Life is puzzling. We don’t like to admit this to ourselves, but it’s true. It is tempting to delude ourselves into believing that once we find the right partner, or earn money, or lose enough weight, then maybe, maybe, all those empty spaces we feel inside of us will go away.
We want what fills our loneliness, but we rarely ask why we are lonely. We want success but we do not ask what actually defines success. We want spiritual fulfillment, but rarely ask what this might truly mean and require of us.
The game of life requires truthful question if we are to find truthful answers. When we finally realize that this is how the game works, we can be shocked by just how many empty spaces in our lives still need filling. The experience is overwhelming.
Fearing what all those empty spaces might mean, we avoid asking truthful questions. We are more likely to dismiss it all as a midlife crisis. Yet this is the point. We must find the behind the game. It requires that we go through states of not knowing, to states of knowing, to states of not knowing again.
When we ask truthful questions, truth is what we find. Life speaks to us through the questions life presents to us. The more life asks the more you know what was previously unknown. The more you evolve in consciousness. It is the promise of transformation.
Puzzle of Duality
The goal of the game is transformation. We transform when we discover truth. We discover truth by discovering what is not true. This is the purpose of duality, the illusion is that we are separate from the whole, separate from ourselves and separate those around us.
The illusion is created through the lens of our perception. We are presented with a world of opposites. The game requires us to puzzle through them and find the truth that lies between them.
The game is a paradox is which we must find unity from the illusion of separation.
Once the truth behind a single illusion is discovered, say learn the truth between the opposites of love and hate, we become transformed from our experience of the truth. Through transformation slowly awaken to the truth behind the game.
The game is one of transformation. We transform by puzzling through the pieces that fill the spaces in our lives. When we do we become more of the whole.
Now that we know the object of the game, lets take a closer look at the playing field.
The Playing Field
The game takes place within a three-dimensional playing field. The field allows us to experience the consequences of our choices and actions or lack of them. What we learn is what we gain. Without learning there can be no transformation.
As in any game, the field in which we play must appear to us as absolutely real. Likewise, we must believe that the game has a beginning and an end. Therefore we are provided with the illusion of birth and death. This provides the player with a sense of urgency, a reason to get on with the game. In addition, the game must carry some element of risk and danger.
“Wait a second,” you may say. “Everything about life seems so very real, the risks and dangers so compelling! Why would anyone call this a game?”
It’s partly for the same reason people call a heart-stopping roller-coaster ride amusement!
Before we take a roller coaster ride, we know, with near certainty, that the car will deliver us safely back to the ground when the ride is over. The operative words being near certainty.
Something happens however when we actually get on the ride, when we make that steep, slow climb and hear the heavy clicking of the chain pulling us up to the ride’s summit, the point of greatest risk. At that moment, it is very easy to forget that it is only a ride. For a brief second or two—and for some of us, much longer—we are convinced that we really are risking our lives; we really might suffer this horrific fall and die. The fear is real, and therefore so is the ride.
The illusion is brought to life because of the elements of risk and danger. This is essential to what we know as play.
Living Life As Play
Plato tells us that life should be lived as play. Yet play must contain some element of risk, the chance of winning and losing, the resulting experience of joy and pain. No game could keep our attention for long without containing some aspect of loss and gain; some part of the player must be anted up on the table if the game is to matter.
If nothing is at stake there is no lure to the game, nothing to play for. This is why we play the game of opposites. In the game of opposites there is always something to lose and something to gain—including our very lives!
If we knew that life, death, and everything in between were just an elaborately designed virtual game, what incentive would any of us have to struggle through it?
This is why the game requires that we forget. The wall of amnesia must be raised. We must not remember our infinite and eternal nature until we awaken from the game.
Transformation Requires Free Will
As with any good game, and life is no exception, we must always be allowed to choose our next move. So the centerpiece of the game is free will. Each player must be free to experience the consequences of his choices, good or bad, or there will be nothing to learn from those choices. After all, we are the players of the game, and how we choose to play it determines the outcome.
The laws of cause and effect—what some know as karma—ensure that no move within the game goes unnoticed. Every choice or action carries its own consequence and therefore delivers its own special lesson.
The game of duality is often painstakingly difficult and challenging, but it is rarely boring—unless of course you choose to play it that way.
Prior to incarnating, some players choose to take their time, ease into the game slowly, minimize the peaks and valleys, and spread the lessons to be learned over numerous lifetimes.
Other players jump right in. They choose to live large, their life experiences tend to be intense, the lows are very low, and the highs are very high. These are the players intent on learning as much as possible from each lifetime, and their strategy usually results in fewer incarnations.
Most players, however, seem to play the game somewhere between the two extremes.
As a player, how much you are willing to learn depends on the degree to which you are willing to experience the range of opposites. Each of us chooses the lesson themes for each of the lives we live. This time around, for example, we may choose to learn the truth behind wealth and poverty, so we take on the experiences of not having in order to give meaning to the experience of having.
The learning process therefore enables the player to find the center point—the truth between the opposites. The player progresses as a result of learning the lesson. Another piece of the puzzle is found, and it’s on to the next one.
A high degree of swing between polarities, such as poverty and wealth or pain and joy, can certainly be jolting to the senses, but if we are unable to experience a significant part of the range, it is more difficult to find the truth between the extremes.
Painful as it is to puzzle through the world of opposites, when we do, we expand our knowledge of what is possible. We shape ourselves into the type of person we wish to become. This is the treasure in transformation.
From the book Henry’s Puzzle – Awakening to Infinity (2011) All Rights Reserved.
