Have you read Florence Scovel Shinn’s, The Game of Life and How to Play it? It popped up as a suggested video on Youtube one day and curiously, I clicked on it. I listened to the full 2 hour audio book and went on to purchase a collection of all of her books and recommended it to several friends and relatives, needless to say, I loved it. In the Game of Life and How to Play it, Shinn, an artist, and mystical and spiritual teacher who studied metaphysics, breaks down spiritual law and how it affects our every day lives and how to use metaphysics to win at the game of life. Shinn provides countless examples of how people used spiritual law in their favor or against it and manifested anything from money, marriage, divorce to poor health or even death.

“Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game, it is a game however, which can not be played successfully without the knowledge of spiritual law and the old and the new testaments give the rules of the game with wonderful clearness…”

She goes on to say, 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 cheats he will be cheated .

So what is the key to winning the game of life? Training your mind to only see the good.

Train your mind

“A person with an imaging faculty trained to image only good, brings to his life, every righteous desire of his heart, health, wealth, love, friends, perfect self expression, his highest ideals.” Florence says. In order to properly train your mind, you must understand your mind – the subconscious, conscious and super conscious. Whatever you feel deeply is suppressed in your subconscious mind and carried out. In this chapter, she gives an example of a little girl who would wear all black and make believe she was a widow, to the amusement of her friends and family. She would wear a black veil and pretend to be a widow quite often. When she grew up, she married a man she deeply loved and in a few years he died. She went on to wear a black veil and all black for several years following his death. She had imprinted the picture of a widow in her subconscious mind, and eventually it worked itself out, regardless of what had to occur to get her there. Whatever we feel deeply and think of often, is impressed in our subconscious mind. Have you ever met someone that has a problem for every solution? All of their conversations are negative and it seems like negative things are always happening to them? With each negative word or thought, they are welcoming more negativity into their lives. Every time I get money something bad happens. All of my relationships end horribly. I can never get someone to commit. I can never find a job. Those people. They don’t realize that it is them, who is drawing every negative interaction into their life. The ones who refuse to even attempt to try to change they way they think, or the words they say, because for them, it is easier to complain, then it is to change the way they have thought about things their whole life. So they continue to attract all of the things that they don’t want because to the subconscious mind, that’s exactly what they do want, or else, why would they talk and think about it so much? While I’ve been accused of living a “fairy tale life” or always getting what I want, that isn’t true. I’ve experienced great pain in my life, but also many pleasures and I’d be lying if I said great things didn’t happen for me, but the truth is, those things happen because of me and my understanding of spiritual law. Both good and bad. I realize that when I’ve been in negative situations it has been because of me and what I manifested in my life and the same goes for positive ones. When I’ve been an ass to someone else, I’ve gotten that treatment right back and the same goes for when I’ve been kind. When I’ve been in bad financial situations and complained about my lack of money, I lost more money. When i’ve changed my thoughts and despite my bank account, repeated the words, money flows to me easily and freely, I’ve had friends randomly cash app me money just because I had done nice things for them in the past, or have had opportunities to make money randomly fall in my lap time and time again.

Following your divine design

Each person has a divine design. There is a place that you are supposed to fill that no one else can. There is something that you are supposed to do that no one else can do and it often flashes across our minds as something unattainable or too good to be true, when in reality it is our true destiny. Most people are unaware of their true destiny and strive for things that do not belong to them or aren’t theirs by divine right and will only bring failure if obtained. In this chapter, Shinn gives the example of a woman that asked her to “speak the word” that a particular man that she liked would be her husband. Shinn explained to her that this was a violation of spiritual law and instead she would speak the word that the right man, the man that belonged to her by divine right would be her husband, adding, if she was supposed to be with the man she liked, she couldn’t lose him, and if she wasn’t supposed to be with him, she would no longer want him and would receive his equivalent. The following week, the friend seemed to be less enthused by the man she previously had been head over heels for and shortly after they parted ways and she met a man that fell in love with her, and said and did all of the things she wanted the previous man to say and do. They went on to get married. I believe that what is mine, I can not lose and what is not mine, I don’t want. That goes for everything in my life. I have gotten to a place where I realize if there is anything that I perceive as something I have missed out on, I realize that it wasn’t truly for me to begin with and I start to want it less and it is always replaced with something better. I’ll give the opportunity of me getting to perform for Tyrese a few years back as an example. I had just moved to LA and didn’t have many connections and even less money. I came across a paid focus group that though I needed the money, I just didn’t feel like going to. The very same day of the survey, I got a call from a friend of mine saying Tyrese was looking for a poet to perform at his house that night. After a lot of craziness, I ended up being selected, going, performing and making more money than I would have made at the survey, not to mention getting to perform for and having dinner at Tyrese’s house which in my opinion was a much better deal than stale sandwiches and chips at the focus group. When you let go of the idea of how it is supposed to go or how you think you want it to go and instead, openly say and think, if it’s mine it will always be mine and if it isn’t, I don’t want it, you will see things begin to change in your thoughts and life for the better.

The power of the word

“A person aware of the word becomes very careful of his conversations”

In this chapter, Florence gives the example of a father and daughter. The father would always say, I always miss a car. The daughter would always say, I always catch a car. Whenever I need one, a car is just pulling up. Each person created a separate law for themselves. This idea can dive into superstitions. A person that believes a rabbits foot or lucky pair of panties will bring success, will receive some form of “luck” whenever they have those things because their belief in them is so strong, they naturally see the positive in occurrences when they have those things with them. The same goes to the person that is afraid of walking under ladders, black cats or broken mirrors. When you give power to those things, you attract whatever power you believe in them. The truth is, it is us and God that has power not physical objects, as lucky or unlucky as we may perceive them. This doesn’t mean you have to throw away your lucky panties, just understand that God is the only power, not your panties, as lucky as they may seem. In my personal life, looking back on my Facebook memories, I noticed that when I would say, I’m just happy, something bad would happen. I had this idea stuck in my head for years and would refuse to say, those words out of fear of something bad happening, not realizing that my belief in that was so strong that I was inevitably attracting bad experiences into my life when I said it because I had made the law within myself that whenever I said, I’m just happy, something bad would happen so the universe conspired to give me what I wanted. The power of life and death is in the tongue. I try to be extremely conscious of the things I say even when joking because of my knowledge of this but I definitely haven’t always been this way and suffered a lot because of it. It was only when I changed my way of thinking and speaking that I saw positive results in my life.

There are countless, literally 2 hours worth of gems in this book and it has helped me in so many ways. If you have been struggling with the game of life, I urge you to read or listen.

How are you doing at the game of life?

Love & Light

-Ashley