Guaranteed Win
Monday, March 28th, 2005What if you entered a game, such as a multi-million dollar lottery, and you couldn’t lose. What if you were guaranteed to win the lottery. Wouldn’t that be exiting? Ah, but how about everyone else in the game, what about them? Oh, they’re guaranteed to win too. What kind of lottery is this?
What if your favorite athletic team is guaranteed to win a national championship? No matter how many mid-season wins and losses, they’re guaranteed to win the championship—and everyone else’s favorite team is also guaranteed a win. What if you knew you would win any game you played: checkers, chess, and tennis, all of them?
If you knew you would win, you would be free to participate in the experience, the process of playing the game. Would it still be fun and exiting? You might think knowing the outcome would diminish your pleasure and excitement, but I don’t agree. The joy is in the process. If you’ve ever played a game in which the outcome was unimportant for you, but playing the game was very important, you know what I mean. This often happens when playing a game with a child; the fun is in the playing.
Now consider that life is such a game—the outcome assured. We will win the game of life. How do I define winning? Not dying, not being wrong, and not failing. Life is eternal; my body has limited physical life, but my soul is eternal. The real me—the life behind my body, the being behind my mind—is eternal.
I can’t die. I can’t lose. I can’t fail. I can experience short term wins and losses, short term successes and failures while shooting for a goal and falling short. I can have the experience of doing harm to another or of being a victim. I can have the experience of childhood happiness or childhood abuse. I can have the experience of dying a blissful or a violent death. These are simply experiences for my eternal soul—experiences made richer by contrast.
The joy of love is all the sweeter for knowing the despair of fear. Joy itself is all the more wondrous for having known misery. Inner peace comes when we know that this life experience isn’t all there is. Knowing that today’s crisis, as well as tomorrow’s success, is temporary and insignificant in relation to the eternity of life is both freeing and disturbing. Eckhart Tolle, in Stillness Speaks, says: “What will be left of all the fearing and wanting associated with your problematic life situation that every day takes up most of your attention? A dash—one or two inches long, between the date of birth and the date of death on your gravestone. To the egoic self, this is a depressing thought. To you, it is liberating.”
Inner peace is a characteristic of those who know deep down that they’ll win the ultimate game—the game of life. Inner peace allows us to experience life’s ups and downs with a detachment that encourages observing, “Isn’t this interesting? What an adventure! I’m happy today. Tomorrow I may be filled with anguish.”
So many of us live lives out of fear, so many of us inflict our fears upon others. So many of us control others through fear. There is nothing to fear. Every spiritual master has told us this over and over. At a deep spiritual level, we know this to be true. But at times we’re afraid to believe it. What if they’re wrong? What if I don’t toe the line? What if I violate the dogma of my religion? Maybe I’ll burn in hell for my transgressions. So we toe the line. We accept the beliefs; we follow the dogma out of fear. We fear that Jesus was wrong, that Buddha was wrong, that the Dalai Lama was wrong, that our inner voice is wrong.
It’s so hard at times to know what is right and what is wrong. Everyone has an opinion, from how to live your life to how to raise children. Everyone has an opinion. Some opinions count for more than others do because of the power, the position, the success, or wealth of the authority. The only real truth is that which feels right, which brings to the surface of you and me the feeling of joy—the feeling of knowing something is right for us. That is always truth. We all feel that truth at times. But many of us then allow ego to jump in and raise a question; what if you fail, what if you’re making a mistake? What if people humiliate and reject you?
And so we’re torn. We look for direction and approval from others. We don’t do our thing. We do the accepted thing. We don’t say what we believe. We say what is acceptable to believe. Truth is always personal, always individual, and always available to us. We will always know our truth by the way we feel. Not by what we think, but what we feel. If there is even the slightest tinge of exaltation, of joy, of knowing that something is right for you, then it is right for you. And when you feel comfortable listening to your ego, listening to the objections of others and knowing they are simply giving their opinions, beliefs, and fears for you, you’ll find inner peace. If you’re willing to go your own way, to take the path less traveled, but the path that is right for you, you will have won.
And the good news is that you will win anyway. If not on this step of the journey, then the next one. So experience the joy, the frustration, the success, and the failure. Examine the behaviors you’re proud of and those you’d do differently. Learn from them, grow from them, and benefit from them. You will win.
Jerry
