Minecraft is spiritual? Bitch, please! I can almost hear you laughing at me now from the other side of my monitor. But honestly, this is no joke. I do honestly view games like Minecraft (and particularly my favorite, Creativerse) as significant spiritual/meditative tools. Just hear me out, and try and keep an open mind about this.
Creation and Expansion
What I have come to believe spiritually is that EVERYTHING THAT IS comes from a single source energy that is continually expanding, continually reproducing, continually growing, always and forever in a constant state of creation and expansion. We are part of that source energy and therefore we also are imbued with a natural desire to create things. Some of us are driven to create fantastic works of art, others to create music, still others poetry and great works of fiction or nonfiction, and some of us just like to draw or even build things out of Legos or blocks. Whatever medium we choose, it is a basic human (conscious) desire to create things, to make something, to bring something into existence that is new and to share that with others. In some ways I feel that if we are not creating something in our lives, we are wasting our time here and not fulfilling our true purpose for we ARE expansion and as source energy, we are meant to create.
Above all else, games like Minecraft and Creativerse are designed to foster creativity and imagination. They encourage us to create something new out of what we have been given. And, what we have been given to start with is a virtual world filled with semi-randomly laid blocks or boxes of various textures and colors and then given a set of world constraints and rules in which to manipulate them. What we do with them is entirely up to us. We can rearrange them, destroy them, clone them, and use our own imagination to make of them whatever we wish. We can rearrange all the blocks to create an elaborate work of art or we can goof off and create a giant set of boobs or even a penis. We can even create bombs and blow all our shit up and destroy everything we have made if we really want to.
The point is, Minecraft and games like it are just a giant sandbox and the choice of what to do in our sandbox is entirely ours. The game designers mostly likely give zero shit what we do with it. They just want us to enjoy playing the game and having fun with it. There is no morality involved here. The designers do not care what we build. Of course I’m sure that some of the game designers are very interested to see WHAT we will do with it when given free reign to use our own imagination but I doubt they are saddened that they made the game when someone does something silly like erect a giant penis. I’m sure that they are frequently surprised when players do things with their world that the original designers never even imagined. And, I imagine, they enjoy coming up with new tools to give their players as we interact with their virtual world and begin asking for new tools, new blocks, new things that would make our experience better.
For me, this is much like I see our role here in our physical universe. This entire physical realm is just like one giant sandbox with a set of rules for which we are allowed to manipulate it (i.e. matter, gravity, time, space, etc). Universal consciousness, source energy, God, or whatever you want to call it just simply created the sandbox and the rules and then handed it to us to see what we’d do with it. And, I would suggest, there is no morality here either. The grand designer doesn’t give zero shits if we make a Utopian society of peace, love and harmony, or if we shit all over it and blow it up with nuclear bombs – just so long as we enjoy playing the game. The entire intent of our physical universe is to go create things and have fun within the rules given us.
Working with Your Subconscious
One more point I’d like to make is the power of these games to tap into our subconscious. I am a firm believer in the power of the subconscious and believe that images and symbols are constantly communicating non-verbal information to our psyche every minute of every day. When I am presented with a new virtual world within my virtual environment the first thing I do is run around a little and look for something to speak to my subconscious. I scan the horizon and suddenly stop. Over there…in the distance…what does that remind me of??? A giant bunny head with big bunny ears? The rough outline of the Egyptian sphinx? Maybe a camel? Or a cow?
And then my imagination begins to run wild. What if I turned that hill into a giant Sphinx and hollowed it out inside to make a home? I could hollow out the eyes and look over the ocean in the distance…maybe put fires in the eyes so the eyes glow at night or….or I could turn that bunny into a giant white rabbit…the basic shape is there…just need to convert it to snow blocks to make it white…and I could turn the entire landscape into a giant Alice and Wonderland theme park…
While I am off building things with my imagination I start to ask myself why did this come to my mind, what caused me to see that in the random landscape? What does it say about thoughts floating around subconsciously in my mind? And, I am frequently stunned to find that after spending hours working on a giant rabbit I will have new dreams that evening that are inspired by my labors. I will see strange synchronicity in my daily life like total strangers asking me if I like Alice and Wonderland for no apparent good reason. I begin to realize that my focus and attention on something as simple as a video game is actually somehow SHAPING my experiential reality, creating real life connections that I never saw before. Life is MAGIC that way.
And so, for me at least, loosing myself for a few hours now and then letting my imagination run wild as I build things out of blocks becomes itself a form of meditation. The thoughts and concerns over work, or relationships, or stress, or whatever seem to take a back burner to the focused attention of creating a bunny’s ear and then magic begins to happen in my life – if I let and keep my eyes open.
If you haven’t done so before, consider getting yourself a copy of Creativerse (free to play on steam) and just look for something to began building. Let your imagination run wild and then as you do perhaps your subconscious will begin to show itself to you in new thoughts and images and magic will begin appearing in YOUR life!
I agree that it is spiritual. Just like drawing, painting, writing, crafting and so on. The cool things about games like these is that it helps give people a tool to help them express themselves in a way they may not be able to on paper, canvas and what not.