THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR PERSONALITY

If your experience has been anything like mine, the following portrayal will appear familiar: a scenario of the way we develop our human predicament. See it as a prelude, if you will, for explaining why the ALL Game can be so useful as a means for change and growth. For if it is true, and I believe it is so, that we are meant to live as spirit beings, free of the so-called human constraints, even while alive in the manifested world, then we must find our way to that actuality. It is not handed to us.

We are born into this world, planted like any other seed, with the potential hope that we will flower into a glorious embodiment of Divine Spirit, embraced by benevolence and abundance, knowing freedom from fear and despair, expressing joy and lovingness, living from an intuitive and purified heart.

But the path to this intended flowering is not clearly delineated. We must discover the way. And before that, we must feel the need, and actually desire to commence the search. For in order to become aware that our true desire is to seek enlightenment, we must first begin to suspect that what we have made of our lives, no matter how accomplished, is in the final analysis unsatisfying. From our very beginning, and in a mostly unconscious manner, we develop our unique personality traits; our patterns of thinking that translate into patterns of behavior.

The particular world we are born into - our family's way of being and acting, the attitudes and biases in which we are immersed - is absorbed by our supple minds. All these early impressions sink into our sub-conscious depths, eventually becoming our personality structure.

We seldom are aware that we have learned these characteristics, which later we believe to be unalterable aspects of ourselves.

In addition, almost from the very first day, we are faced with challenging situations that require response. Our bellies are empty, our food source seemingly nowhere around. We can choose to wait patiently, or we can burst into a fit of crying. Somehow, we must deal with one crisis after another. And how we overcome these early obstacles that threaten our sense of equilibrium and contentment, determines the strategies we will use, perhaps for the rest of our lives, in future interactions with life's contingencies.

These strategies also sink into our sub-conscious levels. They become hidden from our awareness. We just seem to do our lives the way we do them, without exactly knowing why, without realizing that initially we have made choices, decisions of action, which seemed efficacious at the time, so they were added to our repertoire of automatic responses.

So long as these unconscious strategies work effectively, we have no reason to question their use; nor to question ourselves.

We live inside the personalities we have become. From this egoic-self, we view the world in which we live, and with which we interact. Our personal perspective determines our sense of reality. How we see the so-called real world and what we make of our experience of it, we believe to be valid. We fail to recognize that our understanding is a result of our personality structure, that the world we experience and believe to be real is actually no more than a reflection of our unconscious beliefs and our unconsciously generated behaviors.

In this manner, we are never in contact with reality. We are in contact only with our interpretations of reality.

And from such a platform, we structure our lives.

We tend to establish ourselves within a routine pattern of existence. We attempt to stabilize our world by furnishing it with familiar and comfortable objects. A steady job; a pleasant relationship - as much as possible, a permanent way of life. Even down to minute details, such as the food we like to eat, the type of clothing we like to wear, all our many and sundry preferences. We cling to this structure we have created, as if it were truly our own self we are holding onto. Our treasured habits, so completely identified with them are we, we can hardly distinguish ourselves as anything else.

And if we are happy in our lives, successful in our endeavors, enjoying good relationships with family and friends, the framework we have designed for ourselves is seldom questioned.

Everything seems okay, so why should we meddle?

  LOCKED IN A CAGE OF OUR OWN MAKING - The so-called mid-life crisis:

Most of those playing in games I have led during the past twenty-six years, demonstrate some such profile. Having achieved a considerable degree of success toward personal authenticity and worldly accomplishment, they yet tend to desire even more improvement in their lives.

They feel they have reached a kind of ceiling in their progress. They sense there is more to life than what they have achieved, more growth available, if only they can find a way to slip through the perspective heretofore so artfully established, now somewhat confining.

They look for the crack in their cosmic egg, realizing they are finally seeking actually no less than spiritual growth. And they see how the game provides a vehicle.

But not all of us have generated so smooth a growth process. Despite our efforts, life seems always to be throwing us curves; the world always in a state of flux. Our strategies aren't helping us anymore. We find ourselves constantly needing to readjust. We get stuck attempting to achieve goals. Our relationships flounder a bit. The work we do loses its appeal, or, worse, evaporates. New skills have to be acquired.

Our hard earned survival techniques have rendered us somewhat rigid. At a time when we could do with a bit more flexibility, we find ourselves stuck in old ways.

And while our discontents may move us to put some effort into making changes in the way we function, our attempts at self-examination seem futile. We know ourselves only too well. Our inner reflections travel the same old neural pathways again and again. We are able only to see ourselves in the way we have become accustomed. Living inside our psyches, we cannot see ourselves objectively.

At best, insights through other people's viewpoints are a possibility. We may seek a bit of advice from a family member or a trusted friend, open to some helpful observation. We might even address our concerns with a professional counselor of one sort or another. But to what avail? When it comes to changing the way we 'carry on,' how often do we really heed another's advice?

