Part 1

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THE GAME OF LIFE

AND HOW TO PLAY IT

FLORENCE SCOVEL SHINN

DeVorss & Company P. O. Box 550 Marina del Rey, California 90294

Copyright 1925 by Florence Scovel Shinn

ISBN: 0-87516-257-6

Printed in the United States of America

CONTENTS

THE GAME 7

THE LAW OF PROSPERITY 15

THE POWER OF THE WORD 22

THE LAW OF NONRESISTANCE 30

THE LAW OF KARMA AND THE LAW OF FORGIVENESS 39

CASTING THE BURDEN (IMPRESSING THE SUBCONSCIOUS) 48

LOVE 56

INTUITION OR GUIDANCE 66

PERFECT SELF-EXPRESSION OR THE DIVINE DESIGN 75

DENIALS AND AFFIRMATIONS 85

THE GAME

Most people consider life a battle, but it is not a battle, it is a game.

It is a game, however, which cannot be played successfully without the knowledge of spiritual law, and the Old and the New Testaments give the rules of the game with wonderful clearness. Jesus Christ taught that it was a great game of Giving and Receiving.

“Whatsoever a man soweth that shall he also reap.” This means that whatever man sends out in word or deed, will return to him; what he gives, he will receive.

If he gives hate, he will receive hate; if he gives love, he will receive love; if he gives criticism, he will receive criticism; if he lies he will be lied to; if he cheats he will be cheated. We are taught also, that the imaging faculty plays a leading part in the game of life.

“Keep thy heart (or imagination) with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.” (Prov. 4:23.)

This means that what man images, sooner or later externalizes in his affairs. I know of a man who feared a certain disease. It was a very rare disease and difficult to get, but he pictured it continually and read about it until it manifested in his body, and he died, the victim of distorted imagination.

So we see, to play successfully the game of life, we must train the imaging faculty. A person with an imaging faculty trained to image only good, brings into his life “every righteous desire of his heart”—health, wealth, love, friends, perfect self-expression, his highest ideals.

The imagination has been called, “The Scissors of The Mind,” and it is ever cutting, cutting, day by day, the pictures man sees there, and sooner or later he meets his own creations in his outer world. To train the imagination successfully, man must understand the workings of his mind. The Greeks said: “Know Thyself.”