WHY WE ARE HERE (THE MEANING OF LIFE)
If we are here to learn lessons, then why are the animals here? Or the plants? Or neutron stars?
The religious perspective is viciously anthropocentric: "The rest of the universe is here to help people learn lessons." And there the explanations end. They serve us. People are more important than animals. After 50 years of failing ecology, massive extinctions, and irreversible warming, do our teachers still so pitifully misunderstand "why we're here"?
We are here because the Infinite is playing at being finite. The Indivisible Whole is pretending to be divided, into separate people, into plants and animals and creepy-crawlies and black holes and alternate universes. The One, at play. The Great Game. Music without rules, unless we make them. Children arguing at recess about what's fair and what's not. Lovers quarreling, enemies falling in love, multiple wives and extra husbands. Bipeds that can think, quadrupeds that can think, ocean-going monsters that can think. (Check out all those online videos of octopuses and whales that constantly make plans for their futures, or sing, or grieve.)
Animals are just further expressions of the One at play. So are you and I. Our pets reflect the love of the Universe back to us. Or sometimes Its deep unpredictability. The animals we farm or hunt are not our servants: they are more demonstrations of the Universe trying out every possible role in this drama, working out every possible scenario of predator and prey, the eater and the eaten, the dull beast with scarcely a clear thought for the future and human beings terrified all their lives by their own assured mortality.
Anyone with pets knows that they dream, just like people. More evidence of play and games and drama and music. All beings shift constantly from one state of play to another, from one dream state to another. We abandon dream games in a few minutes; we abandon ordinary-reality games after a few years. Our beloved domestic friends love, just like people. They fear and run, they play all the same games. Dogs and wolves and whales sing. Cats and elephants paint, given half a chance. Parrots do arithmetic. We are all One. The One plays at being, at being all beings.
Shamans merge with mountains and clouds, they dance animals and plants, they shape-shift, they eat meat, they sacrifice themselves. They coach the same game that they themselves play; they play medics to injured players, they cross all lines. Human, volcano, Antarctica, spaniel, squid...shamans read for all roles, play all field positions, sing all the notes. Hey, they help write the music and the playbooks!
Sunday, February 20, 2011
Monday, January 3, 2011
Play money
Play money.
Well, OF COURSE it's just play money. It's part of the game you're playing. It's for you to play with. Are we playing to participate? To love?
Or are we playing to win? That would be tragic. We cannot "win"—remember? We are mortal; that means we do not play "for keeps." Remember, we play "for fun."
Some shamans are wealthy; some are broke; most don't care. Shamans move between many worlds, only one of which cares for those thingies we call Euros or Dollars or Pesos or Yen. Other worlds, other lives, utterly other. Shamans have other things to think about, better things to do. Of course it's play money.
Well, OF COURSE it's just play money. It's part of the game you're playing. It's for you to play with. Are we playing to participate? To love?
Or are we playing to win? That would be tragic. We cannot "win"—remember? We are mortal; that means we do not play "for keeps." Remember, we play "for fun."
Some shamans are wealthy; some are broke; most don't care. Shamans move between many worlds, only one of which cares for those thingies we call Euros or Dollars or Pesos or Yen. Other worlds, other lives, utterly other. Shamans have other things to think about, better things to do. Of course it's play money.
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Life is Like a Highway--and We're the Traffic
LIFE IS LIKE A HIGHWAY--AND WE'RE THE TRAFFIC
Playing the Game and Shamanic Death
December 22, 2010
I've always thought that human bodies were like the cars and trucks rolling down the road. The motorcycles and cars "think" that other trucks and motorcycles are the true beings of their world. If you are flying above the roads, that's what it looks like! They apparently sleep and wake, take in nutrition, expel waste, avoid pain (accidents), require maintenance, form societies following sets of rules, and occasionally make mistakes, injuring or destroying other vehicles or other objects in their environment. And they die.
