Francis Lucille said something a couple of months ago that I liked.
"This life is a game. We play it like we play a game of tennis, while at the same time watching a movie"
We play tennis with a friend as if winning the game matters. Ultimately, we know that it doesn't matter. Nevertheless, I'm still nervous when I am serving to win match point. That's why we play!! It is the same with this game of life. Ultimately, nothing matters and the little fears along the way, such as feeling nervousness when asking your guru a question, actually makes the game more fun! Which is too bad because we are usually trying to avoid all fears as much as possible. It is only the really big fears, such as fear of dying, that we need to see through.
The really cool part of the Game of Life is that everyone wins in the end. This is the way God designed this game. Everyone wins. The game ends when the body dies and we realize that we were always God. That God dreamed the whole thing. All of it. That nothing dies because the person never really existed. The experience was real, but its reality was always Consciousness. Just like the night dream, the experience was real, but its reality was later learned to be thoughts.
But when we play the game we completely believe that we are separate. This is the ultimate illusion. Consciousness is able to fool itself into believing that it is separate from itself. That I am my own separate conscious unit.
The name of the game could also be re-packaged and called The Pursuit of Happiness. This is an apropos name for this game because everyone who plays, is always pursuing happiness. Whether we know it or not we are always pursuing happiness. Unless we are perfectly content, (which usually doesn't last very long), we are seeking it. Its just what humans are programmed to do.
So practical people, like myself and my oldest friend Bear, we do practical things to achieve happiness. This means getting a good education in a growing field such as bio or computer science. since this will give me the best chance of getting a good paying job with security. Preferably engineering if I'm smart enough. There will be demand in the future for this kind of person. This is how a practical person such as myself plays the game of life in the hopes that it will bring the happiness and security that I seek. It was this practical approach to life that I became a Software Salesperson. I was able to convince myself that carrying a yearly sales quota was a pathway to happiness. I made money for a while, but something was always missing.
Some people, one way or another, come to the understanding that happiness never comes from the acquisition of things or relationships. This would be a good description of the people that I met on retreats. One way or another, we find ourselves at retreat because the methods we learned from our parents to achieve lasting happiness don't work. The methods that we learned from our culture only bring temporary relief to the fears and desires (two sides of the same coin) that are always with us.
Plus, even if we successfully accomplish all of our goals and desires, such as the perfect partner and house, there will always be a sense of lack. It is guaranteed. Because no matter how well we play this game of life, no matter how successfully we achieve our life goals, we will always be a fragment. Never whole. Always separate. So we will never escape the feeling of lack. The unease will always linger in the background. So we are always reaching and there is always a short-term remedy available. Many are destructive (alcohol, drugs, eating), while others are not (meditating, exercise)
But somewhere hidden in the deck there is the card that says "Die Before You Die" This is a short cut. It is the equivalent of knocking the board game over. It is when the reality of experience is revealed to be itself. That only God is real and I am that. It is the discovery that you were never this person. It is when the sense of doom disappears.
If the goal of the game is lasting happiness, practically speaking, the most practical thing is to always pursue the truth. I say this as a practical person who has lived his entire life doing practical things, such as spending less than I earn, and quickly paying down the mortgage.
I say this because all other strategies are doomed to fail. Even if everything goes perfectly as planned; great job, great family, lots of cash, there will be the fear of death, and a sense of lack lurking somewhere in the background. No matter how perfectly everything goes...on the surface everything looks amazing. You can see how amazing my life is going by looking at my posts on Facebook. Unfortunately, the back-side of the picture that you don't see isn't so perfect. It's kind of dark and ugly. The sense of lack is always around and the unavoidable fact that complete disappearance is waiting for me when I die, so what's the point?
Dying and sense of lack are definitely party poopers! So we drink, or swim, or surf the web, or do any number of things to feel better. Most people are able to manage their unease while others are not. I can understand why people sometimes choose to kill themselves, because it is the end of their suffering, and it is their own version of pursing happiness.
Fortunately, we don't need to wait to die before we are liberated from suffering. "Die Before You Die" is an old Zen expression pointing to the truth. Being is, Non-Being Never Was. In other words, that which is real can never die, and that which dies never truly existed. These are just words but it is possible to know this experientially. There are experiments you can run now if you are interested. Most are not interested and I accept that. This blog is for people who are already interested.
At the end of the day, true liberation is about getting clear on one thing: What exactly am I referring to when I say the word "I"? This is the source of lasting peace. And it is available to anyone who is tired of suffering. Tired of the burden of being a person. Tired of living a lie. Tired of playing the game because its too cold outside. It is always our choice. We are always free to come out of the cold whenever we are ready.
Today my BFF Jac shared a quote on the subject of death that fits: "The words I AM are the last words that a person says about itself" -Rupert Spira
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