I also just wrote a book on anxiety and how it’s ruining so many lives and how the solution for it is to go into our creativity and live in a creative space all the time in our brains. So I’ve been doing those things. I try to practice what I preach. And I have been, for a long time, following the joy and seeing what comes from that.

Lately, especially after I wrote Beyond Anxiety, which I talked about doing a test on myself to see if it really worked. The equation of creative brain plus creative activity cancels out anxiety. It wasn’t an equation. It’s something about, I think, the way the brain works. If you’re in a creative process, it’s very difficult to be in anxiety and vice versa. So I started doing something while I was researching that book. I took a month to just live a creative life, a life that would light up the right hemisphere of my brain. 

And for me, I thought, “I’ll start with drawing and painting” because I did that a lot in different periods of my life. So I was a bit rusty. I sort of got out the pencils and things and started sketching away. And at first I was rusty and then it was like, woo! I broke through into this sort of bliss zone. And I did this for a month and I never got beyond drawing and painting. I was just like, “Ahh, drawing and painting every day.” And I was in a state of such joy, no anxiety whatsoever, just play.

And then at the end of the month, I’m like, “Okay, that has to stop. I need to go back to real life.” And it wouldn’t work. I could not go back to real life. It was just that part of me that was the creative, joyful part had tasted freedom. And she was not going back in the box where she’d been stuffed so that I could make a career for myself and support my family as the primary breadwinner and all the things.

So I never stopped, really. I’ve been sort of drawing and painting ever since. And about a year and a half ago, a year and a few months ago, I was in Africa, South Africa, Londolozi, a place of deep, deep, deep spiritual significance for me. And I always want to draw and paint what I see there. So I was thinking about this landscape that I wanted to draw. But then I started to have, and I believe that one has these. What I said in my book was, if you get creative and you live in the creative space enough, you start to go to the part of your consciousness that we call the mystery because it’s really not explicable from the part of us that is just physical being. When you go there, you start to feel like, “I am not just this physical being. I am a creative consciousness that is working through this physical being, but there is so much more to me.” And you get into this place of the mystery. 

So I was in South Africa and I was doing all my meditation and art and the things I do. And I had this huge sort of awakening moment. It was kind of an epiphany. I’ve had a series of these. And they do say in the old ancient traditions of awakening that you can go in stages—little epiphanies, boom, boom, boom—where you sort of wake up a little bit more each time and you never sort of go back. It’s like a ratchet. And so I had this experience in Africa that was kind of mind-blowing, as often happens at Londolozi, but I had an idea for a painting.

And so I came back, and those of you who are in my online community, Wilder, the Wilder community, we have these meetings we call the Friday Arty Hangs, where everybody gets together on Zoom and does some kind of art with their hands while we all have a discussion on a given topic. So one day after coming back from Africa, I was on the Friday Arty Hang. And I was working on a big concept for a painting that I’d sketched out while I was there. And I just was getting the very basic things down on the canvas. But Rowan, my partner who does Wilder with me, she said, “No, you have to show your work, Marty.” 

So I showed the people in Wilder. Now, the reason I’m going to all this trouble to explain it is that they can verify if necessary that I started this painting like a long time ago. And then in the winter, I didn’t have a lot of time to work on it, and everything was chaotic. I was traveling. So I went back to working on it this spring after I got back from another Africa trip. And it’s a big painting-ish for me. And it’s a complicated subject that is not something I could ever see in real life because I decided “Who wants another nice landscape? I want to paint portals into the awakening of consciousness as best I can”—because that’s not hard.

So that’s what this painting was, and it gave me fits. I just couldn’t get it to look the way I wanted because I’d never seen this in nature because it never happened in nature. And it took a lot longer than most of the things I’ve worked on, but I was kind of obsessed with it. I lost sleep over it because I didn’t know how to make it work, blah, blah, blah. And I just poured hours into this thing. And then one day I just said to the force, “Look, if this is the right way to go, like pouring all my time into a piece of canvas that nobody’s ever going to really see, shouldn’t I be writing another book? Shouldn’t I be coaching more people? Shouldn’t I be making more of an impact? If this painting thing is the right course for me, I need a sign.”

All right. Now, I have also been in the habit of watching people’s near-death experience stories before I go to bed at night. I go to sleep. It’s like a bedtime story for me. It’s very comforting and loving because they talk about how life is hard and then you die and then things really get good. You’re surrounded by a non-judgmental, loving warmth. And I’ve felt that a little bit before. So it really puts me in a sweet place.