But you and I are pretty certain that cars and trucks are not thinking beings. They follow rules and perform nearly all their actions because we are temporarily inside them, directing their actions. They undertake no action arising from volition or desire or revulsion. If a police cruiser roars past you at 100 miles per hour, it's because the officer wants to set aside the normal rules and follow different ones. If a dude in a pick-up spins circles in a parking lot for ten minutes, burning up half the lifetime of his tires, you don't remark how the truck was such an idiot. If your car breaks, you can still travel, but you have to find other options. When your trip is done, you leave your wheels behind and go about your real business. You leave behind the constraints of any rules of the road and live normally.
True You, the real You, are not the same as your body. Where your body is going, and why it's going there, is not the same thing at all as where True You are going or why True You are going there. No car ever drove to the bank to pay a bill or withdraw some cash—but people do. No truck ever fell in love; no motorcycle ever grieved—but people do.
In the same fashion we can re-apply the highway picture to our lives here on earth. True You, the real You, do not live here for the purpose of attending attend school and working for a living; your true goals are beyond ordinary comprehension, just as your car or motorcycle does not understand what human goals are. True You do not actually desire money, even though the person you are here on earth does want money. You, who you truly are, want the very best for yourself and others, even though the person you are "driving" on earth may viciously hate someone or even harm someone. You, who you really are, you love Life and are overjoyed at living, even if the person you temporarily inhabit feels like a walking disaster and wishes this life were over. True You are far more and far better and far greater than any of us can imagine, here on the highway of life.
Shamans drive while riding on the bumper. They make the rest of us scream, in terror—or perhaps in true amazement.
Playing the Game and Shamanic Death
December 22, 2010
I've always thought that human bodies were like the cars and trucks rolling down the road. The motorcycles and cars "think" that other trucks and motorcycles are the true beings of their world. If you are flying above the roads, that's what it looks like! They apparently sleep and wake, take in nutrition, expel waste, avoid pain (accidents), require maintenance, form societies following sets of rules, and occasionally make mistakes, injuring or destroying other vehicles or other objects in their environment. And they die.
But you and I are pretty certain that cars and trucks are not thinking beings. They follow rules and perform nearly all their actions because we are temporarily inside them, directing their actions. They undertake no action arising from volition or desire or revulsion. If a police cruiser roars past you at 100 miles per hour, it's because the officer wants to set aside the normal rules and follow different ones. If a dude in a pick-up spins circles in a parking lot for ten minutes, burning up half the lifetime of his tires, you don't remark how the truck was such an idiot. If your car breaks, you can still travel, but you have to find other options. When your trip is done, you leave your wheels behind and go about your real business. You leave behind the constraints of any rules of the road and live normally.
True You, the real You, are not the same as your body. Where your body is going, and why it's going there, is not the same thing at all as where True You are going or why True You are going there. No car ever drove to the bank to pay a bill or withdraw some cash—but people do. No truck ever fell in love; no motorcycle ever grieved—but people do.
In the same fashion we can re-apply the highway picture to our lives here on earth. True You, the real You, do not live here for the purpose of attending attend school and working for a living; your true goals are beyond ordinary comprehension, just as your car or motorcycle does not understand what human goals are. True You do not actually desire money, even though the person you are here on earth does want money. You, who you truly are, want the very best for yourself and others, even though the person you are "driving" on earth may viciously hate someone or even harm someone. You, who you really are, you love Life and are overjoyed at living, even if the person you temporarily inhabit feels like a walking disaster and wishes this life were over. True You are far more and far better and far greater than any of us can imagine, here on the highway of life.
Shamans drive while riding on the bumper. They make the rest of us scream, in terror—or perhaps in true amazement.
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Regular Things Can Go "Wrong"--And Do!
ANYTHING CAN GO "WRONG"
Our lives here run on love, or else we would never grieve over losing a fellow-player, oh so young to exit the stage. Our lives here run on love, or else we would never lament old people who die helpless and alone. You and I do not merely eat; we do not merely stay alive. We do not come to this earth to sit in some loveless classroom; after all, school is an artifact of civilization, itself scarcely a few millennia of our immense history on earth.
