Gameism OS (Page 10)

In tabletop games and video games, game mechanics are the rules that govern and guide the player's actions, as well as the game's response to them. A game's mechanics thus effectively specifies how the game will work for the people who play it.

Life is not a school?

No.

We are not here to learn lessons?

No.

Then why are we here?

To remember, and re-create, Who You Are. [...]

School is a place you go if there is something you do not know that you want to know. It is not a place you go if you already know a thing and simply want to experience your knowingness. [...]

You can know yourself to be generous, but unless you do something which displays generosity, you have nothing but a concept. You can know yourself to be kind, but unless you do someone a kindness, you have nothing but an idea about yourself.

It is your soul’s only desire to turn its grandest concept about itself into its greatest experience. Until concept becomes experience, all there is is speculation.

In game design, a sandbox is a metaphor for playing in a literal sandbox. Game historian Steve Breslin describes "the metaphor [as] a child playing in a sandbox ... produc[ing] a world from sand", compared to games with more fully formed content. [...] Sandbox design can incorporate several different game mechanics and structures, including open worlds, nonlinear storytelling, emergent behaviors, and automation of believable agents.

It is not God’s function to create, or uncreate, the circumstances or conditions of your life. God created you, in the image and likeness of God. You have created the rest, through the power God has given you. God created the process of life and life itself as you know it. Yet God gave you free choice, to do with life as you will.

In this sense, your will for you is God’s will for you.

You are living your life the way you are living your life, and I have no preference in the matter.

This is the grand illusion in which you have engaged: that God cares one way or the other what you do.

I do not care what you do, and that is hard for you to hear. Yet do you care what your children do when you send them out to play? Is it a matter of consequence to you whether they play tag, or hide and seek, or pretend? No, it is not, because you know they are perfectly safe. You have placed them in an environment which you consider friendly and very okay.

Of course, you will always hope that they do not hurt themselves. And if they do, you will be right there to help them, heal them, allow them to feel safe again, to be happy again, to go and play again another day. But whether they choose hide and seek or pretend will not matter to you the next day, either.

You will tell them, of course, which games are dangerous to play. But you cannot stop your children from doing dangerous things. Not always. Not forever. Not in every moment from now until death. It is the wise parent who knows this. Yet the parent never stops caring about the outcome. It is this dichotomy — not caring deeply about the process, but caring deeply about the result — that comes close to describing the dichotomy of God.

How can I see myself as great when I see all my foibles, all my mistakes — all my evil?

I tell you this: There is no evil!

I wish that could be true.

You are perfect, just as you are.

I wish that could be true, too.

It is true! A tree is no less perfect because it is a seedling. A tiny infant is no less perfect than a grown-up. It is perfection itself. Because it cannot do a thing, does not know a thing, that does not make it somehow less perfect.

A child makes mistakes. She stands. She toddles. She falls. She stands again, a bit wobbly, hanging on to her mommy’s leg. Does that make the child imperfect?

I tell you it is just the opposite! That child is perfection itself, wholly and completely adorable.

So, too, are you.

But the child hasn’t done anything wrong! The child hasn’t consciously disobeyed, hurt another, damaged herself.

The child doesn’t know right from wrong.

Precisely.

Neither do you.

But I do. I know that it is wrong to kill people, and that it is right to love them. I know that it is wrong to hurt and right to heal, to make things better. I know that it is wrong to take what is not mine, to use another, to be dishonest.

I could show you instances where each of those “wrongs” would be right.

You’re playing with me now.

Not at all. Merely being factual.

If you are saying there are exceptions to every rule, then I agree.

If there are exceptions to a rule, then it is not a rule.

Are you telling me that it is not wrong to kill, to hurt, to take from another?

That depends on what you are trying to do.

Okay, okay, I get it. But that doesn’t make these things good. Sometimes one has to do bad things to achieve a good end.

Which doesn’t make them “bad things” at all, then, does it? They are just means to an end.

