“…reality is always plural and mutable.”
— Cosmic Trigger Volume I: Final Secret of the Illuminati
In my last article I briefly explored the idea of becoming a “jack of all trades” type personality:
Will You Become Jack Of All Trades?
Any skill can be learned at anytime in one’s life, and it seems to be the case, that the more knowledge one explores, the more passion and compassion will arise and strike that individual’s dimensional heart-gate.
As someone said before me, we have an imperative to realize the “relative validity” of all realities that can be experienced. This expansion of consciousness can lead individuals away from the sense of disconnection and towards the sense of bliss. Like, for instance, if you find yourself talking about the music of Micheal Jackson. You may not have a preference towards his music or perhaps his alleged character, but you can well know that others somehow do. In this context, it is a reality that Micheal Jackson has “good music”, and from there the connection can begin to happen. This saves a lot of time in boring and argumentative differences that only exist within an assumption of an “objective reality”. A reality that doesn’t exist without a mind to think it up and believe it true.
I quickly wrote my previous article, because I wanted to put something down in words before I got to the core of what I was desiring to say. Because to me, there seems to be a special unifying quality to anyone who understands more about the reality they find themselves in. As well, I happen to be taking up many skills all at once in an extremely ambitious (and probably stupid) attempt, to create some kind of virtual masterpiece.
Though no matter what, it seems we will always have our blind spots. An example can be found in Nikola Tesla, who was known for his advanced engineering and innovative designs, but ostensibly, was not known for being good with business or money. Perhaps, this is due to being too humble with his work or not bullish enough with his patents — in either case, it may have been possible for him to have achieved some kind of “wireless” electricity if he only had the funding to do so.
This is where we must enter the blog section of this article.
Surely, This Will Be The Next STARDEW VALLEY!
Recently, I had a great conversation with an unknown musician by the name of Cashlin, about following passion and manifesting one’s dream. We explored the realm of new thought, positive thinking and many spiritual ideas that people are becoming more attracted to these days. While to many people, the idea of game design mixing with spirituality may seem like a rather shallow endeavor, I tend to believe that since billions are addicted to the gaming scene, we might as well make it a space for conscious expansion.
As a fledgling game designer, I often like to bring up the story of a famous indie developer who made it big, by creating a video game all by himself. The creator of Stardew Valley, Eric Barone.
Hearing and watching his story was awe-inspiring to me. For most of the time, when an extremely popular game is developed, it is only completed by huge teams of talented artists, musicians, coders, designers, and marketers. Seeing someone make millions off a game, by doing all that work alone, was fascinating to me. As well, I like to mention the developer of Undertale, Toby Fox, who also made a game nearly all by himself, using very simple game design tools.
When I wasn’t having fantasies of giving up the material life to live in some hermitage or monastery — I would become enamored with the thought of making a living by simply working on a single great game.
Positive Thinking? Or Lackadaisical Thinking
Unfortunately for those who enter the “Positive Thinking” realm, the most common reality of being a game designer is a lot like the most common reality of being a writer, a musician, an artist, or an upstart of any kind. The odds are stacked against you. This is something that doesn’t seem to be highlighted too much in the “law of attraction” idea, which purports positive thinking as the best way to live by doing one’s passion.
Though my previous work has received nothing but positive feedback, if I was more honest with myself, I could have seen that the mechanics (of the games I created) — were just too overdone, and not creative enough to catch on fire. My games may have been intriguing through story or concept, but in the end, they just were not that fun.
I pinpoint the main reason for this may have been due to an overload of positive thought. I became convinced that no matter what I put out, it would be “good enough” for people to play it and at least donate me enough money, to buy a house or something. This was wildly presumptuous of me. Having looked back at the creation of my games and actually judging the experience (without the rainbow-colored glasses of my own positive delusional reinforcement), I can see how a little bit of negative thinking would have helped me a whole lot more. Perhaps, a better word could be used, such as “self-critical awareness”, but nevertheless, I would have judged those “self-critical thoughts” as being negative either way. This would have actually placed me in a more useful trap of ideology.
Though, to be fair to the idea that abundance is just a simple ‘tweeting-of-the-number-1111′ away from one’s most blissful goal — positive thinking always seems to eventually lead one towards doing something constructive or creative while negative thinking always seems to lead one towards doing something destructive or useless. If I had not had the positive thought of “I could make a great game”, I would have never even initiated a single brush-stroke of my creative endeavor!
This said, there were still many aspects about both of my games. wherein I just decided to be lazy. I could have easily taken the time to go back and fine tune all aspects about the game that I absolutely knew were kinda “off”. I already had a keen self-critic, active in my awareness, to make those crucial decisions, and yet I decided to bypass them all in favor of (what I suppose I need to call) a type of “lackadaisical thinking”. Which is thought that generates a reality which seems more probable than it really is, just so that a project can be finished faster or a pertinent task can be ignored. At the time of making these games, I was hungry for money, for attention, and to uplift people in some kind of conscious expanding way. All of this made me rush the process a lot.
Yet, as always, it has to be realized that this is all talk that is in hind-sight of the unfolding life process. I wasn’t just exploring the reality of game design when I made these games.
I was also exploring:
▣ Politics
▣ Spirituality/Mysticism
▣ Astral travel/Lucid dreams
▣ Relationships
▣ Travel
▣ Health
▣ Business/Economy
▣ Science
▣ How to use money with integrity
…and even questioning whether or not using money was integral to begin with.
Everything that was happening in my life actually made my “lackadaisical thinking” a very necessary thing, so that I did not become overwhelmed with burden. I realized that improving one’s self could only be done at the pace of the current consciousness of that individual. In this, I felt a perfect peace and comfort that constantly required awareness to maintain.
Gladly, I went through this gauntlet and arrived with more experience under my belt. This is actually how it is for all of us. We all obtain experience that we use to benefit ourselves and others for the future.
The Future
It seems that my great skill (if this truly exists) has to be somewhere in the integration of spiritual knowledge and game design. So, I finally decided to begin work on a new game. Something that will be simple and yet hopefully profound enough to spark something special in anyone who plays. Except this time, I won’t prepare any expectations for the result. All I can do is improve all my skills until I know it is good enough for it to be potentially popular. And, if it happens to fail, then all I can do is begin anew.
So perhaps I will be able to create something that can inspire humanity on a scale that perhaps no other game has done before? I still don’t know for sure if this is possible, but if so, it would be great…
Because then my title won’t end up as a lie.
Rokazulu's Mystical Eschaton 