Since finite games are played to be won, players make every move in a game in order to win it. Whatever is not done in the interest of winning is not part of the game. The constant attentiveness of finite players to the progress of the competition can lead them to believe that every move they make they must make. (James Carse, Finite and Infinite Games, p13)

It's important that we arrive to work on time because staying employed is winning, while unemployment is losing. We clock in and play the employee game through a mask that hides other values. We may show different masks to coworkers, however, to win at promotion games we may have to compete with those same coworkers. We could choose not to play competitive employment games by reducing the seriousness of promotions or raises. We could play as if we do not care. But pretending to not care, while deep down winning is still imperative, is a game as well. Many play such a denial game.

Finite games include competition but infinite games do not, since winning is not the object of the game. Yet, although infinite games are noncompetitive, they do invite as many players as possible. Finite games often compete for scarce resources. Only those with large incomes can compete for luxury resources like, Mediterranean cruises, HDTVs, Cadillac Escalades, etc. These are symbolic of winning. Ownership of resources are indicative of winning and are usually associated with titles like CEO, president, manager, director, supervisor, etc. Not to care about winning is to play an infinite game and be less concerned about such resources.

The CEO arrives to work on time because winning means remaining CEO. To remain CEO is to win because being asked to resign means losing (although bonuses may be large, future corporate positions may be curtailed due to resignation). Therefore, CEO's must model winning behaviors. Employees may compete to become CEOs and this would be indicative of winning, but CEO's rarely wish to become employees as this would indicate loss. In a finite game every single move is calculated toward winning.

The issue is whether we are ever willing to drop the veil and openly acknowledge, if only to ourselves, that we have freely chosen to face the world through a mask At which point do we confront the fact that we live one life and perform another, or others, attempting to make our momentary forgetting true and lasting forgetting? (p16-17)

Rarely will a CEO forget that he/she is CEO, especially while around those not CEOs. In fact, those not CEOs may be more aware of the CEO and the deference that title requires based on the rules of the game concerning players of lower rank. Diminished veiling, or removing of masks, may be apparent around friends and family. However, a CEO may fail to surrender the CEO mask, thereby forgetting that the mask is freely chosen. This finite seriousness may impair family relationships and impede friendships. Typically, movies portray such solidified finite players, when winning the game is all that matters, as lonely and unhappy. Friends and family win by claiming the inherited spoils of a dead finite player. A dead infinite player may only leave infinite memories.

To forget that one plays a finite game is to make life very serious. When life is lived from the perspective of a finite game, fear and anxiety is pervasive since there is so little time for which to go about winning. Therefore, every move must be a winning move, no matter the consequences to others, since the finite player sees all others as only more finite players.

Since finite games can be played within an infinite game, infinite players do not eschew the performed roles of finite play. On the contrary, they enter into finite games with all the appropriate energy and self-veiling, but they do so without the seriousness of finite players. They embrace the abstractness of finite games as abstractness, and therefore take them up not seriously but playfully. They freely use masks in their social engagements, but not without acknowledging to themselves and others that they are masked.

Infinite players can willingly play finite games. However, the mode of play is altered because the roles are seen as willingly chosen. To play CEO or employee, and know that it is a game, is to play the game with an expectation of change and a lack of seriousness.

The seriousness expected while wearing the mask of CEO, is not present for an infinite player. Infinite players tend to have less formalized roles even while participating in finite games. They often surprise others in their interactions with those finite players of less status and through their encouragement that others never stop playing.

Mother Teresa played the finite game of religion. Yet she altered the rules of that game by asking all to play even with no expectation of winning, thereby becoming an infinite player. In addition, Martin Luther King demonstrated himself to be an infinite player by inviting poor whites to attend his famous march on Washington. His ultimate desire was that all play continue infinitely by everyone.

Infinite players show up on time, but rarely experience the stress of being late. Infinite players recognize status, but replace deference and reverence with a general kindness extended to all players no matter the game.infinite players respect, but never idolize.

Infinite players understand that they may lose in games based on finite rules of winning. However, they also realize that their losing may open opportunities for continued play elsewhere. They rarely experience the disappointment and discouragement that attends losers, but they never stop playing.

