The RPG of Life and the Player Character

     The most dangerous mistake anyone playing a role playing game can make is confusing themselves with their characters or avatars. Fortunately, it's fairly rare that it happens, but, as I understand it, it can and does happen. When it does, the person can spiral into self-destruction.

      Role playing games involve making choices and decisions as your character would, and speaking and acting within that world as your character would. Some RPG gamers take on whole other personalities with elaborate backstories which adds depth and richness to the player's experience. This can be true for tabletop RPGs, or sometimes for Online RPGs depending on the server and the players in question. The chance to escape and experience something new, exotic, and adventurous while still remaining completely safe and isolated from the dangers within that world can be both fun and rewarding. It can bring out qualities in a person which they might not have even known were there as your character, or your "avatar" ventures forth.

     Something which has been emphasized and reinforced with me recently is that the bodies we inhabit, and the lives we live here and now are much like this as well. The real person, the "player," could be called one's "consciousness" or one's "soul," while our physical bodies and the lives we live are our avatars or player characters. The soul, the actual "person," remains completely safe no matter what happens to the body in this life. It doesn't matter if the body is harmed, tortured, or killed. The soul remains safe the same way the player remains safe and unharmed if one's avatar is killed in, say, World of Warcraft.

     Part of our biggest problem as human beings is that we tend to confuse who we are with the character we're playing at the moment, and this leads to most of our misery and fear with what happens within this RPG we call "life." The natural state of the soul apart from the body, as can be evidenced by many out of body NDE experiences, is peace, patience, calmness, love, joy, and so on. It is only as we confuse ourselves with our bodies and the roles we play that we become afraid and allow our characters or avatars, our bodies, to dictate to the soul who it is supposed to be.

     In order to play the game in a healthy way, we always have to keep in mind that we ourselves are neither our characters nor our avatars, and eventually, the game has to end and we have to return to the real world.