But we always play. We act, sing, imagine, dream, build, laugh, grieve, and play. We invent rules, which we follow or bend or break. We play with love and with hope. Under normal circumstances we rejoice at life and grieve at death, because we love to play and we love our fellow players. In a few fearsome instances, too, we thrill at somebody's death and mourn another person continuing to live, because we have seen a life of actions utterly bereft of love. The Universe is shocking, amazing, wonderful, horrifying. All the emotions of play, whether sports, theater, music, building, travel, commerce, politics—we thrive on them, we build our lives on them.
The cycles of reincarnation and of life and death are not punishments. Disciples: "Lord, who sinned—this man, or his parents—so that he was born blind?" Jesus: "Neither!" Nor is this life with all its death about destruction or school lessons. It's about something else: focused attention. The Infinite is beyond all limits...so far beyond, that It can play at being limited—and that means the One become individuals, being "here" but not "there," starting and ending, birth and death. The One is so all-embracing it can imagine action and song in every possible form. Eternal Love encompasses all, so nothing is ever lost.
Back here on earth, we play ceaselessly, in a world bounded, limited, terminated. In fact we have invented all kinds of ways to magnify the amount and the intensity of play. We call them our communications media: newspapers, television and radio and movies, the Internet. But they are not for better information; they are for our play. Play seriously for a moment—you'll see they are of little use in helping us "learn lessons." When was the last time TV improved your character? How has the Web taught you to forgive everyone, to love without holding back? But look as what marvelous tools they are for play.
What can go wrong as you play? All sorts of things! This concert has no constraints; this game has no rules. We are in the Infinite, and Infinite outcomes can happen. The most common "mistake" is that we play this game so well that we forget the game we're playing, and we become focused on yet another diversion. We believe this life is all there is—we forget we are Infinite. This happens constantly, and our attention jumps from big games to smaller ones, from matches just lost to new competitions. A tiny sample: my computer alerts me to new email with a five-note fanfare that's identical to a melody of Richard Wagner. Suddenly I have an ear-worm, a tune that repeat endlessly in your head, and it interferes with the much "more important" text I was composing. Or I'll drop what I'm doing and look up Wagner on the Web.
Something's gone wrong with my behavior: Forgetting my universal, Infinite self, I've been in a game we call "writing," instead. And then in turn—forgetting my attention on writing—I'm mentally singing the Ride of the Valkyries, or maybe reading about opera. We play at earning money, then we play at spending it. Some folks play at loving, then get all wrapped up in the game of fighting with their lovers. Our life on this plane is a grand maze of games, volleys within matches within sets within tournaments, carburetor science within engine technology within automotive design within highway labyrinths. And we get lost.
The most obvious game-within-a-game is to play, er, to believe, that there's a rule book, and that our purpose here is to win. Or that there's a script to follow, so we can "get to heaven" if we obey it. We search constantly for the sheet music the whole time we're actively singing this life-opera. We try so hard to "win" (whatever that is—money, health, applause, a ripe old age, a page in the history books), even though it's glaringly obvious our game is temporary: everything and everybody's mortal! Indeed, our planet and our galaxy are mortal! The Universe does not jump into the game to follow rules or to win. The Infinite plays to play. Like kids as a summer swimming pool or actors doing improve or an out-of-control rock star, winning is irrelevant. Eventually everyone must exit. The concert ends; the pool closes. The apparent winners leave without their winnings, and the apparent losers exit no poorer than when they arrived.
Deathwalkers. A terrifying word. Hypnotic. Shocking. True. Shamans, the deathwalkers, know who's playing and why. Shamans constantly remember that we're all playing. Roman conquerors are said to have tipped their hats to ancient shamanic wisdom by having a slave whisper to them, MEMENTO MORI, "Remember you're dying," as they roared in triumphant parades to the applause of their fellow citizens. Some scholars remark on what a strange tradition that was! Not strange at all—if you were a general who won by massive slaughter, who knew killing and death deeply, face to face, in person. They played harder at winning than any professional actor or athlete today. Yet they knew: we all end up as deathwalkers. Shamans just volunteer for the job.
