Saturday, December 1, 2012

Images from a Board Game of Life Revealed


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.



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