The Universal Playground

You feel like you’re in some hostile place where you have to constantly prove yourself while simultaneously battling a never-ending series of problems but; what if you were looking at it from the wrong angle? A cube can look like a two-dimensional square from six different perspectives and yet that doesn’t make it a square to some perspectives but it will absolutely and honestly be a square to those six perspectives. Other views have other views.

What dimensionalises things is when you flip the universe from a place hostile, (where you’re not good enough to overcome all of your problems), to a generous place (where you start off belonging and the universe is keen to cooperate with your creativity). But if your perspective is that you can’t be happy until you’re in Los Angeles, or until you’re with that certain person, or until you own this or that; then the world will always feel wanting.

Think of the angle of a pinball machine as your nature. Without anything in your way, you’ll just naturally head that direction until you die and you’ll be quite graceful about it. But life includes all of those things you can hit along the way. Bang, smack, poke, there’s bells, chimes and sirens and the sudden, unexpected direction changes has the whole mess going all over the place. It can feel like you just move from one impact to another. But…

…but I never said you were the ball. If you related to all of those problems and impacts to yourself then you thought you were the ball but the ball is only your ego. You are the player. And the player has a perspective the ball does not. By having a higher perspective your soul realises that all of those impacts aren’t bad things. Those are actually where you’re gaining all of your points; your experience points.

The other thing you’d notice as the player and not the ball would be that the impacts are all to the ball and not the player. You’d also notice that some of the hardest impacts your ego felt weren’t from bumps of beneficial experience, but rather from your soul actively redirecting you, thereby preventing you from going down the hole. So your ego feels like it’s being battered and yet the player is doing all he can to keep you alive, and it’s all just a great big bunch of bouncing and noise until then.

When you die the player simply runs out of balls and leaves the machine, so the ball will never get to see its own score so that’s not a reason to play. The player can see the score, but the wisest, happiest players are those that know that to play to win is to live and die as the ball. To be truly alive is to enjoy the playing of the game itself, and so they’ve learned to ignore any scores. If you’re a player you just move to the next game.

Too many people stare endlessly at the machine, fearful to release even the first ball, always imagining failure. But there is no losing in the game of life. The playing itself is the victory. Life is crazy. And it’s good. It’s always been able to be both. So just accept today’s craziness and play your game and I’ll watch for you out on the playing field of life.

peace. s

Scott McPherson is an Edmonton-based writer, public speaker, and mindfulness facilitator who works with individuals, companies and non-profit organisations locally and around the world.

Scott McPherson

I help people achieve better mental health by teaching them about reality.