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[Sean]

Sometimes truth shows up in the most unlikely places – extremely violent video games for example. Toward the end of one that me recently played, the main character discovers that he’s not merely infected with a virus, he actually is the virus. Afterwards, he gives the following speech: "I’m not human. The revelation… it freed me… it killed me. I’m not human. [This person] is just a role I play. Part of me was relieved… and part of me died. Just another disguise, right? So ingrained, so real… even I believed it." What a great description of what it feels like to wake up from the dream of self.

Yes, me plays video games. This process called "i" experienced having serious judgments about them beginning way back in 1980 and me swore he would never let them "imprison him in their addictive escapism". That was then. Earlier this year it became clear that it was time to go buy an Xbox. So, there me was in Costco, laughing on the way to the checkout counter with an Xbox 360under his arm saying, "Oh, so this is what we’re doing now. Okay. What do i know?"

One of the things this nonexistent self has both enjoyed and not enjoyed about how this life has unfolded is that it continues to move in directions that directly confront prominent ideas of how life should be lived, what a spiritual life should look like, what’s right and wrong, etc. The main message me has heard over and over all these years is "Stop thinking and follow." That’s the extremely condensed version, of course. The message usually comes more fleshed-out, like "What you think you know is irrelevant. Stop thinking and listen. You’ll know what to do when it’s time to do it. In the meantime, just wait." Oh man. Me used to hate that… being told so clearly and bluntly that all the thinking, planning and efforting is meaningless noise and that the only real thing to do is to wait to be told what to do and then do it. "Why can’t i go out and live my life like everyone else does?" "Because you’re not like them." It used to drive i up a wall. His knickers would get so twisted he couldn’t breathe. Me is not human. As much as he might wish he was, me is not.

The video games me gingerly began to play in his late thirties were adventure games like the Myst series that were about walking around in a world devoid of other people and solving puzzles to investigate a story. Five years later someone introduced him to role playing games (RPG’s), which are also about story. Sure, they can involve lots of fighting, but there’s usually lots of dialog and story, too: each player plays a role, a particular type of character, in the story – like in the speech quoted in the first paragraph. Playing a role, like an actor in a movie.

"I’m not human. I just play one on TV." Me grew up basically knowing that he wasn’t human. It wasn’t an easy thing to digest, but it was pretty obvious to him and everyone around him. Suburban New Jersey in the 1960’s and 70’s was basically inhabited by hordes of humans. They were everywhere. They knew they weren’t animals, they knew they’d been given dominion over the earth, they were striving to build successful careers for themselves, they cared about social status and material possessions and TV shows and sports teams and weekends and vacations and their preferences and opinions and beliefs and values and morals and all of that stuff. They believed in the primacy of American Society and Western Civilization and were very clear about what was appropriate behavior and what was not. Me didn’t resonate with any of that. Me didn’t understand it and wasn’t interested in becoming part of it. Me wasn’t like them.

Just as societies often have different classes (eg: warrior, priest and worker classes), so RPG’s have different classes of characters, and the role one plays in the game is largely defined by the class of one’s character. For example, in a fantasy RPG there are usually classes such as warrior, rogue, wizard and healer. Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses, skills and abilities, and each player chooses one and plays through the story as that type of character. In high school, me watched his peers give up their organic individuality and take on personas, roles, places where they fit into the big story, as if high school was a real life RPG. There were defined classes that one could belong to and everybody had to choose one or have one chosen for them.

In me’s school the available classes were things like jock, cheerleader, gearhead, slut, nerd, clown, popular, freak, artist, hippie and weirdo. It seemed like everyone was trying to find their place in society, taking on a role, creating a mask, building a disguise. Me felt like he could see the anguish in their eyes as their organic beings were covered over and ignored. Me didn’t understand any of this or feel any interest in joining in. Me started to feel more and more alone, like a stranger in a strange land. No one else seemed to be aware of what was happening and high school became a living nightmare for him. Everything was quickly transforming into a fantasy game that he wasn’t interested in and didn’t fit into. At times he felt like the sane among the crazy and at others like the crazy among the sane. Sometimes he felt like the only one alive in a school full of zombies.

