The Game of Life & How To Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn

Life is not a battle, but a game that requires knowledge of spiritual law. Jesus taught that it is a game of giving and receiving. What we sow, we reap. Our imagination plays a key role in the game of life. What we imagine eventually becomes reality. To play successfully, we must train our imagination. There are three departments of the mind: subconscious, conscious, and super-conscious. The subconscious carries out what the conscious mind impresses upon it. The super-conscious is the realm of perfect ideas and our true destiny. Many people are unaware of their true destinies and strive for things that bring failure and dissatisfaction. THE GAME OF LIFE AND HOW TO PLAY IT By Florence Scoville-Shinn Chapter 1 The Game Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game. It is a game, however, which cannot be played successfully without the knowledge of spiritual law, and the Old and New Testaments give the rules of a game with wonderful clearness. Jesus Christ taught that it was a great game of giving and receiving. Whatsoever man soweth, that shall he also reap. This means that whatever man sends out in word or deed will return to him. What he gives, he will receive. If he gives hate, he will receive hate. If he gives love, he will receive love. If he gives criticism, he will receive criticism. If he lies, he will be lied to. If he cheats, he will be cheated. We are taught also that the imaging faculty plays a leading part in the game of life. Keep thy heart or imagination with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. Proverbs 4.23 This means that what man images sooner or later externalizes in his affairs. I know of a man who feared a certain disease. It was a very rare disease and difficult to get, but he pictured it continually and read about it until it manifested in his body and he died, the victim of distorted imagination. So we see, to play successfully the game of life, we must train the imaging faculty. A person with an imaging faculty trained to image only good brings into his life every righteous desire of his heart, health, wealth, love, friends, perfect self-expression, his highest ideals. The imagination has been called the scissors of the mind, and it is ever cutting, cutting day by day the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he meets his own creations in his outer world. To train the imagination successfully, man must understand the workings of his mind. The Greeks have said, Know thyself. There are three departments of the mind, the subconscious, conscious and super-conscious. The subconscious is simply power without direction, it is like steam or electricity and it does what it is directed to do. It has no power of induction. The way a man feels deeply or images clearly is impressed upon the subconscious mind and carried out in minutest detail. For example, a woman I know, when a child, always made believe she was a widow. She dressed up in black clothes and wore a long black veil, and people thought she was very clever and amusing. She grew up and married a man with whom she was deeply in love. In a short time he died, and she wore black, in a sweeping veil for many years. The picture of herself as a widow was impressed upon the subconscious mind, and in due time worked itself out, regardless of the havoc created. The conscious mind has been called mortal or carnal mind. It is the human mind and sees life as it appears to be. It sees death, disaster, sickness, poverty and limitations of every kind, and it impresses the subconscious. The super-conscious mind is the God-mind within each man and is the realm of perfect ideas. In it is the perfect pattern spoken of by Plato, the divine design, for there is a divine design for each person. There is a place that you are to fill and no one else can fill, something you are to do, which no one else can do. There is a perfect picture of this in the super-conscious mind. It usually flashes across the conscious as an unattainable ideal, something too good to be true. In reality it is man's true destiny or destination, flashed to him from the infinite intelligence which is within himself. Many people, however, are in ignorance of their true destinies and are striving for things and situations which do not belong to them and would only bring failure and dissatisfaction if attained. For example, a woman came to me and asked me to speak the word that she would marry a certain man with whom she was very much in love. She called him A.B.