For infinite players, continued play means that finite games are not played with any degree of seriousness, but with an openness and expectation for change. The expectation for change insures that rules such as dogma, norms,procedures, policies, pretenses, laws, doctrines, etc, etc, do not become solidified expectations or rules. To expect that it be done this way or that way is to lose the capacity to play freely and to become oppressed by the past. To be oppressed by the past is to base every move you make on the rules set previously and to no longer be surprised.

Infinite players thrive on surprise and seek opportunities through which to be surprised. Barack Obama is a "surprise" (in General Powell's endorsment of Obama, he claimed Obama exhibited an "intellectual curiosity"). This is because he has broken with finite rules simply through his election to play the game of president. This has disturbed many who rely on strict and rigid rules of play. Even so, many will demand he immediately play by the rules established for that game because finite players loathe surprise. Yet those who play infinite games see Obama as an epitome of surprise and feel invigorated over the possibility of future surprises :

Infinite players, on the other hand, continue their play in the expectation of being surprised. If surprise is no longer possible, all play ceases.

Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.

Surprise in infinite play is the triumph of the future over the past.

The infinite player does not expect to be amused by surprise, but to be transformed by it, for surprise does not alter some abstract past, but one's own personal past. (P.22-23)

In the austere, often esoteric, world of spiritual paths, practices and ideologies, we seek to be go beyond what we are in realization of a becoming. This ‘realization is often referred to as enlightenment, awakening, revelation, heaven, nirvana etc, etc.

These special concepts were created to define this ‘other than' or higher, better, improved state of being. Each religion or spiritual ideology is essentially founded and supported primarily by these specialized concepts. Take away enlightenment, awakening or any of these beliefs in transcendence and the paths and practices crumble under their own oppressive weight, which of course is the weight of sacrifice and struggle. In order to attain ‘realization' one must sacrifice in this way or that, but don't worry, we are told, the goal is worthy just press on.

These concepts leave our normal everyday existing in the dust. We are taught by the ancient, and so-called modern, ‘masters' that our everyday states of existing are heavily laden in ego desires and thus, can only accrue suffering. So are we surprised that we suffer? Of course not, it's expected!

Locked into the Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Integral, etc, etc, teachings, we expect enlightenment/awakening and therefore, we spend hours and years meditating and contemplating within those tired old, worn-out methodologies, passed down through the ages and tweaked in "neo" fashion for the postmodern practitioner.

However, by expecting our experience conform to the teachings, do we obstruct it?

What if surprise were the goal? What if we were to cease all reliance on what the masters taught, or teach thereby ending all expectations of what somebody else taught us is the gospel, the word and, hence, the truth. What if we were to believe that it could never be the way they say, since what they taught, based on their experience, was for them and no one else? What if it was always meant to be a surprise unlike anything they taught?

In such unfettered pursuit could we then free ourselves from our trained and conditioned expectations and expect only to be surprised? To be surprised not just in our meditation or in our practices, but in our everyday life. Living with the expectation of surprise at any moment, no matter what we are doing or thinking or saying, no matter the circumstances. What would life be like if there was no expectation of an outcome that conformed to past learning, but the expectation of surprise exclusive to each and every individual mind that chooses simply to await surprise in the ultimate desire to be surprised?

What if you knew that at any moment you could be lifted up into a sense of intense joy, never before comprehended or defined by thought (in fact, I hesitate to think about it). How would a life lived in that expectation, a life that does not rely on past teaching or lofty expressions of so-called masters, be experienced? Would just the expectation of surprise create a life of unavoidable joy? Nobody can say, since it's all a surprise!

Preparation impedes surprise. Preparation is based on prediction, through text or teacher, of what you seek based on past precedent. It is no wonder spiritual practices attempt to prepare, since all our lives are spent in preparation for something and spirituality simply conforms to that need. Is surprise all we really seek and can we be surprised if we spend our lives preparing for it? (seems counterproductive to me).

Can we envision death as a surprise? If we can then that may significantly reduce our fears in life, since we fear nothing more than our death (since we expect an ending). No longer must we prepare for death, since we expect to be taken by surprise.

Let enlightenment or awakening take you by surprise. Of course, the only way to do that is to stop preparing for it and seek to be surprised in every moment of your life and death.

I suppose we can't blame the masters for the fact that we don't like being surprised. But if we did, they'd be out of a job. So I imagine it's not a popular subject to those in preparation for enlightenment.