The game of life and how to play itShinn, Florence Scovel
Religion
The game of life and how to play it
Shinn, Florence Scovel
Conduct of life; New Thought; Spirituality; Success -- Psychological aspects
For example: A woman came to me in deep distress. The man she loved had
left her for other women, and said he never intended to marry her.
She was torn with jealousy and resentment and said she hoped he would
suffer as he had made her suffer; and added, “How could he leave me
when I loved him so much?”
I replied, “You are not loving that man, you are hating him,” and
added, “_You can never receive what you have never given. Give a
perfect love and you will receive a perfect love._ Perfect yourself on
this man. Give him a perfect, _unselfish_ love, demanding nothing in
return, do not criticise or condemn, and _bless him wherever he is_.”
She replied, “No, I won’t bless him unless I know where he is!”
“Well,” I said, “that is not real love.”
“When you _send out real love_, real love will return to you, either
from this man or his equivalent, for if this man is not the divine
selection, you will not want him. As you are one with God, you are one
with the love which belongs to you by divine right.”
Several months passed, and matters remained about the same, but she
was working conscientiously with herself. I said, “When you are no
longer disturbed by his cruelty, he will cease to be cruel, as you are
attracting it through your own emotions.”
Then I told her of a brotherhood in India, who never said, “Good
morning” to each other. They used these words: “_I salute the Divinity
in you._” They saluted the divinity in every man, and in the wild
animals in the jungle, and they were never harmed, for they _saw only
God in every_ living thing. I said, “Salute the divinity in this man,
and say, ‘I see your divine self only. I see you as God sees you,
perfect, made in His image and likeness.’”
She found she was becoming more poised, and gradually losing her
resentment. He was a Captain, and she always called him “The Cap.”
One day, she said, suddenly, “_God bless the Cap wherever he is._”
I replied: “Now, that is real love, and when you have become a
‘complete circle,’ and are no longer disturbed by the situation, you
will have his love, or attract its equivalent.”
I was moving at this time, and did not have a telephone, so was out of
touch with her for a few weeks, when one morning I received a letter
saying, “We are married.”
At the earliest opportunity, I paid her a call. My first words were,
“What happened?”
“Oh,” she exclaimed, “a miracle! One day I woke up and all suffering
had ceased. I saw him that evening and he asked me to marry him. We
were married in about a week, and I have never seen a more devoted man.”
There is an old saying: “_No man is your enemy, no man is your friend,
every man is your teacher._”
So one should become impersonal and learn what each man has to teach
him, and soon he would learn his lessons and be free.
The woman’s lover was teaching her selfless love, which every man,
sooner or later, must learn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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