People talk about spirituality a lot. During the course of my life I’ve moved through what might seem to be steps or stages. I think a sort of contemplation at times, or even a regular contemplation might be of benefit.
It was through a game of solitaire that my own thoughts veered off into the ether to come back to me as a sort of homely aha.
The game of solitaire I play is called, “Aces and Kings”. You’ve got 2 decks. On the left hand side you build upward from Aces to Kings. On the right side you build down from Kings to Aces. You’ve got a stack of overturned cards at the lower left that move face up into 4 empty spaces. You can play these whenever you want. You can turn over cards whenever you want until they are gone. And, you can choose from a number of cards, two piles of them at the top of the screen. The goal is to move all the cards into their proper piles. This is a computer game, though I’m sure you could play it with regular cards.
In any case, I’ve been playing this game for a long time. In fact I’ve played 5,145 games and won 100 of them. I do lose a lot.
The feelings that emerge for me are varied and from the beginning I found some sort of strange satisfaction playing a game I mostly never won. It’s not a difficult game to play but there seem to be ways that you can approach the game that will either determine how far into the game you can get before you can’t go anymore and it is those approaches that intrigued me. It’s also the luck of the cards that is there too.
It’s like driving. If something catches your eye at the side of the road you do need to be aware that the normal tendency is to drive towards it.
So, I took that “rule” and have applied it to the game. I try to build up one side over the other. The cards, by default, will build automatically on the left side, the side from Aces up to Kings, but you can if you want to make choices during the course of the game that will build up the other side first. My own tendency is to build up the left side and get hung up with most of the right side not built up.
The first feeling I ever felt with this game was frustration at how many times I lost. It was important to me to win the game. The picky Virgo in me coupled with a wide streak of stubbornness from the Michael Teachings is what has probably driven my fascination with this game.
But, as time has gone on my feelings towards the game have moved slightly from a win/lose proposition to an enjoyment of each move during the course of each game. The energy attached to winning and losing is easing and a noticing of what I am doing or how the cards are falling is an underlying attention. It was when I thought you could live your life that way, with an enjoyment of the present that what is coming from the future whether good or bad is not as critical.
I thought of the shorter games, the ones I lose and the games that I can drag out towards a higher score like the lives people live. Like not everybody wins big. I asked myself what is winning big? Winning big could be being a movie star, a person of importance in government, a rich person, someone who can stand out and be noticed above the shoulders of all the people in a crowd. Face it, with all the people who live on our Earth exactly how many are going to stand out? Not many. What does that mean for the rest of us who live lives centered on home, on family, on friends, on work? Does that mean those lives are any less important? Of course not.
Okay, so then why was I so obsessed with winning? The conscious decision made to not have winning be so important and the resultant emotions that accompany being a loser also not be so important was interesting.
So, how does this apply to spirituality? I’m not sure other than you can think all of your life is you on your own road of self discovery and as you can ease into moments of contemplation you might be able to feel more at ease, more balanced and less self absorbed to reach out to other people.
It’s really all mixed up. I am really rambling with this but somehow it feels like I am kneading dough. There is something of worth in these thoughts. I am peering toward something I cannot see but that I think is important. In the end my goals will likely change.
Thinking about how you play a game, how you approach life, what you do when there are stresses that seem unrelenting, how health good and bad affects you and how sometimes things sort of well up inside you and need the light of day to be.
It has been a long time since I have written in any of my blogs. I appologize for the meandering.
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