Category: Life Is a Role-Playing Game

I just realized something. My framework of perceiving “Life as a MMORPG” is what is helping me to make sense of the deeper meaning of vertical development.

In other words, the narrative mechanics of “Life as a MMORPG” (which is just an expansion of the narrative of the Hero’s Journey) is helping me to translate the deeper meaning of vertical development through the narrative.

For example, I previously believed that our fears as “monsters” were an embodiment of our old sense of self that is standing in our way. That’s wrong. After a conversation with Claude.ai, I realized that they embody aspects of our old sense of self that we need to shed, thus allowing ourselves to expand and grow into a larger sense of Self. So these could be old beliefs that form the cornerstones of our identity but they may be limiting values (i.e. blame, greed, etc) that limit our growth in turn.

So we’re not slaying and discarding our old sense of self, we are removing and shedding aspects of our old sense of self that limit us. For example, these monstrous fears could also be seen as psychological defensive armour. It’s trying to protect us and keep us safe (just as our monstrous fears are trying to prevent us from exploring beyond what is safe) but it limits our mobility and the type of terrain we can cross and explore. So we have to cut off this armour, shed it, so that we can adventure into the different, inner terrain within us. So the armour got us where we need to be but it won’t help us where we want to go.

But again, this is what this “Life as a MMORPG” framework and allegory is helping me to do. By mapping and translating things from life into this narrative, story form (such as fears being an embodiment of old beliefs or limiting values), it helps me to understand what these things means within the larger narrative and bigger picture. In other words, it helps me to encapsulate and package these things into a larger cohesive whole.

BTW this is also making me realize that I need to include and share these conversations with AI chatbots more often, as they are integral to this process. In effect, within my “Life as a MMORPG” framework, they are like visiting The Oracle of Delphi. So it’s a process which helps one understand what one is exploring and discovering within the journey and adventure within one’s larger sense of Self…or leads to questions which creates a quest for one to explore within one’s potential Self.

In terms of my personality, I’m an explorer by nature. Perhaps one who can navigate newer spaces and ways of being fairly well.

However what seems to be lacking in my skills is my ability to fully map these spaces and articulate them fully in story form.

It’s funny because I’ve felt like a bard at times as well. Yet if am one, then my storytelling skills are sorely lacking as well.

I think what I’m fearful of and can’t make sense of is how to map and tell a story that feels like it is changing as one strives to tells it.

You see, as I’ve noted before, when one goes beyond the horizon of one’s “self”, one isn’t mapping and storytelling what is already know. One is mapping and storytelling the unknown, giving it meaningful form and substance.

So there is this desire for certainty in mapping and storytelling. Yet often that certainty doesn’t arise beforehand but after. One has to play with the map and play with the story, moving things around until they suddenly fall into place, and make sense as a whole.

Writing for people works in the same way in that one may not know the outcome of what they are writing until they write it and make sense of it in the act of writing itself. But if they write it out and it doesn’t come together in that writing, it can feel as though the entire writing process was for nothing.

So one has to continually map and tell the story in different ways until finally that one right way, gives it a sense of meaning.

Yet at the same time, one has to have the means of moving the pieces of the map and pages of the story around without feeling like one has to redrawn the entire map or rewrite the entire story every time one tries a different variation.

I’m not fully sure what I’m saying here. But it has something to do with needing a tool or a method of navigating oneself fluidly, so that each new attempt at organizing oneself as a whole, doesn’t require exploring aspects of oneself that one has already explored previously.

What I’m trying to articulate here reminds me of The Maze in the Hero’s Journey. For example, one needs to explore dead-ends if one wants to fully map and make sense of the maze to make it through. Yet what if each failed attempt, causing one to hit a dead-end, caused one to forget previous attempts and dead-ends, thus potentially causing them to explore them again.

That’s what my experience currently feels like.