Our lives here run on love, or else we would never grieve over losing a fellow-player, oh so young to exit the stage. Our lives here run on love, or else we would never lament old people who die helpless and alone. You and I do not merely eat; we do not merely stay alive. We do not come to this earth to sit in some loveless classroom; after all, school is an artifact of civilization, itself scarcely a few millennia of our immense history on earth.
But we always play. We act, sing, imagine, dream, build, laugh, grieve, and play. We invent rules, which we follow or bend or break. We play with love and with hope. Under normal circumstances we rejoice at life and grieve at death, because we love to play and we love our fellow players. In a few fearsome instances, too, we thrill at somebody's death and mourn another person continuing to live, because we have seen a life of actions utterly bereft of love. The Universe is shocking, amazing, wonderful, horrifying. All the emotions of play, whether sports, theater, music, building, travel, commerce, politics—we thrive on them, we build our lives on them.
The cycles of reincarnation and of life and death are not punishments. Disciples: "Lord, who sinned—this man, or his parents—so that he was born blind?" Jesus: "Neither!" Nor is this life with all its death about destruction or school lessons. It's about something else: focused attention. The Infinite is beyond all limits...so far beyond, that It can play at being limited—and that means the One become individuals, being "here" but not "there," starting and ending, birth and death. The One is so all-embracing it can imagine action and song in every possible form. Eternal Love encompasses all, so nothing is ever lost.
Back here on earth, we play ceaselessly, in a world bounded, limited, terminated. In fact we have invented all kinds of ways to magnify the amount and the intensity of play. We call them our communications media: newspapers, television and radio and movies, the Internet. But they are not for better information; they are for our play. Play seriously for a moment—you'll see they are of little use in helping us "learn lessons." When was the last time TV improved your character? How has the Web taught you to forgive everyone, to love without holding back? But look as what marvelous tools they are for play.
What can go wrong as you play? All sorts of things! This concert has no constraints; this game has no rules. We are in the Infinite, and Infinite outcomes can happen. The most common "mistake" is that we play this game so well that we forget the game we're playing, and we become focused on yet another diversion. We believe this life is all there is—we forget we are Infinite. This happens constantly, and our attention jumps from big games to smaller ones, from matches just lost to new competitions. A tiny sample: my computer alerts me to new email with a five-note fanfare that's identical to a melody of Richard Wagner. Suddenly I have an ear-worm, a tune that repeat endlessly in your head, and it interferes with the much "more important" text I was composing. Or I'll drop what I'm doing and look up Wagner on the Web.
Something's gone wrong with my behavior: Forgetting my universal, Infinite self, I've been in a game we call "writing," instead. And then in turn—forgetting my attention on writing—I'm mentally singing the Ride of the Valkyries, or maybe reading about opera. We play at earning money, then we play at spending it. Some folks play at loving, then get all wrapped up in the game of fighting with their lovers. Our life on this plane is a grand maze of games, volleys within matches within sets within tournaments, carburetor science within engine technology within automotive design within highway labyrinths. And we get lost.
The most obvious game-within-a-game is to play, er, to believe, that there's a rule book, and that our purpose here is to win. Or that there's a script to follow, so we can "get to heaven" if we obey it. We search constantly for the sheet music the whole time we're actively singing this life-opera. We try so hard to "win" (whatever that is—money, health, applause, a ripe old age, a page in the history books), even though it's glaringly obvious our game is temporary: everything and everybody's mortal! Indeed, our planet and our galaxy are mortal! The Universe does not jump into the game to follow rules or to win. The Infinite plays to play. Like kids as a summer swimming pool or actors doing improve or an out-of-control rock star, winning is irrelevant. Eventually everyone must exit. The concert ends; the pool closes. The apparent winners leave without their winnings, and the apparent losers exit no poorer than when they arrived.
