What is Reality?

Whatever appears to be happening.

What is a game?

Something you find yourself playing.

In reality games we play with whatever appears to be happening. Whatever your situation is, it can be played with. For no benefit. This is just an experiment to see what happens. I know you want benefits. I mean there are loads of benefits apparently but that’s not why we play. I know you’re trying to make good things happen, I know you hope you’ll improve your fitness, sleep better, lose weight, make friends, become more productive, be more creative. How do I know this? Because everyone on the planet has been taught that whatever is currently happening isn’t enough. It’s a little bit too…. or not quite…  Everyone on the planet has been taught to use this moment to build a better moment in the future. And often we feel we aren’t able to do that and so we spend this moment feeling guilty that the reason this moment isn’t what we wanted it to be is because we didn’t do more in previous moments. This is all an illusion. Nothing can be different to how it is and no one has made things this way. Life is an unfolding dance of energy that takes the form of apparent individual people running around trying to get their needs met. Whether and how and when those needs get met has nothing to do with the individual’s efforts to meet those needs. This is all a story. We don’t look like trees or rivers or squirrels but we are just like them.  No intentional effort is needed for a tree, a river, a squirrel or a human being to be a successful tree, river, squirrel or human being. There is no separate individual personal entity being or doing tree or river or squirrel or human being. But in the case of human beings at least it is widely felt that there is a separate individual entity controlling actions and thoughts and directing the life of each person. This is a mistaken illusory belief as the Buddha put it : “actions happen, thoughts happen but there is no doer or thinker thereof”. Whether you feel it or not, you are the universe expressing itself as and through whatever you take to be yourself in this moment. The only thing that cannot reasonably be doubted is that something is happening now. Whenever you remember this you can play with it.

Making Meaning

The trouble with life is it almost makes sense. It appears to follow laws and logic and it even seems possible to predict it and rely on it. Night follows day, and maybe the other way around too but you never get two nights in a row and then a day and then two more nights. You won’t get a Wednesday the day after a Sunday, not unless you’re Keith Richards. This apparent order is misleading if we take it to mean that the universe has some kind of meaning or purpose. The universe is all there is and therefore has no context in which it could have meaning or purpose. Apparently within the universe or within life things can and do have purpose and meaning, for example the meaning and purpose of red traffic lights or of words in a language or the infinite meanings of people and things in our lives. But these are all made up meanings, invented by us. 

Realising that life has no intrinsic meaning on its own but at the same time recognising that human beings are meaning machines and have had meaning programmed into them by culture since birth, in Reality Games we deliberately make our own meaning by looking for and inventing patterns in what appears to be happening.

In Reality Games the process of creating our own meaning through “games” or thought experiments and pattern recognition is both an artistic and existential endeavour. It invites us to actively engage with our world, seeking connections and crafting interpretations that resonate with our lived experiences. This pursuit of meaning-making emphasises the creativity inherent in being human—transforming both randomness and routine into a tapestry of personal significance.

Purpose

Unlike you, the universe has no purpose.

No aim, no goal, no point.

I’m not having a go at it.

I think the universe is a good idea.

I’m in favour of it.

I wouldn’t vote to leave it. 

The universe is everything to me.

An unconditional explosion of energy.

Allowing everything there is to appear.

Unlike you, the universe loves everything 

For every thing you love about the universe there’s another thing you hate about it.

The universe has no favourites, you do.

The universe loves your misfortune as much as your success, you don’t.

The universe is love. It is unconditional impersonal love, containing and inseparable from everything. 

Wherever you are and whatever you apparently find yourself doing, you will notice that it’s always this.

This moment, now.

‘Then’ is just another word for ‘now’ and ‘now’ is a word for whatever appears to be happening.

Whatever appears to be happening cannot be really be known, understood or explained beyond the apparent appearance of it in this moment.

So in Reality Games we play with this.

Life is like a deck of cards in that you can only play the games you know the rules for.

Reality Games shares new rules to play with.

The rules of each card game vary but the cards we play with are always the same. Sometimes the ace that’s the most valuable, at other times it’s the 2, the 9 or the king. Sometimes it’s hearts you want to find in other games you need to get rid of them. What can this teach us about life? Everything, each moment, is like a card you've been dealt. However what it means depends on the rules of the game you’re playing . What are the rules of cards? Well there are no rules of cards because the rules depend on the particular game you’re playing! Alternatively we could say the first rule of cards is to make up the rules. It’s the same with life. Each moment is what it is, just as each card is what it is. The queen of spades is never the 9 of hearts, and a rainy day is never a hot, sunny day or a snowy day. However, the meaning of each thing in life, like the interpretation of cards in a particular card game, depends on the context or the rules of the game we find ourselves playing.

In life we're usually given the rules by others or society. We think there’s just one game and its name is life. But that’s like saying there’s just the one game of cards. There is no ”game of cards” There is a universal deck of playing cards. And there are countless games to be played with them - if you know the rules. Few of us realise there’s more than one set of rules to play with. So we go around seeking only for specific "cards" with fixed meanings because they're the only ones we've learnt are valuable within the rules of the game that we've unconsciously learnt to play and which we unconsciously assume is the only game available. However when we realise the "cards" themselves have no intrinsic value we can find ourselves creating our own games and rules for whatever life deals us.

Q. So I can just change the rules so that everything that happens, every card life deals me, is the one I want?

A. Give it a try! See how it works out for you! This analogy of a card game can help us comprehend why we can’t be perpetually happy. In fact, a card game where all the cards have the same value essentially means they have no value. So, how could you possibly play with them? What we perceive as “good,” “correct,” or “happiness” exists because there’s something else called “bad,” “wrong,” or “suffering.” It’s the difference between getting the card we desire and getting the card we don’t. You can only obtain the card you want if you already have cards you don’t want or if there’s a chance you might get a card you don’t want. Happiness can only be experienced in a world that includes unhappiness.