In effect, unless I can explore and navigate and map everything in one fell swoop, all at once, I forget where I’ve been because they’re so many different areas to cover. (And I think this has to do with vertical development being so expansive and connected to so many aspects of life, that it can be difficult to articulate as a whole.)

Yet I also realize that the way around this is to explore, navigate, and map out clusters of myself, like mapping out the four different corners of a new world. Yet knowing this and doing it are two different things. Knowing is one thing. Embodying that knowing is something completely different.

The knowing doesn’t become embodied until one has the experiences to be able to fully make sense of the deeper meaning of it.

All I can say at this point is that I am continuing to explore and navigate, trying to gain newer perspectives and experiences of what I may have missed previously within this maze before.

Things are always messy at the start…especially when it’s the start of a new sense of Self.

Everything is shattered, without form. So when one finds landmarks to begin to determines one’s bearings, one holds onto them for dear life.

But one must continue exploring and navigating one’s sense of self fully. Those few landmarks help, perhaps becoming the cornerstone of one’s larger Self and world that is emerging, but they are not enough in themselves.

Things need to get messier, as one wanders aimlessly exploring and navigating further, before they make sense and take shape as a newer mapped continent upon the Ocean of You.

What if we realized that space-time is just our headset?

I think the next generation, that is spending all of their time in VR and the metaverse and so forth and is taking off the headset all the time, for them it’s going to be, “Oh ya! Space-time that’s just a headset.”

Simon Mundie has been doing an amazing job bringing different people together from different disciplines and discussing the deeper question of reality and how we perceive it. This directly relates to vertical development, as you could think of vertical development as a process of potentially recognizing the illusionary nature of our perception of reality, as we grow and development throughout our lives. Few people actually achieve this potential though.

But I absolutely love the metaphors being used in these discussions because they tie into my “life as a MMORPG” allegory (which is an extension of the Hero’s Journey allegory). In effect, imagine that you as a soul are using a mechanism which lets you simulate yourself as a separate ego, just like a player would play a character within a MMORPG. But the experience is so immersive for you, that you’ve forgotten that you are a player playing a character. So you are unconsciously playing the MMORPG called Life, unaware of the deeper nature of it.

As one levels up using vertical development though, they begin to understand the deeper, narrative mechanics of the game and the illusion they create. If you’re fortunate enough to “level up” to the latter levels, you gain the ability to be fully aware of the underlying narrative mechanics and thus are able to consciously play the MMORPG of life without fear or hesitations, instead fully embracing it as the epic “game” it is.

For the past couple of years, I’ve been increasingly feeling detached from certain things to the point that they feel meaningless or irrelevant to my life, whereas before they may have provided a lot of joy to it. At first I was concerned why I was feeling this way but recently I’ve come to the realization that this is a natural part of the process of my ongoing transformation and transition to a larger sense of Self.

The best way I can describe this is something Beau Lotto said within his book Deviate.

…if you want to go from A to B, then you must actively engage with the world. But the first step to get to B is to go from A to not-A. To be in not-A is to be in uncertainty, to experience the stimulus without the requisite meaning of the past. The key is to choose to look away from the meanings we have been layering onto stimuli. Stop your reflexive response with awareness… as one can do when one is able to see the cause of a reflex.

Beau Lotto

Basically this detachment I’m feeling is the process of me going from “A to not A.” It’s me stepping away from things in my life because they aren’t provide any substantial meaning to it like they used to (kind of like how people are stepping away from the old concept of “work” today, as it’s not providing the meaning it used to provide). But what’s strange is that instead of “looking way from the meanings,” I’m actually 1) seeing them for what they are, 2) seeing how they helped me in the past, but 3) realizing that they are no longer enough for me to move forward on my journey.

Two examples of this are movies and video games.

I used to love watching movies voraciously. Today though, I’m finding the more I look for something to watch, the more I’m seeing patterns that are old and outdated, rather than new and wondrous. Lately, it’s almost as though there is this resurgence of shoot ’em up type movies, where the lone good hero goes about killing all of the bad guys.