Deathwalkers. A terrifying word. Hypnotic. Shocking. True. Shamans, the deathwalkers, know who's playing and why. Shamans constantly remember that we're all playing. Roman conquerors are said to have tipped their hats to ancient shamanic wisdom by having a slave whisper to them, MEMENTO MORI, "Remember you're dying," as they roared in triumphant parades to the applause of their fellow citizens. Some scholars remark on what a strange tradition that was! Not strange at all—if you were a general who won by massive slaughter, who knew killing and death deeply, face to face, in person. They played harder at winning than any professional actor or athlete today. Yet they knew: we all end up as deathwalkers. Shamans just volunteer for the job.
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
Serious Fun, This Shamanic Death!
This is just a picture, of course. Modern spiritual instructors paint a picture of children, in school, learning lessons—ugh!—to tell us what we're doing here. I have a better picture: happier, available (to schoolchildren and super-seniors alike), both sad and blissful, hard and easy. The picture is that WE ARE PLAYING here on earth, playing games, playing music, putting on plays, playing sports, and all normal human activity.
Listen to the tiny tots on a playground, fighting about what the rules should be! School is an imposition foisted on children by adults. Non-urban societies have no schools. But play and games and inventing rules charge out like racehorses from our very core, from times before we can even talk.
Fun? Yup. Serious? Oh, yes! Watch those preschoolers screaming about what is fair and who broke the rules! Childhood is no idyllic dream. Too many teachers fantasize about their early days. So don't. Instead, sit at a playground. Baby shamans, focusing their infinite attention on small things. Like adults playing chess, whistling a tune, betting on a hole of golf, toddlers know how big the world is but choose instead to play little toddler games. And not just aimless play, either, but Rules, and Fairness, and Roles! Shocking! Awesome! Terrible! Wondrous!
Some shamans cannot abide such restrictions for long. Dare I hint at my understanding about why so many children die? The Game metaphor makes serious sense to me, in ways that scholastic nonsense always seems to fail. Mexican shamans have been said to disappear forever, on the rare occasion. Elijah and Enoch were reported to have ascended to the Divine without dying—or returning. Shamanic journeys that just kept on going. Deathwalkers that never returned to the living.
Listen to the tiny tots on a playground, fighting about what the rules should be! School is an imposition foisted on children by adults. Non-urban societies have no schools. But play and games and inventing rules charge out like racehorses from our very core, from times before we can even talk.
Fun? Yup. Serious? Oh, yes! Watch those preschoolers screaming about what is fair and who broke the rules! Childhood is no idyllic dream. Too many teachers fantasize about their early days. So don't. Instead, sit at a playground. Baby shamans, focusing their infinite attention on small things. Like adults playing chess, whistling a tune, betting on a hole of golf, toddlers know how big the world is but choose instead to play little toddler games. And not just aimless play, either, but Rules, and Fairness, and Roles! Shocking! Awesome! Terrible! Wondrous!
Some shamans cannot abide such restrictions for long. Dare I hint at my understanding about why so many children die? The Game metaphor makes serious sense to me, in ways that scholastic nonsense always seems to fail. Mexican shamans have been said to disappear forever, on the rare occasion. Elijah and Enoch were reported to have ascended to the Divine without dying—or returning. Shamanic journeys that just kept on going. Deathwalkers that never returned to the living.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Quick Summary
Playing the Game and Shamanic Death
The Universe loves infinitely, knows infinitely, and so plays at being finite—becoming separated personalities (you, me, Fido, whales, elephants, planets, galaxies, and roses) and playing fun and scary games that we call life, this world, or reality. Near-death experiences are just previews of the real Monday-morning quarterbacking, and after leaving this life we feel the calm of a match well played, even if I played villain this time and you played hero!
Much of our playing is dead serious, filled with grief and agony as we scramble to stay alive. Even more of it is enormously light-hearted: laughter, romance, song, travel, fantasies, meals, beauty. The Universe plays.
Since the Universe knows infinitely, there's nothing more to learn! Since the Universe loves infinitely, there's no fear of death, no fear of loss, no abandonment, no rejection. "It's all love." So shamans dance with Death, like directors who know the play, the audience, and the outside world, coaching their actors, who dive so deeply into their roles that they forget everything else. Shamans know Death not as an ending but as a boundary line you can cross—both ways, in fact.