Well, the day after I asked, “Give me a sign,” I watched the near-death experience of a man named Pat Johnson. He was in a kayaking accident on September 12th, 2010. And he drowned and left his body and was in this still, quiet, warm, loving space. And in March, he recorded the story of his near-death experience. So I’m watching this and loving it. And then he starts talking about what he saw once he went to the other side. I thought, “Huh, that’s interesting. It’s kind of like my painting.” And then he started saying more and more. And I was like, “Oh my God.”

So I want to show you guys this thing. All right. So I’m going to read from the transcript of his near-death experience. If you wanted to look it up, it’s Pat Johnson. He drowned in a kayaking accident in 2010. This is part of what he says: “There was a blue stained glass and it was like somebody had thrown a rock through it. And kind of to the right and down from center was a hole, but the hole wasn’t round like somebody cut it. It was like somebody threw a rock through the glass and it had jagged edges to it. And behind the glass was this immense white light. White, white, white, white, white. And it didn’t hurt to look at it. I could look directly into it, but maybe here on earth, if it was the same kind of light, you wouldn’t be able to look into it. And it kind of looked like a kaleidoscope. And to the left of me and above my head, it was rough like being inside a cave, but it was covered with this black, soft like a felt or a velvet. And the floor was just solid black marble, but it had the beams that were coming off the light and they were kind of reflecting off the floor. And off to the right of me, it was just total darkness.”

Okay. This is the description. I just read it to you. Now, several months before he even recorded this and long before I heard it, this is the painting I’ve been doing. It’s pretty well done, I think now—it’ll never be what I want it to be. Okay, now you are seeing a mirror image of it because when I put my camera on it, I flip it around. So actually, yeah, no, I think you are seeing it correctly. I can’t tell. Anyway, stained glass window. It’s not blue, all right, I’ll give you that. But stained glass window. Jagged hole. You can’t see it super well. I have photographs of all the stages where I did the jagged, I just painted a black jagged hole. Then I painted a black marble floor where I put all the squares down. I mean, if you look at the painting closely, you’ll be able to see the bricks of marble put together. Then the light beams reflecting off the floor. Then the blackness, the velvety blackness to the sides.

Okay. This is a very specific image. This is a very specific image. And it is so close to what I’ve been painting. And this was right after I asked for a sign that pouring all my time into this painting was a good idea. It’s so specific that it’s hard to say it was coincidence, yeah?

So I’ve been stuck going, “Okay, but what? I’m not an artist. I don’t sell stuff. My paintings just get stacked up in my studio. Who cares?” But then I was thinking about a book called Finite and Infinite Games that was given to me by my friend, my great friend Jennifer Voss. It’s by a guy named James Carse, a philosopher. And he talks about how there are two kinds of games in the world. The things we think of as games are, he calls them finite games. And he played football in high school and he would wait for the games, but not because he enjoyed playing them, because he wanted desperately to get to the end of the game and say that they had won, his team had won. And it was very stressful and he actually didn’t enjoy playing very much. But then he said when he was growing up and he was littler, there was an endless game of softball going on in his neighborhood with a lot of different kids.

And the whole idea was you could just come into the game and then leave the game, but the game just kept going. And so he said, “Our lives consist of two kinds of games. The finite games, which are the only things we are credited with doing right or the only things we credit with being worthwhile. These are finite games where the end is “I won and I got money. I won and I got status. I won and I got power.” So in the finite game, the purpose is to play to win.

Then there are infinite games where the purpose is to keep playing. I know so many writers who say now—because writing is not a way to get rich—so many of my writer friends say, “I just want to write, get enough money from writing to justify continuing to write.” When you’re doing something because you want to keep doing it, you are in a completely different set of values. And I don’t think we even understand how vastly different life is from those two sets of values.

But definitely for me, I think like a long time ago on The Gathering Room when I was in my first months of painting, I remember doing like nine different copies of a watercolor and saying, “This is so dumb. I’m just turning out reject paintings.” And then I realized the purpose isn’t the painting. The purpose is painting.

So all of us are participating in finite games. If there’s anything you’re trying to do that is stressful, where you think you should be playing a game a certain way, where there’s a clear win that has to do with dollars and bragging rights and things like that, you’re in finite games and you can feel the crushing pressure of that. And that is the only thing that society is going to reward you for.