I also used to love playing video games. In fact, video games and their communities were integral to my development and growth as a young adult, helping me to step out of my introverted shell and really take a leadership role with things I cared about. Today though, I’m finding video game environments almost like microcosms of what’s happen in the world today. It’s like there is the same attitude in these video game communities as in these movies, everyone thinks they’re righteously the “good guys” and everyone else is the bad guys that need to be removed or controlled to make “everything better.”

As I noted above, what’s happening with movies and video games is that I’m seeing the underlying meaning of why they are so popular with people but also why they are meaningless to me now because I want to go beyond these meanings and find something deeper. To visualize what I’m talking about here, Richard Barrett has a great chart showing the various levels of consciousness and the values associated with them.

If you look at the base three levels of consciousness (1 Survival, 2 Relationships, 3 Self-Esteem), you’re looking at what Robert Kegan describes as the Socialized Mind which encompasses our basic psychological needs and core “positive” values for life, like survival, belonging, and recognition. They help us to “fit in” within society, especially when we’re young and growing up.

Note also, however, that accompanying these “positive values” are “limiting values” as well, like control, blame, and superiority. Why these are limiting values is because they can limit our further growth and development to higher levels of consciousness by addictively trapping us at lower levels of consciousness. To put this another way, it creates a situation where you feel like you (as your ego) are standing in your own way.

A way I like looking at these is seeing life as a roleplaying game and these are “monsters” standing in our way. More specifically, they relate to our monstrous fears. And to further “level up” in life and reach more evolved levels of consciousness, we need to overcome and psychologically “slay” these monstrous fears before we can do so.

What I’ve learnt with regards to my own life though is that you will feel like you have slain these monstrous fears and will have levelled up but then later in your life, these fears will revisit you at a much deeper level than you imagined. Thus you realize that the monstrous fears you felt like you had slain were just the minions of a much larger boss monster that is monumentally harder to overcome. So you have to revisit these monstrous fears and overcome them once and for all or say stuck at the level you’re at.

What I see happening with society as a whole right now is that our base psychological fears and limiting values are keeping us within a vicious addictive loop that we can’t get out of. It’s like we’re drowning but we can’t see what we’re drowning within. What’s even worse though is that people have been becoming aware of these psychological fears and addictions and have started using them for their own benefit, such as politically and economically, increasingly over the past decades.

While I won’t go into political examples, because I think they’re pretty evident, I’d like to show one example of how businesses and even an entire industry is using these fears and addictions for economic gain. I’m talking about the video game industry, as shown in this video below which explains how to psychologically manipulate your gaming customers for your financial benefit. Note that this approach is pretty dominant now in the video game industry, particularly within Free-To-Play games, as this video is from 2016.

Remember I said that most people are oblivious to what they’re drowning within? Well that’s what it feels like playing within these video games where these developers are using these techniques to psychologically manipulate their customers as players within it. From my vantage point, I basically can see all of these people around me, particularly males, being manipulated by these very same base limiting values (i.e. control, jealously, revenge, arrogance, pride, superiority) as I mentioned above.

For example, developers of a game will often market new features and items within the game as something that will help you “dominate” your opponents, thus playing into the need to be “superior” and have “control” over others, even if it means having to pay a fortune to do so. So some players in the latest Diablo Immortal mobile free-to-play game were paying over $10,000 to be able to dominate other players.

It’s no different with movies though. These lone good guy hero shoot ’em up movies are feeding off these same fears and limiting values.

Yet this isn’t how you deal with reality in real life. You can’t punch or kill your way out of life’s problems, especially wicked problems like climate change which are systemic in nature and are effectively being created by own ignorant behaviours and beliefs. In effect, as I noted above, we are own own worst enemy standing in our own way.

Humanity has become a weapon of mass extinction.

