Sometimes life is filled with blessings, insights, and a heart-felt sense of connection with people around us. Other times we stumble through a series of setbacks, accumulating pain, even falling into depression; and nothing we try seems to help us get out of it. Sometimes someone unexpectedly appreciates us or offers to serve us -- or we reach out to help another. Sometimes miracles happen, pain is lifted, new directions open up, and the seemingly impossible occurs.

Just as life is filled with this rich variety of experience, so is the Transformation Game®, a fun and complex board game developed originally by Joy Drake and Kathy Tyler at the Findhorn Foundation, a spiritual community in northeast Scotland. Since the first Game workshop was offered there in 1978, thousands of people have played the Game in its various forms.

The Game offers a playful yet substantial way of understanding and gracefully transforming the way you play your life. One way of viewing it is that it aims to recreate in miniature the soul's journey through life, providing a context where people can look at the kinds of experiences they create, and assess the value of their particular patterns and of their attitudes and responses to life. It highlights strengths, identifies blind spots and limitations, and brings fresh perspectives to current challenges.

In most versions of the Transformation Game®, you start by creating a focus or purpose to keep in mind as you roll the die and move along your life path. Before being 'born', you fill your 'Unconscious Envelope' with a set of cards which indicate the strengths, challenges and inner qualities that have a bearing on your purpose. You choose a guardian angel and then move along your life path, taking cards from the Unconscious and playing them on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual levels. Some of the cards bring awareness, others bring pain -- and you can use awareness to clear pain. You also have opportunities to exercise free will and intuition, to connect with angels, and to share appreciations and feedback.

Although players move their 'personalities' from square to square at the throw of a die, you are by no means a passive participant in the process. Many of the squares and cards require you to exercise initiative and imagination, to share on a deeply personal level and to make your own choices and decisions. It is a game that comes alive through personal sharing and interaction, and it has a definite therapeutic value, although it was not designed as a therapy. It is up to the players to decide how deeply to participate, and to make what you choose of the experiences that come to you.

There are two main card decks in the Game: Insights and Setbacks. The Insight deck contains cards like: "An unexpected crisis provided an opportunity for you to actualise your inner strength and power" -- "I'm willing to undo my belief system to accelerate change" -- "You hold a positive outlook". Players receiving these cards will share about how they assist with their purpose, or give an example of a time when the card applied. Other Insight cards require more involvement: "An opportunity to give truthful feedback to another player who is born" -- "If you could change one aspect of yourself right now, what would it be and why?" -- "Take personal responsibility; choose where you move next."

Setback cards highlight behaviour and attitudes that cause difficulty in our lives. Examples include: "You are setback by your avoidance" -- "You constantly look outside yourself for sources of direction rather than following your own inner truth" -- "Preaching instead of practising". These cards provide players with the opportunity to look at areas of difficulty in their lives and to explore ways of changing them.