Hi Peeps
PhillyC here with a spontaneous urge to write, and today I want to talk about video games, on the PC, or on whichever console (such as PlayStation, game boy, Xbox etc) people are using these days.
We have to admit that there is massive portion of humanity right now who are heavily invested in 'gaming' as it has been termed. There seems to be something deeply appealing about going into a virtual world and imagining ourselves there - as another whole 'character' or persona with different choices and situations. The array of games these days is astounding, you can put yourself into any kind of situation, with all kinds of different abilities and different outcomes.
I happen to have some experience in this realm, and was a gamer for a long period of my life. In the end I decided to quit gaming because I had some deep realizations about the dynamics I was involved in. Nowadays I might play a few hours here and there of a 2001 release called Baldur's Gate. At other times in my life most of waking life was spent in front of a computer screen involved in a virtual world of some kind or another, and this routine might persist for weeks or months until I got sick of it.
For me the appeal of games was for various reasons. On one level I enjoyed being in a realm that seemed to have greater possibilities than my 'physical' world, where I could be successful and clever and have a feeling of being good at something. That's not to say that my physical world has been bad, like everyone it's certainly had dark periods, but it's also had times of profound happiness. I am inclined to say that the times I have been most happy are the times I have gamed the least.
I think that gaming is also just a comfortable groove to get into, just like watching TV, browsing facebook, scrolling through instagram, going to the pub, or smoking crack. There is all kinds of extremes, but it' really just the same thing on a fundamental level - a way to not be here and project ourselves into a mental world that isn't here. It's kind of funny how some of us construct whole paradigms of superiority about how our particular methods of distraction are better than another persons. We could judge a man on the street who drinks pre-mixed burboun and cola at 11am. But on a basic level it's just the same as a wealthy businessman going to a five star restaraunt. The common thing is that it's experience seeking.
Getting lost in experiences is a way of 'switching off' and disconnecting from things we might be experiencing and feeling. My big realisation about gaming was that by putting my attention into it, I was avoiding my own lifes experience.
I didn't want to accept the unpleasant parts of my life, yet if I didn't accept them and let them in - then I could hardly let all the joy and the abundance in could I?
The gaming habit, just like any other habit is just a convenient method to avoid ourselves. It could really be anything, and in truth most aspects of human life are just distractions. We have our minds filled with expectations and opinions, and we waste our lives seeking them out and never seeing what is beneath all of this contrived dialogue. It's a worthwhile search in my opinion.
We like distractions, because they are less complicated. The mind says "we will be safe if we stick to what we know", so the human tendency is to go with our habits and our assumptions about life. Fear runs our lives, so we take the minds advice and seek safety on a day to day basis. That's a big call I know - to say that survival runs the lives of most humans. Sure we aren't running from wild beasts (well most of us), but the way we operate suggests that the survival aspect is running the show.
We seem to be always fleeing the scene, and unable to really inhabit a moment with silence and profundity. Why are people on the city street walking so briskly? Why when you look them right in the eye and smile from your heart will they not even notice you, or simply look back bewildered. It's a strange age we are living in, and it's time we started admitting it. Disconnection is the modern day disesase, we have been given this tool called the mind and instead of operating it constructively, it just runs our lives for us - according to it's default agenda, which as a biological survival mechanism is survival.
I feel that this is a way of describing the process of humans transitioning into our divine or conscious form. Which as an optimist and an intuitive I choose to believe is happening. This the real game, this is the real challenge of our lives. It's not getting a better KDA ( which is a term to denote your score in some games), unlocking the next achievement, or any of that other garbage. I couldn't give a hoot about any of that because I stopped taking all of that nonsense seriously when I had the insight that there was one game that eclipsed everything else. Solving the mystery of this life, and ending my continual suffering.
What I couldn't stomach was that I was too much of a coward to live my own life, irrespective of how mighty or powerful I could be on a screen. Even in team or social games with my friends, it basically boiled down to gaining approval, we all gamed because that was what we knew - it was a safe way of relating to each other, but in it's safety it was a safe harbour for all kinds of dark states which were being suppressed. To me online games seemed to be a platform to cultivate all kinds of negative emotional states. The player base has a VERY strong tendency toward adolescent and young adult males, with all of the complexity and repression of being that in our societies. Going online I would gather emotional states which would remain with me outside of the game, I can remember one time being angry for several days after a match.
So that's my little sojourn friends, I feel like my basic point is that games are like most of our 'culture' in that it's another hoop for your mind to jump through in order to be happy. Mind likes tasks and complexity, so we tend to give it things to pursue in order to give ourselves that happiness.
I don't game anymore because I know that this happiness is my natural state actually, and if I choose not to do the 'extra work' of first giving it a condition and then attempting to fulfill that condition. Without doing that 'extra work', I can then be grateful and joyful doing anything. I can be happy just walking down the street, looking at a glass of water, or folding a towel. This is something that everyone can do, and we tend to naturally display this state when we are kids.
It's only when we 'grow up' that we become serious, and seriously distracted by our minds. But more on that later, I think this post is long enough.
Hope this gives some food for thought
Namaste
Phil