So on Monday I played the Transformation Game with Meg and her friend Val. What is the Transformation Game? To quote their website, it’s "a fun and complex board game which offers a playful yet substantial way of understanding and transforming key issues in your life. It can be played at varying levels of intensity, from a light-hearted way of gaining insight into yourself, to a tool to help solve problems, clarify important personal issues, or creatively enhance relationships." And happily for me, not only has Meg been to Findhorn and has the game, she’s a facilitator.

More links on the Game:·
* What is the game?
* Game intentions.
* More on the game.

Anyway, this is normally the sort of thing one should be doing over a very long weekend/on some kind of hippie retreat, but since she can’t really do that in her home these days and when the heck do I have the time, we agreed to play on my day off from work. The game has several levels, today’s level was the Physical one. I am hoping we can get back to playing this same game again in the future...we’ll see.

How do I explain this game?

Every player is going along on their own ever-looping section of the game board. You draw cards before the game starts according to your die roll and put them in an envelope labeled "Personal Unconsciousness." Your options for selection are:

Angel Cards
Life Insight
Life Setback
(There's also Universal Feedback cards, but they don't get drawn much.)

Usually when you land on any space, you draw some kind of card somewhere. The symbols on the board represent what you're drawing. Options are Appreciation Life (happy face), Free Will Life (exclamation point), Insight Life (sun), Blessing Life (4 pointed star?), Miracle Life (lotus), Transformation Life (four sided squiggle thing), Intuitive Flash Life (lightning), Setback Life (X in a circle), Angel Life (angel), Depression Life (tears), Service Life (heart with wings).

You get a board per each level of the game, with the requirements of what you have to do in order to make it to the next level.

During the game, you will be receiving abundance cards and pain cards. The pain cards hamper your ability to move in the game, the abundance and angel cards help you to fulfill your level. In order to move up to the next level of the game, you must have six abundance cards + one service card + no pain cards, or have three angel cards + no pain cards. For every pain card you have, you lose one die in a roll (like if you have 2 pains, you need to roll at least a 3 to roll one). You can get rid of pain cards by giving up an abundance card per pain card.

You end up doing a lot of discussing during this game with everyone else as to what your issues are with the particular card.

The focus question I used was: What is holding me back from progressing in doing the things I supposedly want to do? (I will politely not mention so much what everyone else's stuff was.)

I drew some cards that said things like, "You are set back by your protection at your present level. Take 2 pains," as well as "You are set back by your fear on your present level, take 2 pains." So we all had some discussion about how those words relate to my job--I'll do anything to protect this job unless/until I can get another one, basically.

One thing Meg kept noting with me (which yeah, is true) is that I anticipate a lot of pain and that I take on other people's. Which is LITERALLY my job, right there. I have to take on others' pain--no boundaries allowed--and I expect to be dumped on. I don't exactly expect to get saved at this point. I got a card about self-deception, which led to a discussion of how I am guilty no matter what happens at my job, even if I had nothing to do with something and/or it was impossible for me to know something. (Three days later, I got chewed out for something I had no idea I was supposed to do, but even though it was proven later that no, nobody told me to do it---yes, you should have known better by now.) I pretty much have some kind of Stockholm Syndrome going on--the truth is in the eye of the beholder who has judged me guilty.

Somebody landed on the lotus symbol, which wiped out everyone's pains. Huzzah!

I landed on a lightning symbol, which means intuition. You guess what you're going to do next ("I'm going to draw a life card," I said), flip a coin and if it comes up lightning, your intuition won. So I got five awareness tokens, but burned one to get rid of a pain. I got some more awareness tokens later too.

I got the lightning symbol again, but this time I lost the coin flip and ended up with pains instead, which led to a discussion of how I get upset when my intuition doesn't pan out and how I beat myself up about it. Meg said that she thinks maybe if I don't get an answer to something, maybe the universe is just feeling neutral and it doesn't matter, or it's taking awhile, and you're better off with no response. She feels like if she does get an answer, she has to move on it and that's dangerous--so if there's no answer, she's home free. Well, that's an interesting point.

I had three pains and nine awareness cards (note: you only need six to win), but I decided not to burn any of them because eh, maybe something wlll come along like someone lands on the lotus card and I'll be home free, eh? NO! I landed on the Depression Life Square, got 4 pains, and literally was unable to roll the dice any more. Meg was all, "if you hadn't gotten rid of those pains, you could have landed on the Transformation Square, here's all the goodies you could have won..." and I was all, STOP THAT, THAT IS NOT HELPING. I am just used to carrying pain. I figured maybe divine intervention might get rid of it before it became too bad and I wouldn't have to waste awarenesses, and...I totally blew it.

Moral of the story: get rid of your pains the second you can, for many more may be piled upon you and you end up blowing your awarenesses anyway.

And after burning awarenesses, I uh, won four more awarenesses. Go figure on that one. And then the next landing was on the appreciation space and all pains were taken away! Right after I burn a bunch, it all gets fixed. SO YEAH.

We had some discussion of boundaries and how I don't see the point of attempting to set them with people who refuse to respect them, and how I do not want to go all balls to the wall to get my needs met* or get people to stop, because I don't want to be that level of asshole.

* I really, really wish people at work would stop doing that.

I got a card that literally said, "I'm tired of waiting, take two pains." Hahahah, so accurate. I'm so conflicted that the universe is having me stay where I am.

By around the end of the round, I made a list of my impasses:
(a) I don't have a whole lot of backup in my life--emotionally, financially, family--to trust that will take care of me if I take risks and do crazy shit that isn't stable.
(b) there will be drama escalation, especially with Mom.
(c) Potential financial ruin if I don't have a steady 40 hour a week day job.
(d) I don't have the emotional energy to make and sustain big changes.

So I got an answer to my question, eh?

We finally needed to wrap up the game for dinner, and amazingly enough we started landing on the right things in order to be able to win. I ended up getting two angel cards and she got a service card and I passed her some awareness cards and we were done!

Yeah, I really want to play again. Maybe with the same question, maybe with a different question, I don't know.

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