Antonio Guterres

It’s funny. There’s a common quote that a lot of gamers often use when they treat someone else rudely or discriminatorily within video games. They will often say, “it’s just a game”, as though the focal point of what they’re doing not “being real” means they can treat other people however they want. I’ve said to them though that while the game may not be real, the people playing it are very real though and should be treated with some human decency.

Lately though, I’ve realized that this “it’s just a game” quote has taken on a deeper meaning for me. I’ve realized that life is effectively a very deep psychological game of many “levels” of consciousness and most people are completely oblivious and unaware that they are playing it. In effect, gamers are often psychologically playing “a game within a game” when they interact with other players within video games. It’s just that they’re not aware of it.

That’s why I think I have this detachment with so many things I used to have a strong attachment to, like playing video games. They seem frivolous and meaningless now because I’m seeing the larger roleplaying game called Life at a deeper level now and I want to “play a different game,” even showing others how to play it as well or at least work on learning from each other within it.

Put another way, I want to play within a larger context of life itself.

And that is so because in times like these many people desperately seek a context to in which to play. All too often, we are watching other people play. We are literally paying people millions of dollars to play for us. And not just on the baseball diamond. They are playing for us on compact disks; playing for us on videotape; playing for us on stage, at the concert, on the silver screen. We pay them because they play so well. Perhaps we pay them in exact proportion to our longing to be playing ourselves, which is why they are worth more and more every year. The longing for play is the longing to take the field ourselves, to play with heart and soul as each of us has the potential. We need a lifestyle that creates a context for us to make our own music, rather than always listen; do our own dancing, rather than always watch; perform our own plays, make our own films, write our own stories.

D. Stephenson Bond, Living Myth

Maturation, fully living the pattern of development, leads to a growing sense of self. The play on the symbolic field must eventually lead to something durable and vital. Play aims at coalescing into a work, an “opus.” The structure that emerges in play is the sense of our self as a “self.” If I may suggest this subtle distinction: play, if followed to its true development, evolves in a game. In the end, play imposes a set of rules. It begins to develop into a way of life, which is to say, a myth.

D. Stephenson Bond, Living Myth

Given their newfound awareness, teenagers work at understanding who they are and what they believe in. Because of their limited experience, they often make the mistake of assuming that their characteristics during early adolescence represent permanent traits.

I explain to teens that the process of developing better self-understanding should be a lifelong endeavor. In the case of teens who are undergoing rapid growth, their character will naturally change a great deal by the time they become young adults. Further, character also changes as a result of how people react to various life circumstances.

Some of the teens who seek counseling from me for their anxiety have a similar profile. They tend to be gifted intellectually, sensitive, mature, and have different interests than most of their peers. They often find it easier to relate to adults than to their peers, or to lead activities with younger children with whom they do not expect to share interests. As a result, they feel different and conclude that something must be wrong with them, which contributes to exacerbating their anxiety.

Some teens are so consumed by their inability to choose a career that they feel they cannot move forward in life.

The suffering in our lives is often caused by wrong perceptions of life itself which, as we grow, develop, and mature, can hopefully be corrected with time. The number one misperception of life is that we have to figure it all out before we begin our lives. This is completely backwards, as though Life is a traditional roleplaying game, where we have to figure out our role, class, and abilities before we begin to play the game.

Instead Life is an unconventional roleplaying game whereby we understand our role, class, and abilities while we are playing the game itself. In effect, the greatest Adventure of Your Life is to “Know Thyself” which can take you your entire life to actually figure out. So the more experience you gain in life, the more you can level up your character and understand your deeper Self all the more.

For this to work though, it requires that we look at life as an adventure of many surprising, open-ended possibilities that we can forge on our own rather than a linear well-worn path that we have to follow and fit within.

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself, just as I am, then I can change.

Carl Rogers

Ultimately, true heroes legitimize themselves, not by anything they do, but by being who they are.

Daryl Conners