PORTAL’S TEMPLE

Portal's Temple is a virtual space for healing and reflection situated in a private Minecraft server in which I perform Reiki as iridescent_soup. Reiki is a Japanese energy healing technique for stress reduction and relaxation that also promotes emotional and physical wellbeing. Because the practice is based on quantum physics, it can be done via distance, sometimes over the phone or video call. But by inviting guests of the server into a floating temple in the sky, having them plant and meditate on trees in a forest and discussing points of reflection while canoeing on a lake facing the sunset, this project facilitated distance healing in a way that was more visceral and intimate.

A new way of caring across vast space and time, Portal's Temple hosted individual and group healing sessions, creating intimacy without proximity. It involved Reiki (energy) healing, meditating, planting a virtual tree, a published in-game spiritual detox guide, and intimate conversations.

Where it all started…

Games like Minecraft are not just a blank slate where players can create worlds. Players world-make within a certain framework and encoded game mechanics. As Minecraft rewards players for subverting the other inhabitants of the game world for their consumption, players participate in a larger media ecology that honors a neoliberal worldview.

As social and environmental issues grow more dire, let us ask ourselves, if it's possible to modify Minecraft's code, in what ways can we hack our real socio-economic systems and create pockets of alternate realities in which everyone can thrive? If the Western ideologies behind much of today's technology contributes to the ecological problem, in what ways might we be able to transform modern technology so that it becomes conducive to multiple ways of world-making?

…So what is Portal’s Temple?

Reiki Healing Sessions on a Private Minecraft Server

Portal's Temple is a virtual meditative space for healing -- a floating temple in the sky where I perform Reiki healing sessions in a private Minecraft server (for individuals or groups of up to four people). It's one of the ways I'm exploring new ways of caring for each other across vast space and time -- intimacy without proximity. On average, each sessions takes two hours and involves meditation, planting a virtual tree, a real-life spiritual detox and intimate conversations.

How it works

When a person enters my server, I take them to my temple, where I give them a five minute introduction and explain what’s going to happen. Ideally, they come dressed in the skin that feels most authentic to them.

Then, I give them a Birch tree sapling and ask them to choose a place in the forest below that feels right and plant the tree. I ask them to meditate on the tree until it fully grows. Behind the screen, they are meditating, eyes closed, while I’m performing the attunement. When it’s over, I tell them they can open their eyes, and to their pleasant surprise, their tree is fully grown. Here I wanted to create an association between their own (spiritual) growth and that of nature.

After the meditation and attunement, we return to the temple where I give them a four-page spiritual detox guide in the form of a (in-game published) book. I ask that they go on this detox for at least a week.

For individual sessions, I then go on to explain to them what I felt during the attunement; for groups, I message them privately. Sometimes, I’ll have felt pain in certain chakras or perhaps fluctuations or weakness in energy. I let them know these things as points of reflection over the next few days and often this leads to some intimate conversations.

Decolonizing Technology

What might technology look like if it optimized empathy, intuition & connectedness instead of efficiency & productivity?

Accompanying the game is a new type of controller which facilitates energy transfer and healing. Playing with the idea of sensors, the Copper Anti-glove is crocheted out of copper, a metal well-known for its conductive and healing properties.

Beyond aesthetics and slow production techniques, perhaps truly decolonized technology is about the purpose and meaning inscribed within it — what it’s made for and how we use it. We need to start thinking about the value systems that we embed in our technology when we design software and devices.

Insights

When I first started building this server, I based it on things one would normally find in the physical world: beds, food, shelter and religious architecture. Early on, while testing the experience, I realized that in a game world, these things were absurd. As it turns out, beds are only useful in real life and inconvenient in a game. A virtual experience loses its authenticity when one merely copy-pastes what they can already experience in the physical world and this is squandering the potential of virtual spaces. I then started to tailor the healing experience specifically to what Minecraft made possible.

Instead of healing on beds, I did my attunements in the forest. In having people plant trees, meditate over them and place wooden signages beside them where they could type down messages, I realized how profound creating in-game rituals could be. The tree in my server was symbolic of one’s own spiritual growth in relation to the landscape; the forest became a living growing artefact of the community’s collective healing.

When we play a video games, the rituals we can create are specific to the virtual world and sometimes a bit absurd. But a player’s relationship to a game is much like watching a play or a movie, wherein one is already cognitively predisposed to ‘make believe’. It then becomes much easier to create meaningful rituals and experiences in the virtual space, making it an effective space for healing and internal change.