But there are, in our lives, infinite games. And you also have infinite games that you’re playing. Games that are fluid and ongoing and they bring people together in joy and love. Okay? So I’m going to read a few different characteristics of first, the finite games and then the infinite games.

Okay. So finite games have fixed rules that cannot change during play. Dynamic—sorry—infinite games have rules that shift. They’re dynamic. The reason they shift is to prevent the game from ending because the game is joyful. 

Finite games, everybody is explicitly identified. You have to make the team. Nobody else is let on. Infinite games, you can just bring people into your world, go into their world at will, a concert where everyone starts to sing. I went to an Ani DiFranco concert where she just said, “You all know the chorus. Just sing it with me.” And the whole crowd was singing, and it was this incredible, infinite game. 

Okay. The finite game is about, the goal is to produce a winner and a loser and end the game. Infinite games, the objective is to sustain the play, invite other people into the game and ensure continuity that things keep going. 

So finite games, some examples are like professional sports, a political election, a job interview where you got a job. Infinite games are things like a marriage, a whole career that consists of you playing at something that you’re doing for the joy of it. Learning is an infinite game. Even business can be an infinite game. Gardening is an infinite game. Love is an infinite game.

So I just wanted all of us today, what did I take from this weird coincidence of this guy basically having a near-death experience where he described the painting that I’d been working on? Yeah, I told you the story. I don’t need to say it all again. It just blew my mind. So what do we do to shift from one to the other?

James Carse believes that we can deliberately shift our consciousness from the finite game system into the infinite game system. And here’s the thing, there’s nothing to be lost by switching to the infinite game because all the finite games you want can fit into the infinite game. So if your infinite game is learning, you can fit in a whole bunch of research projects that have an end, but you don’t take them as seriously. They are part of an ongoing series of finite games you play in the service of the infinite game, which is joy, which is flow, which is love, which is companionship. If your infinite game is love, you’ll have many relationships, many different kinds of relationships. Some of them will end well, some of them will end badly. It’s okay. Because even if a relationship seems to end, part of the infinite game of love has been enriched. Okay?

So if you think about the attitudes of the infinite versus finite game, the finite player is after power, titles, and status. So if you’re interested in that, you’re in the finite games. The infinite player is interested in growth, resilience, and continuity. So if right now you’re going for power titles and status, just think about, “What if I shift over to growth, resilience, and continuity?” The finite player wants to control outcomes. The infinite player welcomes surprises. So if you’re trying to control the outcome like, “I need to control my child’s life and what that child becomes,” start to say, “What if there’s a surprise here? What if I could welcome it the way I did when I realized one of my children had Down syndrome?” Whoa, that’s a different thing. What if I play a different game with that?

The finite player is anchored to the past victories and holding onto titles and wealth and status and all of that. The infinite player is into future possibilities and adaptation: “What can I do that will be fun as the finite games go by? Because they will, they’ll end and I’ll still be in the infinite game.” And the preparation that the finite player needs is like highly specific training to manage all the known variables, where the infinite player just needs an open mind to handle the unexpected. So it’s crystallized intelligence versus fluid intelligence.

There’s so many paradigms that fit within these two ways of looking at how we do life, how we play. The infinite versus finite game is something that James Carse says is an entire different paradigm for the way human systems work across the board. Businesses, families, nations, everyone. If we can shift to the infinite game, here’s the deal: The finite games will be less stressful. It won’t be as hard on us if we don’t win at the finite game in the way we think we should. And we will constantly be encountering rich new possibilities of ways to play the infinite game. So I mean, this whole weird thing with my painting, I thought, “Okay, well, I’m going to keep painting because of this weird synchronicity. And I’m also going to let it be a mystery for me why I’m painting. I don’t know where it’s going to take me.”

I know that when I decided to paint something weird and mystical instead of a nice African landscape that I tried to make it look like someone else painted it, something shifted. Something became compelling. I didn’t really care about the finite games when I was playing the infinite game of painting the ineffable, which feels like such a nice, for me, it’s just the absolute sweet spot of my fascinations.

So we all think, “How do I win the finite games? How do I win the finite games?” The anxiety is overwhelming. The need for money is overwhelming. I know it’s overwhelming. It overwhelms me too. But I never win it. I’ve had a few good games, but I’m always back in the finite game of, “Okay, well now I have to do it again. I got a bestseller. I need to write another bestseller.” If you’re playing for the finite goals, it’s not play and it’s not the creation. It’s not the ongoing game of the spirit creating in matter. And that I think that we have an overself of some kind that is more interested in the mystery than it is in any finite game we could win.

