The board game season is upon
us and I have to say that I have always been ambivalent. It seems to me as a
means to connect people who cannot otherwise communicate and an unimaginative time
filler in an arena of unacknowledged subtexts. I would do anything to avoid
participating. Recently, however, I have come to acknowledge that I have been
playing my own the board game all along called life, and further more I co-created
and designed the board and the rules. The realization came by looking at the
images from the past eleven months from Painting into the Emerging Cosmic
Myth, a collaborative year-long seminar with Pamela Wylie and Ellen
O’Hanlon, source material by visionary cosmologist Pamela Eakins. Pamela Wylie
guided through the investigation one of the 10 Evolutionary Powers every four
weeks, looking at the scientific data, reflecting on the meaning in our lives. I
guided the painting in large format as a means to integrate through the
Transformational Process.
My prayer, as an artist, has
always been that my art be central and meaningful to my everyday life. As a
result of the seminar, a schema much like a board game emerged. The game board
that I had been playing but had not clearly marked or articulated. Not
appreciating playing board games and observing the narrow games that most
people were playing, I was disenchanted by the prospect, not realizing that we
are all playing anyway. Now, I have a rudimentary outline, which is enough to
more consciously craft the game as I learn along the way. I can identify where
I am on the board and what my next options are.
Images of the paintings from this year
differ from any of my other work. As with the other participants they originate
at the beginning of each month in sacred geometry and numerology, and follow
scientific principles on the origin and structure of the Universe with an
imperative for self-reflection. The images are extremely personal but are not
generated from ideas. Many of the images remind me of instruments and diagrams
I saw at the Galileo Museum in Florence that were used for trying to perceive
the vastness of the Universe at a time when ‘the view’ of the Universe was
creased with wrinkles from holding it so close to the chest. We are again at a
stage when we need to consider our view of the Universe this time backed by
scientific, evolutionary and visionary cosmology. For me these paintings are
personal devices which mark the workings of the cosmos I my life, that is on my
game board.
Let us pursue a bit further
this metaphor of life as a board game because the more we understand the
purpose and guidelines of the games we have created, the more interesting it
becomes. Even though I avoided board games, I enjoyed the pieces and board
graphics that in some way represented a world. Board games have existed throughout
history. The earliest evidence is 3500 BCE in burial sites of Presynaptic
Egypt. In the Analects of Confucius there is written reference to the strategy
game of go, as well as references in
India as early as 500 BC and in Rome first decade AD. There is something
fascinating about practicing life in a miniature Universe.
The earliest board games and
most of modern ones are based on defeating opposing players. Apparently,
competition is still one of our major ways of having fun. And yet we innocently
continue to ask why are we so invested in war? One of the overarching questions
that we need to consider is whether beating our opponent is a stance that
serves the planet in the long run and as a whole. We have all witnessed how a
life threatening disease has changed friends and family’s orientation from
adversary to a stimulus that opens to a richer and more meaningful life and
that dying does not necessarily mean defeat. The inquiry at the core is, do you
believe that the Universe (put in your word for Source) is fundamentally
supportive? or is it out to get you? Your answer determines the life game you
design and play, and how you calculate your sucess.
An important component of a game is diplomacy. Game does not have to mean bettering an opponent, there may be other ways of determining the success of a game other than victory over. It can be about working with the other players to achieve a common goal, gaining information, expanding experience, developing skills or just the delight of the exchange. We work contrary to someone else when we are threatened. There are some current educational video games that have developed interesting non-competitive formats with various motives, like cooperation, creativity and problem solving. Our children need practice to value collaboration. I have witnessed, as I am sure you have, how an inheritance or divorce procedure can set up an opponent position that escalates until everything is lost on both sides. In your board game, is there an undercurrent of me verses them?
Another feature that is
important to all games and especially the game of life is how much game
information is available to players. This is where I took a leap this year
realizing that I was familiar with all the aspects of the game as the
evolutionary principles of the Universe, but I had not understood them in depth
or organized them as guiding principles. There is just a lot of information
that we do not have in life or is not adequately organized. Transparency can
also be a feature of our game as we keep growing into a more sophisticated understanding.
As little children we see the game as little children. The information is not
being concealed from us, rather we simply cannot perceive it. We need a game framework
that allows for and encourages new kinds of information. Science is actually a
good model, notwithstanding it is often handicapped by current collective
beliefs.
Finally the central aspect of
board games is the interaction of the elements of luck and strategy; how much randomness
in relation to developed skill? Looking
at your life, do you feel it is a chess game and your tactics determine if you
win or lose? Or, at the far end of the spectrum, is it the luck of the draw
that decides your fate. The belief systems we inherited from our family and
culture must continue to be challenged as we create our personal mythology.
What we develop as our beliefs establishes the ground rules for the game. Most
people agree that some skill and some element of chance make the game engaging.
The nature of the relationship between these two elements, in our games,
determines in large part how we decipher who wins, and who loses, or whether a
mutually beneficial outcome is possible.
In Brief The Ten Cosmological Powers of Evolution from Pamela Eakins, The Lightning Papers
Through actively employing the Ten Cosmological Powers of
Evolution we can consciously and actively participate in our own evolution. As
we evolve our human culture, we evolve the earth community – especially in that
humanity has now become a geological force. Consider this model as the
beginning of the construction of a new cultural (symbolic) paradigm:
· 0. Space: The Panoriginal Field, at all levels, contains all that has been, is,
and ever shall be. It is alive, around us and through us.
· 1. Centration: Everything in the universe has its origins in the beginning of
the universe. Everything is original. Everything originates. You are original.
· 2. Attraction: A complex interplay of attractions keeps the whole of the
universe in motion. Your attractions are the gift of motion!
· 3. Creation: On the basis of simple and complex attractions, the universe
brings forth the new. Participate in the creative process. The universe is continually in the process of
birthing its creativity. You exist here and now. This is your place, your time;
you are at the cutting edge of cosmological creativity.
· 4. Stabilization: The universe stabilizes centers of creativity. Nothing, however,
is ever inert, but retains form, changing at different rates, in a state of
quivering equilibrium.
· 5. Cataclysm: Whether it happens by chance, as a mechanism to right
imbalances, or as part of the intentional flow of the universe, cataclysm
ignites the power of evolution.
· 6. Synergy: The whole is more than the sum of its parts. The universe draws
on the power of its parts; the universal community.
· 7. Transmutation: Transmutation is a creative surge that initiates the overarching
change that calls forth a new era.
· 8. Symbolization: The universe remembers its experience. Creating symbols to encode
the experience of the past and present and/or create the future consciously is
a trait inherent in the human species.
· 9. Absorption: The universe absorbs and retains knowledge even as it evolves. As
humans, we retain our experience, past, present, and future in symbolic systems,
in our cultural storehouses of knowledge, and in our collective and individual
consciousness and “subconscious.” We can consciously and actively select what
experiences we wish to absorb and how we wish to absorb and transform them, in
order to participate in creating the perceptions and the future we hold
possible in our personal and collective imagination.
·
10. Radiance: The Cosmological
Power of Radiance is the way the universe shares or communicates its essence.
As the Tenth Power, Radiance encompasses all the other universal
powers/processes: Centration, Attraction, Creation, Stabilization, Cataclysm,
Synergy, Transmutation, Symbolization, and Absorption.
·