  ENTER THE ALL GAME

None of these remarks may apply to you. When I say 'we,' I am actually referring to myself and my own early attempts at getting happier.

What was needed, I discovered, was a fresh approach to looking within.

Eventually, I found a method that offered me new avenues down which to explore, in which I could uncover the deeply embedded mechanisms in my psyche that drove my behavior into those very experiences I wished not to have.

But also, and this is an important point, a method whereby I could connect quite consciously and by doing so, amplify those features of my inner self that would surface and bring to me an unexpected happy moment.

The ALL Game became the means. It is a tool that tailors itself to one's personal needs. Using it helped me attune my personality with my core self, clearing away dross, empowering the worthwhile. From the very first game I played, my imagination was sparked. What fascinated me was the fact that I was involved in a dynamic process of self-discovery in which I was both in control of events, yet at the same time, not in control.

Play, is the operative word here. In my dictionary, the twelfth definition offers a clue: "To move or operate freely within a bounded space."

In the four hours of play, a special, 'bounded' space is provided, a safe place where you can be 'unbounded' - where you can operate more freely, be more open with yourself and with the other players, without any concern over consequences.

You feel free to explore yourself in a more playful manner than you might do ordinarily. You have opportunities to try on new ways of expressing and behaving - ways that habitually you have repressed - in a supportive atmosphere not inhibited by any thoughts of potential ridicule or derision.

After all, 'it's only a game.'

Everyone at the table is playing.

And the play takes on a quality of randomness.

Like any other board game, you throw dice, move markers, land on squares that present a variety of experiences, one among which is the opportunity to draw a card from one of several decks, determined by which path you are moving through.

You have entered the world of chance. Or so it seems. You are no longer making solely conscious choices. Of course, in real life, no one ever does make solely conscious choices. It merely seems so. But in the game, the process appears to be reversed. In the game, your unconscious layers have become openly active. That part of self that governs the movement of your hands when you role the dice has entered into the scheme of things.

Your fingers pick a card that brings to your awareness a message that points to a particular way in which you deal with your life, or how you see yourself in a particular situation. It asks you to talk about yourself in light of this message.

Often, a player will initially fail to recognize her/himself in the context of the card. And with the Game Guide's facilitation, players will share insights they may have, which might help that person to see the specifics of the message in a metaphysical sense, now relating to something familiar.

The card may then ask you to perform a task, thus encouraging your intuitive side to participate. This may be in the form of writing a poem, or making a drawing, or role playing with another player, or doing a movement, a pantomime, or a dance: a way of unloosening self imposed, and most likely unaware, constraints.

It's astonishing how quickly and easily players expand themselves. And this is so, because the apparent randomness of the game has revealed itself to be something more than mere meaningless happenings.

  THE POWER OF SYNCHRONICITY

The whole process has taken on the quality of serendipitous play.

Back to the dictionary-
"Serendipity: The faculty of making fortunate and unexpected discoveries by accident. [Coined (1754) by Horace Walpole after the characters in the fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip (that is, Sri Lanka), who made such discoveries.]"

And just such a 'fairy tale' atmosphere permeates the game. There is a magical aspect, as if an invisible guiding force were behind the action: A certain 'something' weaving itself into an overall pattern, representing a kind of major insight available to each player, both in terms of that player's personal self-exploration, and the collective experience of the group.

C.G. Jung offers a special term for this collection of seemingly random occurrences that somehow convert themselves into a meaningful pattern.

Synchronicity is the word he uses.

The classic example: You are walking down the street; and, for no particular reason, you are thinking of an old sweetheart; when suddenly, out of the blue, someone turns on a radio in the apartment nearby and a song is playing. The very song you both loved so much! It was: 'Your Song!' An astonishing moment; for something beyond the normal has entered your awareness.

People say, such happenings are merely coincidental.

But examine for a moment. Our person, the subject, is walking down a street. It may be a street that's customarily taken. Nothing very random about this, one might say. An ordinary day on a regularly scheduled walk. And then something random happens. At a particular, random instant, our person, for no discernible reason, commences to think of an old sweetheart. And at that very moment, because some unknown person has decided to listen to the radio, a song comes out of the window onto the street. A song, furthermore, selected by yet another unknown, even more remote person, located miles away, a song sent out over the airways...that has special significance to only this one person who happens to be walking by.

All these random events - meaningful only because a person with a mind hears and makes a connection. It is that person's consciousness that bundles the whole series into a significant moment. Without the element of consciousness, the whole sequence would be no more than isolated fragments. Fragments standing side by side without connection. Mere coincidence.

In the ALL Game, synchronistic occurrences become the norm. Every move on the game board takes on symbolic meaning, bringing as if by magic precise insights and revelations pertinent to the question the player has laid open.

And it frequently happens that a player makes a statement just prior to drawing a card from one of the decks, and, fantastically, the card speaks to this issue, often in the very same words the player has just spoken.