Okay, so let’s—we’ll do a meditation at the end of this because I want to switch right into the questions. 

First one: “How do we know what our infinite game is? Also, if we start to suffer in that game, does it mean it’s time to switch up the rules?”

All right. You know what your infinite game is because it won’t ever stop poking at you. What we call talent is really just a love of practicing. If you love practicing something and you find yourself, if you’re an artist, you find yourself doodling during staff meetings at your job or whatever it is. This compulsion to just dip a toe back in it comes back again and again. And when you do dip your toe, the way I did when I started drawing on that long-ago day, there is a kind of, I don’t want to say obsession, but there’s a kind of rapture that comes over you where you’re like, “Oh, I’ve got to do that.”

I don’t know how many of you have played a musical instrument where you started plinking around and then you’re like, “Oh, that sound.” Or you heard a song on the radio and you’re like, “I have to sing like that.” Whatever it was, there’s this feeling of, “Oh, oh, I have to. I want to.” And you don’t get that with the finite games. It’s not, “Oh, I want to, I have to from within.” It’s, “Okay, I should, I must. I should, I must. They say I must. Who says? They do.” So if it’s them saying it, it’s not really yours. But if it’s you saying, “Oh, yes,” it’s just a charge that the infinite game brings with it.

Okay. Question: “Does writing feel like an infinite game for you just like painting does?”

Not just like painting does. It’s not as much my core. It’s not what I did for thousands of hours as a child like I did with [drawing] and painting. But what it does is I get—the idea comes on, and I don’t like shifting into written language. It’s very, very hard for me. But once I’ve done it and I have a paragraph there, it starts to feel like working with clay. I can feel the part of my mind that shapes images coming in to use words to create a sculpture is what it feels like. So it becomes visual art for me and even tactile art. It’s the strangest thing. And it’s like a hypnosis, and I go into that and boy, if you interrupt me when I’m in that, get ready for some fireworks because I don’t like coming out of that place. I will stay there for months. So yeah, I couldn’t have written books and I couldn’t have succeeded at writing books—maybe some people can if it’s not their infinite game, but I couldn’t. I actually can’t play, I can’t not play infinite games.

Okay: “How do I play the infinite game when the book deadlines are rushing toward me?”

You’ve got your deadline. You’ve got your book. Sit down with the book and fall into the language. Be the reader of your book, opening that book in some future time and place where you yourself will never be, but you can imagine that you are a different person, a different part of the omnipotent consciousness that is now about to rediscover something through your book and write for that person. Make it a relationship because that’s what the infinite games are about, including people and keeping the game going. So somebody who’s discouraged, lift them up so they can keep the game going. Someone who doesn’t have the right facts, give them the facts so they can keep the game going. Somebody who’s lonely, write a poem that speaks to their loneliness so that they’ll come in and you can keep the game going. Yeah. And the deadlines, I find that when I go into the creative process, they just simply leave consciousness. And then I come out of it and there’s the deadline and I freak out again. And then it’s just, as long as I’m in finite game world, I’m anxious and stressed. As long as I’m in infinite game, I’m just obsessed with the process.

Question: “Is the ultimate goal to stop all the finite games and play mostly infinite ones?”

Maybe eventually. I really do think we’re at a time in history when things are changing for humanity, and I do not know what will become human life in the next 10, five, two years. It’s just, it’s unpredictable. It’s completely unknowable. So right now you’re going to have to play finite games, but you can play them within the infinite game. So if I, as I set out to do like a Substack or whatever, I’m thinking of starting a Substack, that’s a finite sort of game. Like once a week I get a thing written and that’s finite, but it’s definitely about the infinite flow of my soul and the souls of all others who could read that. Okay. So eventually we may stop playing the finite games, but right now we take a finite game, but play it within the infinite game.

All right, question: “How do you mix the finite and infinite, like paying the bills and looking for another job and fixing a relationship and yet stay infinite?”

I can’t do it at the same time yet. So what I do is I focus on the bills or the job or a relationship issue and I feel miserable. And then I say, “Oh, but I know I feel better when I go to the infinite games.” So then I go into the infinite game of pure love if it’s about relationship. I go into the infinite game of creating a life with my family, which is where the bills need to be paid. I go into the infinite game of creativity to see if maybe I can do something for work that will generate some kind of value. So I always end up having to dive back into the infinite game. And here’s the deal. I always want the finite game to be won and done and in the can before I go back to that crazy infinite stuff. It’s not how it works. At least not for me. I go into the infinite and the finite seems to work out just fine. Almost never as well as I want it to, but fine.

