The Cube Personality Game

My wonderful cousin, who is here this weekend because she has an interview in Seattle tomorrow, taught me an exciting activity called the Cube Personality Game. Unfortunately you can only "play" it once, but you can mediate it for the rest of your life, if you'd like.

Here's how it goes:

1. Imagine that you're on a deserted island. There is a cube on the island. Describe the cube. Where is it on the island?
2. Now imagine a ladder. What does it look like? Where is it in relation to the cube?
3. What is the vegetation like on the island?
4. There is a horse on the island. Where is it? What is it doing? What are your feelings about it?
5. Imagine an interaction between you and the horse. What are you doing? How does the horse respond?
6. There is a storm. Describe it. What do you do when it comes?

Okay. That's the game. Now here's the analysis (with my results and Naomi's):

1. The cube represents yourself. Naomi's was the size of a basketball, shiny solid metal, and had washed up onshore. Mine was the size of a small room and made out of clear glass.
2. The ladder is your career. Mine was wooden, leaning against the cube. Naomi's was wooden too, but old and held together by bits of rope.
3. The vegetation is your friends. Naomi had one coconut tree with a jungle in the background. I had three palm trees (one in the middle of the island, and two near my cube).
4. The horse is your mate. Naomi's was a "wild palomino," its hair wet with saltwater, whinnying. I tied mine to the tree.
5. Your interaction with the horse is how you imagine an interaction with whatever divine presence you believe in. Naomi managed to coax the horse to her and it breathed warm air into her hand. I fed mine carrots.
6. The storm, as you can probably guess, represents your problems and how you deal with them. Naomi stood in the rain next to her horse and waited for the weather to pass, making no attempt to hide. I hid in my cube.

Fascinating, isn't it? Naomi must have taught the game to at least six people last night, and it was really cool to hear their responses to the questions, and to see how they reacted when she told them what everything meant. When one of my brother's friend got to the vegetation question, he closed his eyes and talked about how all the plants on the island were going down in flame because someone had set fire to the underground rum cache. When Naomi told him that he had burned his friends, he felt genuinely awful. "Oh man," he said, "I thought it was all a joke so I just imaged a scene from Pirates of the Caribbean." Oh this is no joke, my friend. No joke at all.