The Universe loves infinitely, knows infinitely, and so plays at being finite—becoming separated personalities (you, me, Fido, whales, elephants, planets, galaxies, and roses) and playing fun and scary games that we call life, this world, or reality. Near-death experiences are just previews of the real Monday-morning quarterbacking, and after leaving this life we feel the calm of a match well played, even if I played villain this time and you played hero!
Much of our playing is dead serious, filled with grief and agony as we scramble to stay alive. Even more of it is enormously light-hearted: laughter, romance, song, travel, fantasies, meals, beauty. The Universe plays.
Since the Universe knows infinitely, there's nothing more to learn! Since the Universe loves infinitely, there's no fear of death, no fear of loss, no abandonment, no rejection. "It's all love." So shamans dance with Death, like directors who know the play, the audience, and the outside world, coaching their actors, who dive so deeply into their roles that they forget everything else. Shamans know Death not as an ending but as a boundary line you can cross—both ways, in fact.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Ending the Play
PLAYING THE GAME AND SHAMANIC DEATH
I'm anti-doctrine. The doctrine says: Life is a school—learn your lessons! Ugh, such a downer! Then when you die, you'll return to Spirit where you'll find you already know everything. Huh? I'm not so sure, says my contrarian self. I'm here to play, to act, to sing, and I find it so riveting to play here that I (mostly) forget my Higher Self, Infinity, the Universe.
We play game after game, and games within games, we sing hymns or rounds or chants one after another, and we play our roles through every scene until the audience rises and applauds and the curtain falls. Intensely focused on our drama or music or sporting match, we find ourselves, here in ordinary life, hoping it will never end, and behaving the same way. Like a little child, I spend the whole day—I mean, my whole life on earth—playing and playing and playing, for good or ill, collecting praise or scoldings, making toddler-friends and toddler-enemies, until I'm so exhausted that I cry and scream, refusing to go to bed, howling and shrieking because I have to leave all the fun I've been having. No, I don't wanna die!! But life as part of the Universe is far, far greater than any single game.
Each drama we enact here ends—applause or no, full house or empty. Every concert finishes, even if we can manage an encore or two. The game may go on, but all the players eventually must leave. Maybe in the tryouts or maybe in the finals. Maybe your character never reappears after the first act, or perhaps you have top billing. Even the most dazzling soloist stands in front of the chorus for just that one stellar moment, but afterwards the concert goes on, absent the star. We are just playing, after all.
We have entered the game, and we will exit. And while we engage, the game's the thing—the ONLY thing. We perform so very well. We think we're working for points, or competing to outdo others, or to last longer than the others. We remain so entranced by the rules and the results, that we have momentarily forgotten facts of the matter: this is a game we play within the larger Universe, the Greater Life of which we form a part. We almost never shed our fanatical play, so that not many of us are ever ready for death.
Some people die too young. Perhaps they join the game intending not really to play but rather to assist other players. Perhaps they simply run in from the sidelines with some useful instructions from the coach. It could be they overacted their part and fell off the stage—the actor is unhurt but the character has vanished.
Some people, supposing the rules to be immutable and thinking all is lost, as they suffer in agony, or shame, or total loss of hope, think their only choice is to leave. They smash their game-piece while it is still on the board, or occasionally they sweep several chessmen onto the floor. A few people, hating their place in the standings or the effects of their fellow actors, drive their opponents off the board, whether swiftly and murderously, or slowly with abuse and torture.
Some just leave the field, stop singing, freeze in stage fright—while all the song and drama and sport of this world continue to swirl around them. Their eyes and ears are fixed on all the action, but they find they have to sit out the rest of the match.
The majority of us dance and perform and tally up points until something in us tires of this game. Until something in us quits. Perhaps it's time to go back and rejoin the Whole for a while. Perhaps we have become entranced by another song from elsewhere, another rearrangement of the rules, a different place to play.
