The Game of Life and How to Play it

by Florence Scovel Shinn

So we can see we must substitute faith for fear, for fear is only inverted faith; it is faith in evil instead of good.

Man can only receive what he sees himself receiving.

They are all finished and perfect ideas registered in Divine Mind (man’s own superconscious mind) and must come through him, not to him.

No one wanted to invest in his enterprise, and the bank had flatly refused a loan. I replied: “I suppose you lost your temper while at the bank, therefore your power. You can control any situation if you first control yourself.”

It is much easier to “demonstrate” for someone else than for one’s self, so a person should not hesitate to ask for help, if he feels himself wavering.

A keen observer of life once said, “no man can fail, if some one person sees him successful.”

“There are not two powers, there is only one power, God, therefore, there are no disappointments, and this thing means a happy surprise.”

I have a friend who said nothing could induce her to walk under a ladder. I said, “If you are afraid, you are giving in to a belief in two powers, Good and Evil, instead of one.

As God is absolute, there can be no opposing power, unless man makes the false of evil for himself.

“Curses, like chickens, come home to roost.”

The metaphysician knows that all disease has a mental correspondence, and in order to heal the body one must first “heal the soul.”

When the subconscious is flooded with the perfect ideas of the superconscious, God and man are one. “I and the Father are one.”

It is safe to say that all sickness and unhappiness come from the violation of the law of love.

Continual criticism produces rheumatism, as critical, inharmonious thoughts cause unnatural deposits in the blood, which settle in the joints.

False growths are caused by jealousy, hatred, unforgiveness, fear, etc. Every disease is caused by a mind not at ease.

Unforgiveness is the most prolific cause of disease. It will harden arteries or liver, and affect the eye-sight. In its train are endless ills.

Man’s only enemies are within himself. “And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.”

Good-will produces a great aura of protection about the one who sends it, and “No weapon that is formed against him shall prosper. “In other words, love and good-will destroy the enemies within one’s self, therefore, one has no enemies on the external! “There is peace on earth for him who sends goodwill to man!”

“If you do not run your subconscious mind yourself, someone else will run it for you.”

“Bless your enemy, and you rob him of his ammunition.” His arrows will be transmuted into blessings.

The robbers of time are the past and the future. Man should bless the past, and forget it, if it keeps him in bondage, and bless the future, knowing it has in store for him endless joys, but live fully in the now.

Man receives only that which he gives. The Game of Life is a game of boomerangs. Man’s thoughts, deeds and words, return to him sooner or later, with astounding accuracy.

“You will never become rich with a burnt match in the pincushion.”

“According to your faith be it unto you.”

Jesus Christ brought the good news (the gospel) that there was a higher law than the law of Karma — and that that law transcends the law of Karma. It is the law of grace, or forgiveness. It is the law which frees man from the law of cause and effect — the law of consequence. “Under grace, and not under law.”

Working under the direction of the superconscious (the Christ or God within man) the “resurrection of the body” would be accomplished.

We see, therefore, that man violates law if he carries a burden, and a burden is an adverse thought or condition, and this thought or condition has its root in the subconscious.

It seems almost impossible to make any headway directing the subconscious from the conscious, or reasoning mind, as the reasoning mind (the intellect) is limited in its conceptions, and filled with doubts and fears.

I am asked, so often by my students, “How can I get rid of fear?” I reply, “By walking up to the thing you are afraid of.”

The subconscious is impressed with the truth that God is the Giver and the Gift; therefore as one is one with the Giver, he is one with the Gift. A splendid statement is, “I now thank God the Giver for God the Gift.”

There is an old saying: “No man is your enemy, no man is your friend, every man is your teacher.”

So “mortal mind” loves to hang on to its griefs and regrets.

As man opens his mind to subjectivity, he becomes

His demand should be: “Infinite Spirit, open the way for the Divine Design of my life to manifest; let the genius within me now be released; let me see clearly the perfect plan.”

God’s will be done, not man’s; God’s pattern, not man’s pattern, is the command we find running through all the scriptures, and the Bible is a book dealing with the science of the mind. It is a book telling man how to release his soul (or subconscious mind) from bondage.

So man must be careful that he is not the “wicked and slothful servant” who buried his talent. There is a terrible penalty to be paid for not using one’s ability.

Every man has within himself a gold nugget; it is his consciousness of gold, of opulence, which brings riches into his life.

“Let not that man who wavers think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.”

The power of this name raises the student into the fourth dimension, where he is freed from all astral and psychic influences, and he becomes “unconditioned and absolute, as God Himself is unconditioned and absolute.”