Spirituality and Role Playing
Role playing can contribute to spiritual growth. Here, we'll explore how role playing can contribute to structuring two key spiritual insights in one's conciousness.
There's always another point of view.
The following is a story that I've been told variations of in a local Sufi community (in the San Francisco Bay Area):
A spiritual teacher once asked if anyone in a group knew anything. Several people thought they did, and one by one the teacher showed them they did not know what they thought they knew. Then a young woman who was a newcomer said she thought she knew something. The teacher asked her what that was, and she said "There is always another point of view." The teacher agreed.
Whatever point of view we have on a matter, there are many others. We may have strong arguments for ours, but still there are alternatives. Different people have radically different ways of looking at the world. Even the same person does.
Role playing a number of different characters is one way to experience that there are different points of view in a very personal way.
The self is constucted.
My son and I had a party once at which people learned and played a simple role playing game called FateRole. People learned both to gamemaster and play. The party was very successful. People learned to play and had a good time. The party was a pot luck and we also had some good food, so that was good too.
A few days after the party we received a letter from a lady who said that the experience of role playing had changed her life. She saw that her character in a role playing game was constructed and that she had a great deal to say about that construct. Back home she discovered that her "real" life was actually very similar and that she had much more to say about it than she thought. She specifically mentioned that her relationship with her children was significantly enhanced.