Ever feel like you are just the thumb Source needs to get things done? Things that need a thumb… Physical things…
I used to have a cat. And cats teach you about yourself things you never wanted to know, like how insignificant and useless you are.
But one thing they also teach you that has served me well is teaching me that I have thumbs. Opposable thumbs. And in spite of their contempt for me otherwise, I can be useful because I can operate the can opener.
And god… whatever god is, is a lot like my cat. It needs a human with opposing thumbs to get things done in the physical universe. God doesn’t have a thumb. God is an energy, in all, through all, it is omnipotent… but lacking physical manifestation, it lacks a thumb… lol. So, us, humans, are here to make things happen.
For the most part, this has been my experience of that energy I call Source. Especially when I play Freecell.
Freecell is a 52 card solitaire, and it is an excellent training tool for seeing widely and deeply… the capacities that humans needed when hunting/gathering… but have not cultivated for centuries…
Anyway, back to thumbs… When I play Freecell I often feel used. I feel that my hands are moved by an energy that is not directed by my brain, but by an energy outside of me. Interesting feeling. That I am only observing the game, not playing it. That I am only a passenger in my car, not the driver.
It is not all the time, occasionally it is like a victory lap…
My life and my work is a lot like playing Freecell. I know what the finished game looks like. I live it. It took me 30 years to get to it, and it is nice. Not exciting, but nice. Very few ripples on the smooth surface of the lake… Small pleasures, a lot of laughs, more smiles, good books, good health, nice people, work I enjoy doing. My legs hurt, but I can live with that. The longer it hurts the longer I am still alive.
So how is my work like playing Freecell?
52 cards, thousands of combinations… but, after all, only 52 cards. Each game has its hidden-in-plain-view inside regularity… so once you got the pattern, and the moves, it is not that difficult to solve the game.
The patterns are a lot like
- the soul corrections
- combined with the human design
- combined with rackets.
The secret of playing well and resolving every situation is to be able to see widely, deeply, and recognize the patterns for what they are.
It’s both easy and difficult.
But possible… And that has been the question all these years: was I an exception, or can every person be lead down the path to live a life that is satisfying.
In yesterday’s Playground session I had the distinct feeling that it is possible, even though there are 52 cards and thousands of combinations.
The more a participant practices, consciously, intentionally, deliberately, the better they become.
And now comes the hard part: deliberate practicing, learning to be conscious of more things than one at the same time, like in music making the left hand and the right hand, and maybe the mouth.
Some sports… line dancing… ballet… juggling…
In my exercise class there is a woman who cannot do both the footwork and the upper body work combined…
She cannot hold them in the same mental field…
And yet it is possible to take people from the level of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence, albeit I don’t think it is going to be easy. For me…
This is what Playgrounds are for… to increase dexterity, competence, through play.
In an ideal world children would have playgrounds where they can learn life… we don’t live in an ideal world. But it is never too late to have a happy childhood.
The past is the past and it cannot be changed… say many “smart” people… And maybe the reality of what happened cannot be changed. But no one experienced the reality of what happened: instead…
…you experienced your commentary, your meaning, your interpretation of what happened, and the arising emotions coming from your interpretation.
So instead of reality you experienced the “occurrence.” Occurrence is a technical term where reality, i.e. what happened intermingles, collapsed with your meaning, with your story, with your narrative of what happened.
In one of my students’ early teens he was infatuated with a girl from his school. After four years of pining for her, he heard that she was dating another boy. He decided that he was never ever going to expose himself to disappointment like this.
You can see that reality was simple, maybe even commonplace. But the internal drama gave rise to that big decision (I will never again…) had nothing to do with reality… it was all unreality.
Being freed up to love again, to feel again, is only possible if the original incident is taken through the steps of separating story from reality… so that you can be left with reality, and not the occurrence.
If you go through this process with all the incidents that hurt in your life, you will come out on the other hand with nothing in your future. Not a thing. No limitations, not “I can’t love because…” or “I can’t risk this because…” None of that. Not a thing in your future. And what can you say about no thing? No thing includes everything. You are left with everything…
Suddenly everything becomes possible, and you can pick what you want to put there… No limitations:
Anything you are willing to work for, risk for is possible… But not until you empty your future of the past…
How does the past get into your future, you ask?
Easy. Every time something bad happened, you made a binding decision to never experience it again. And then you went, according to your “design” on a lifetime of repeating that painful incident, or a lifetime avoiding it.
I am the repeating type. The boy with the disappointment above is the avoiding type. Your soul correction will pretty much tell you what path to take to torment yourself… repeating or avoiding… lol.
The Playground is great. It is all about you. And every step of the way your life becomes a little bit bigger, so you don’t have to wait till the end of the program.
You can pick up in the middle… or leave it for a few years… It ultimately leads to a life where you can have the path to fulfillment open to you. So you can be happy and fulfilled. Not like the rest of humanity.
