-end.  And then it puts those Christ's saying about go to the children. God does that put that in immense proportions, that we literally have, we've almost taken an evolutionary side track, and we've been given the hints about where the real track lies, but we're still afraid to take that risk on that.

And what I see as my job, because that literally is I think a description of what happens to me when I go to a school, when I go to a gang, or when I go to a corporation.  When I go to a corporation, they're still trying to figure out why they invited me there, and so are the gangs.  They can't figure out why I should be there in their world. 

My task is I think twofold.  First is to talk enough to give them a kind of intellectual frame so they feel a little bit safe in their intellect.  Okay, I've got a grip about, this is what he's talking about.  He's going a little off side of what I've learned, but still I can hear him.  And what I have to do is go through a gradation of steps that's not intellectual, that takes their body to the play space.  I have to create that slippage so they can actually take their body and slide in to play, gradually, so literally they don't know what happened to themselves.  They feel it.  Oh, this is what you're talking about.  Okay.  I feel it.  But you're still going to have a problem, and it is an enormous problem of taking that feeling coming back into the corporation, into the gang or the classroom, or wherever they live the real world, and say now what? Because then they're in the position that the hockey player was in.  Or at a bigger level, they're in the position that Jesus was in. 

When you literally have the experience of saying wow, it's really true, I've experienced that love is the most important thing.  It's not just an intellectual idea.  It's not just nice.  It's tangible and it's real.  Now how do I live that moment by moment?  That changes the whole thing.  So that's my task that I go into as a person going to corporations, gangs, and so on.  I want them to feel it in their body, in their hearts, get it out of their heads.  Then when they are caught, it could be, I'm thinking of a woman who worked at a university. 

She told me the story after she had played and then went back and she went into a board room, it was a faculty meeting.  All of the faculty were male.  She was the only women.  They were all doing their bickering, normal academic bickering when she went in and she decided that this time she was going to do one of the things that I suggested. So she went around the room and without attracting any attention, she touched, in an appropriate way, every single man before she sat down in her seat. She said by the time she sat down in her seat, the entire environment had changed.  There was no contest going on and the room completely changed. When she left she was astounded at what had happened. Literally what I think she did was to go in and provide an option. She had the courage. Not to go in and yell at them. Not to go in and to be a non-contestant contestant, but go in and be a person who just provides an option, and in such way that makes it safe. It's got to be safe. And they just slid in to this space.