Do we really need 70 or 80 years to learn some lessons? Has a 15-year-old who suddenly passed away somehow learned all the necessary instruction? We suppose a long life signals success or that the death of a child is tragedy beyond all remedy. But there is another perspective: the Universe is at play. And we are children of that Universe. We do not play for points. We play just because we want to play.
Shamans know death, and so they understand about playing and players. They are seers and knowers. Shamans experience pre-game and post-game, tuning up instruments and later putting them away, locker room, dressing room, and all the wider Universe. Shamans walk both life and death. They always know more than you suppose. Indeed, they always know more than they themselves suppose.
I'm anti-doctrine. The doctrine says: Life is a school—learn your lessons! Ugh, such a downer! Then when you die, you'll return to Spirit where you'll find you already know everything. Huh? I'm not so sure, says my contrarian self. I'm here to play, to act, to sing, and I find it so riveting to play here that I (mostly) forget my Higher Self, Infinity, the Universe.
We play game after game, and games within games, we sing hymns or rounds or chants one after another, and we play our roles through every scene until the audience rises and applauds and the curtain falls. Intensely focused on our drama or music or sporting match, we find ourselves, here in ordinary life, hoping it will never end, and behaving the same way. Like a little child, I spend the whole day—I mean, my whole life on earth—playing and playing and playing, for good or ill, collecting praise or scoldings, making toddler-friends and toddler-enemies, until I'm so exhausted that I cry and scream, refusing to go to bed, howling and shrieking because I have to leave all the fun I've been having. No, I don't wanna die!! But life as part of the Universe is far, far greater than any single game.
Each drama we enact here ends—applause or no, full house or empty. Every concert finishes, even if we can manage an encore or two. The game may go on, but all the players eventually must leave. Maybe in the tryouts or maybe in the finals. Maybe your character never reappears after the first act, or perhaps you have top billing. Even the most dazzling soloist stands in front of the chorus for just that one stellar moment, but afterwards the concert goes on, absent the star. We are just playing, after all.
We have entered the game, and we will exit. And while we engage, the game's the thing—the ONLY thing. We perform so very well. We think we're working for points, or competing to outdo others, or to last longer than the others. We remain so entranced by the rules and the results, that we have momentarily forgotten facts of the matter: this is a game we play within the larger Universe, the Greater Life of which we form a part. We almost never shed our fanatical play, so that not many of us are ever ready for death.
Some people die too young. Perhaps they join the game intending not really to play but rather to assist other players. Perhaps they simply run in from the sidelines with some useful instructions from the coach. It could be they overacted their part and fell off the stage—the actor is unhurt but the character has vanished.
Some people, supposing the rules to be immutable and thinking all is lost, as they suffer in agony, or shame, or total loss of hope, think their only choice is to leave. They smash their game-piece while it is still on the board, or occasionally they sweep several chessmen onto the floor. A few people, hating their place in the standings or the effects of their fellow actors, drive their opponents off the board, whether swiftly and murderously, or slowly with abuse and torture.
Some just leave the field, stop singing, freeze in stage fright—while all the song and drama and sport of this world continue to swirl around them. Their eyes and ears are fixed on all the action, but they find they have to sit out the rest of the match.
The majority of us dance and perform and tally up points until something in us tires of this game. Until something in us quits. Perhaps it's time to go back and rejoin the Whole for a while. Perhaps we have become entranced by another song from elsewhere, another rearrangement of the rules, a different place to play.
Do we really need 70 or 80 years to learn some lessons? Has a 15-year-old who suddenly passed away somehow learned all the necessary instruction? We suppose a long life signals success or that the death of a child is tragedy beyond all remedy. But there is another perspective: the Universe is at play. And we are children of that Universe. We do not play for points. We play just because we want to play.
Shamans know death, and so they understand about playing and players. They are seers and knowers. Shamans experience pre-game and post-game, tuning up instruments and later putting them away, locker room, dressing room, and all the wider Universe. Shamans walk both life and death. They always know more than you suppose. Indeed, they always know more than they themselves suppose.
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