At age eighteen, an immense spiritual awakening happened that both fascinated and freaked i out. His path took a giant leap in the opposite direction of his peers and he stopped being able to relate to them at all… and vice versa. Me got scared about spending the rest of his life very much alone. "If i’m this far removed from other people at age 18," he reasoned, "how distant will i be when i’m 48?" Me nearly fell on the floor in convulsions at the thought. Me began searching for some community he could relate to. A friend’s mother directed him to a group of people she felt he would resonate with more. Me gave up his own spiritual perspective and took on theirs so that he could feel like he fit in.

After a year and a half it became obvious that me didn’t fit with them either and much of the next seven years was spent getting reacquainted with the intelligence and wisdom inherent in being alive. At twenty four me began to sense the reality that he didn’t exist, that he wasn’t really here. There wasn’t any context for how to hold that then. Perhaps in India there would have been, but not here in the US. Needless to say, it wasn’t spoken about very much. If you talk about that in this country they put you away and give you medication.

At twenty-seven, me began hanging out with another small group of people. They all seemed like they felt like they fit in and me’s discomfort with not feeling the same became unbearable again. Me was once again quite aware that he wasn’t like them and he embarked on a quest… to become human. Yes, that’s how me talked about it. Old beliefs came to the fore that there was something wrong with him that needed to be fixed. Me was an alien, for whatever reason (and there were many possible reasons), and for him to live a fulfilling, functional, successful, intimate life he needed to learn to become human, so that he could fit in with all the other humans.

Well, that never worked. There me was again, trying to create a version of self that other people would like and want to be around. Of course, me could never figure out what that was and he would invariably get bored and dissatisfied with playing a role, wearing a disguise and letting people treat him in ways that he didn’t want them to. He was trying to make himself like them in an effort to make them like him. Me was never very good at make believe, though. For some reason, he just couldn’t ignore awareness of reality long enough to keep it up.

Eventually, there came a point of realization that trying to be someone else felt like a living hell and that me would rather die than live like that. What made things challenging was that me also realized that he would rather die than be himself because the aloneness of being himself felt like a fate worse than death. Can you imagine a more intense double bind than that? Not being himself = hell. Solution: death. Being himself = hell. Solution: death. Me was really suffering over this whole "not human" thing.

There came a point in his mid-thirties when a window onto reality opened and the decades of abuse and drama about not fitting in were seen as merely a child’s afternoon adventure. The "essence of who he was" was the same as it had always been, had never changed, had never been affected by all the abuse and drama. The decades of drama were like a game that had been played for a few hours. It had apparently happened, but it didn’t have any meaning and was in no way personal. Which isn’t to say that it shouldn’t have happened. There was no choice. There was nothing else to do. This was simply the way that life had played out through him.

And so goes the game. We are both the car and driver and neither the car nor the driver. Something creates us the way we are. Something moves us to create a self and identify with it. Something moves us to feel dramatically involved with the role that’s being played. Sometimes something deflates the personal involvement with this illusory self. Something destroys us when it’s time to die. None of this is about, by or for us. We are not really here. We don’t really exist. We’re just a figment of imagination created by something that is and is not us. Perhaps what we think of as "me" is simply the little bit of awareness in each of these tiny appendages of the one thing that is everything. Then again, perhaps not. What do i know?

Surely, me has never felt like part of the Civilized Human RPG that seems to be going on around him, but on a deeper level, he’s not even he and there’s no way for him to know who he really is. The reality is that there is no self here, but all he can know about is self. "The self that can be named is not the real self" and all that Taoist stuff. Me is not human. Are any of us? And yet, this soap opera that is commonly called humanity seems so real, doesn’t it? Until it doesn’t. "I’m not human. The revelation… it freed me… it killed me. I’m not human. [This person] is just a role I play. Part of me was relieved… and part of me died. Just another disguise, right? So ingrained, so real… even I believed it." As if on cue, the song that’s playing on my iPod right now has a voice repeating over and over "You think to yourself… ‘It’s real’." What "you"? What "self"? What "it"?