Such moments are quite astonishing. They emphasize the sense one has that this game is like a waking dream in which deep layers of consciousness are communicating.

In some subtle and mysterious way, consciousness permeates the world we live in, indeed the whole universe. And as some believe, this consciousness derives from beyond even our manifested universe.

We live inside this consciousness. Our minds participate in a Universal Mind, a universal consciousness, somehow all interconnected. Without this universality of shared consciousness, I wouldn't be writing this, you wouldn't be reading it.

  THE MIND-FORTRESS

What is being asserted here is this: my consciousness [which affords me my experience] does not originate in my head. My mind does not contain consciousness. Quite the opposite. Consciousness contains my mind. It is only because of one's devotion to mainly the surface layer of consciousness, the egoic layer, in which a person feels walled up inside his single consciousness.

But, no sooner do I relinquish the notion that 'my' mind is something like a fortress of stone with a moat around it, than my once isolated self becomes aware of the flow, on all frequencies, of the larger consciousness in which I really live; and then everything I experience in this sea of awareness reveals its synchronistic quality. A constellation of meaningful events occurring at every moment, connecting what's inside me with what's outside me.

In ordinary day-to-day existence, we seldom recognize such synchronistic moments, unless we start paying closer attention to what is happening in our lives.

In ordinary life, we tend to manipulate our circumstances so that we experience some sort of congruity. We keep a permanent abode, go to a regular place of employment, maintain steady relationships, have consistent hobbies, etc. All designed to give us a sense of cohesiveness, permanence, stability - so that we can believe we are in an orderly universe, one over which we can, more or less, exercise a degree of control.

We have control, yes, but in time we might start to experience a degree of discontent, a vague feeling of stagnation - an itch, if you will, that eventually converts itself into undesirable actions that complicate life. Or - and this happens all too frequently - our comfortable world will be threatened somehow, and we get defensive, play out our fears in displays of anger, or self-defeating, defensive evasions, or involvements that draw us into experiences we really do not want.

And then there are our interior actions as well. We can provoke in ourselves feelings of inadequacy, of guilt, or depression, brought on by the habitual interpretations our thinking patterns have established.

Fortunately, we have moments of freshness. Life offers us a glimpse of possibilities that exist outside the world of our concerns.

Every once in a while, something comes flying off the walls of our construction to show us we live in a wild, unpredictable, glorious environment. Sometimes it is a sublime occurrence that urges in us the sense of a benevolent universe at work, as it happened to our friend as he walked down the street.

But sometimes it is not so desirable an event, prompting a negative reaction; and we hasten to stabilize our situation.

This 'something' can come from within our own psyches. A sudden, strange, irrational, unconventional urge, hardly something we would recommend for ourselves.

Or it may seem to come from what we tend to regard as outside of our own making; the world impacting us, playing havoc with our well-ordered life.

Such, is the thrust of synchronicity. It comes from the Soul. Seldom do we sense that we have made contact with the invisible currents of universal consciousness, urging us to experience the Wholeness that we truly are.

Aspects of our selves, consciously and unconsciously excluded from our lives; aspects wanting an integrated participation in our modus operandi, insisting we become whole beings in a whole universe; aspects which we have tried to keep outside our personality preferences, there on the other side of the moat; aspects that sometimes seem like demons, whom we attempt to fend off at great cost of energy, these threatening forces that cause us so much inner stress, who seem like enemies, but who are really allies.

But if we are prepared to see the synchronistic moment as the extraordinary glimpse of 'something more' that it truly is, then, both surprised and charmed, we can open ourselves to the fullness of life.

Playing the ALL Game has made it easier for me to dissolve my barriers.

  THE PLAY

The game provides an opportunity for expanding parameters of self-understanding like no other I've encountered.

During four hours of play, you are no longer inside your ordinary life with its customary features. You have entered an expanded, or altered state of consciousness. This soon becomes apparent when you realize that, as players share their lives and energy, a synergistic effect has happened. This combined energy field has the power to heighten awareness. In this supportive atmosphere, charged with more energy, each player is rendered more capable of perceiving with greater clarity and objectivity.

The ALL Game offers opportunities to examine unbeneficial impulses, and discover the sources of those hidden strategies, that have ruled your life, even despite your intentions. The heightened atmosphere amplifies strength of mind and will, so that old thinking patterns actually change.

And the process is not grueling. On the contrary, gayety and fun preside over the play. It is a game, a dynamic one, offering a space for seeing more clearly the effects of old habits and the benefits of trying new approaches. You feel free to embrace your true whole self. You are in a safe place where you can play at being a different you where you may open yourself to the larger world of Universal Mind and thus experience the Divine Supreme Being.

Down through the ages, such games have existed in esoteric schools all over the planet. The ALL Game is a contemporary version. It addresses eternal issues, but in a way relevant to 21st century man.