Same question again: “How can you shift your perspective to infinite games when you feel the pressure of a mortgage and other bills and it stresses you out to the point where it’s difficult to enter a state of flow?”

Well, that’s like saying, “Okay, how do you relax in yoga when you’re all crunched up like this and you’re afraid to unclench?” The answer is like gently, patiently, lovingly, you explain to that frightened, clenched part of yourself that it’s not going to lose anything by relaxing, but it will lose things by staying stressed. So there has to be—I got up and I started drawing that day. I got up and I started doing something creative. And I do that every day since. And that’s the best way I know to shift, but you don’t feel like it’s going to be the best way until you’ve done it. Because the fear state always says, “Stay afraid, stay afraid. It’s the only way to be safe.” But actually it’s the only way to stay in constant danger. If you go into the flow state, the fear state will be, “Nooo!” and then it will disappear. And you’ll be in bliss even if your bills aren’t paid. I speak as one who has been in that situation many, many times.

Okay, couple of quick questions, then we’ll do our meditation: “Is spirit almost pure joy? And can you elaborate about this if you feel it’s true and also if you think it’s not?”

I think it is. But I think joy is about the multiplicity of experiences in the knowledge that everything is safe. When you know you’re a spirit, playing this life is a finite game and the infinite game surrounds it, holds it, loves it, knows it, and is fine with it ending, is fine with us failing by the definitions that we have in our brains. If you understand that there’s an infinite game going on that is pure joy in the end, then even when you’re having a rocky time in physical reality, there’s a level of softness underneath it all that’s holding it all. This is why I like watching NDEs because after people have died and come back, they’re like, “Oh yeah, this is just like a term in school. Yeah, I’m cool with it. Yeah.” And sometimes they’re left with disabilities or terrible life circumstances and they’re like, “Yeah, yeah, that’s what’s happening here, but it’s all within the context of the infinite game. So I’m just connected with that infinite game all the time and everything’s great.” It’s really inspiring to watch these people.

And then, last question: “How does belief play into the finite versus infinite games?”

The belief that the culture is right and that fear is the way to safety, that belief will nuke your happiness. It will destroy your life. I mean, it might lead you to wealth and fame. I don’t think it will ever lead you to happiness and fulfillment. On the other hand, if you believe that there’s an infinite game being played and that it can show itself to you in multiple ways, like you can ask for a sign about your painting and that day hear a recording of somebody literally describing the painting. When you believe that somehow the universe is put together in that way, then something that strange and mysterious can happen to you.

If you believe that and you just keep playing the infinite game, you get a lot of those, what I would call a win in the infinite, which is where something looks through and goes, “Yep, yep, you’re on the right track. Yeah, I know it makes no sense. You’re on the right track.” And there’s this joy and uplift that comes with that. And I don’t know any other way to get it than by abandoning belief in the finite games and believing in the infinite.

So now, I know we’re a little over time. If you’re still up for it, let’s do a little stillness, silence, and space meditation. So take a deep breath, let it out.

Relax your shoulders, relax your neck. More deep breaths. And now ask yourself the strange question: Can I imagine the distance between my eyes? Don’t answer the question. Just pose it. You don’t need to answer it. 

Ask yourself: Can I imagine the distance between the bridge of my nose and the back of my head? Can I imagine the distance between the crown of my head and the base of my spine? Can I imagine the full volume of my entire body? Can I imagine the space that makes up the majority of my atoms? Can I imagine that space is continuous with all space in the universe, blended with it, in love with it, rejoicing in it?

Can I imagine the stillness in which all action occurs? Can I imagine the silence beneath every sound? Can I imagine that through the space, the stillness, and the silence of the universe, infinite love is always being projected toward me and through me and around me always?

Breathe into that. Come back into the present, but see if you can carry that silence, stillness, and space with you as you go through the day and feel for the infinite games, the infinite games that we’re all playing underneath the finite games.

All right, Wilder Community people, I’ll see you in our meditation in 25 minutes. For all of you here in The Gathering Room, so much love, so much delight. I started this as an infinite game how many—ten years ago? And here we are still playing. So, tons of love. Keep playing the infinite. I’ll see you soon.

As long as I’m in the finite game world, I’m anxious and stressed. As long as I’m in the infinite game, I’m just obsessed with the process.