Feeling stuck? Need guidance on a major question in your life?
Leela, the Game of Life, can help.
Leela Game
Every turn, you’ll receive a combination of Yogic philosophy and modern psychology to guide you to answers.
What is it?
Ancient Indian seers believed that life is a game of the gods, Leela (the sanskrit word for game). Our souls decide to reincarnate in this human form with karma (think: the plot and setting for the game, our actions) and dharma (our role and the meaning of the story).
Our job in this game is to understand our part (self-awareness) and to play it dutifully (selfless service and hard work). At the end of our lives, we will finish this round of Leela and return to the Cosmic Consciousness, the source energy for our soul.
This game, the little Leela, is meant to be a way to get an outside perspective on your big Leela. The player asks a question of the game and then goes through the challenges and strengths on the board that the player will confront in their Big Leela. When the player has learned the lesson needed for the question, they will be released from the game.
The board will look familiar to you - because it was the inspiration for Chutes and Ladders. The player can move between 72 planes of existence (the squares on the board) as envisioned by Indian seers (things like greed, limiting beliefs, imagination, or positive intelligence).
These 72 planes are organized into 8 rows (aligned to the chakras) that represent the major areas of the player must sequentially achieve balance to reach enlightenment (the physical world, emotions, action, sense of true self, knowledge and communication, intuition and hard work, divine connection, and a return to the divine).
Blocks (snakes) will bring you down to lower levels of consciousness, while resources (arrows) will raise you up to higher levels of consciousness. Throughout the game, a die will play the role of karma - as we will ask for synchronicity to guide you to the right squares.
If that sounds complex and hopelessly embedded in Yogic philosophy, don’t worry. Your game will be facilitated by a therapist and wellness coach. I will give you actionable self-reflection prompts on each square that you can use to reflect on your question, and I will keep track of how your journey is progressing across the squares and rows. When the squares call for esoteric topics, I’ll bring them down to grounded advice. You don’t need to understand the life journey as envisioned in Yogic philosophy to follow along - but you may find yourself drawn in.
The date and author of the original Leela board is unknown, though it is believed to date back thousands of years. In the 1900s, the board and some texts were found in antiquities shops, and were brought back into circulation for a modern audience. While we can’t know exactly how the game was played thousands of years ago, with an open mind and belief, we can learn a lot by playing a round in the game’s modern iteration.