Are you saying the end justifies the means?

What do you think?

No. Absolutely not.

So be it.

Don’t you see what you’re doing here? You’re making up the rules as you go along!

And don’t you see something else? That’s perfectly okay. It’s what you’re supposed to be doing!

All of life is a process of deciding Who You Are, and then experiencing that.

As you keep expanding your vision, you make up new rules to cover that! As you keep enlarging your idea about your Self, you create new do’s and don’ts, yeses and nos to encircle that. These are the boundaries that “hold in” something which cannot be held in.

You cannot hold in “you,” because you are as boundless as the Universe. Yet you can create a concept about your boundless self by imagining, and then accepting, boundaries.

In a sense, this is the only way you can know yourself as anything in particular. [...]

Do you see how you have created your ideas of “right” and “wrong” simply to define Who You Are?

Do you see that without these definitions — boundaries — you are nothing?

And do you see that, like Me, you keep changing the boundaries as you change your Ideas of Who You Are?

Adam and Eve — the mythical names you have given to represent First Man and First Woman — were the Father and Mother of the human experience.

What has been described as the fall of Adam was actually his upliftment — the greatest single event in the history of humankind. For without it, the world of relativity would not exist. The act of Adam and Eve was not original sin, but, in truth, first blessing. You should thank them from the bottom of your hearts — for in being the first to make a “wrong” choice, Adam and Eve produced the possibility of making any choice at all.

In your mythology you have made Eve the “bad” one here — the temptress who ate of the fruit, the knowledge of good and evil — and coyly invited Adam to join her. This mythological set-up has allowed you to make woman man’s “downfall” ever since, resulting in all manner of warped realities — not to mention distorted sexual views and confusions.

A thing is only right or wrong because you say it is. A thing is not right or wrong intrinsically.

It isn’t?

“Rightness” or “wrongness” is not an intrinsic condition, it is a subjective judgment in a personal value system. By your subjective judgments do you create your Self — by your personal values do you determine and demonstrate Who You Are.

The world exists exactly as it is so that you may make these judgments. If the world existed in perfect condition, your life process of Self creation would be terminated. It would end. A lawyer’s career would end tomorrow were there no more litigation. A doctor’s career would end tomorrow were there no more illness. A philosopher’s career would end tomorrow were there no more questions.

And God’s career would end tomorrow were there no more problems!

Precisely. You have put it perfectly. We, all of us, would be through creating were there nothing more to create. We, all of us, have a vested interest in keeping the game going. Much as we all say we would like to solve all the problems, we dare not solve all the problems, or there will be nothing left for us to do.

Your industrial-military complex understands this very well. That is why it opposes mightily any attempt to install a war-no-more government — anywhere.

Your medical establishment understands this, too. That is why it staunchly opposes — it must, it has to for its own survival — any new miracle drug or cure — to say nothing of the possibility of miracles themselves.

Your religious community also holds this clarity. That is why it attacks uniformly any definition of God which does not include fear, judgment and retribution, and any definition of Self which does not include their own idea of the only path to God.

If I say to you, you are God — where does that leave religion? If I say to you, you are healed, where does that leave science, and medicine? If I say to you, you shall live in peace, where does that leave the peacemakers? If I say to you, the world is fixed — where does that leave the world?

What, now, of plumbers?

Events occur in the universe which no stretch of the imagination could claim you instigated or created.

These events are created by the combined consciousness of man. All of the world, co-creating together, produces these experiences. What each of you do, individually, is move through them, deciding what, if anything, they mean to you, and Who and What You Are in relationship to them.

Thus, you create collectively, and individually, the life and times you are experiencing, for the soul purpose of evolving.

[...]

Are you saying the world will always have problems? Are you saying that you actually want it that way?

I am saying that the world exists the way it exists — just as a snowflake exists the way it exists — quite by design. You have created it that way — just as you have created your life exactly as it is.

I want what you want. The day you really want an end to hunger, there will be no more hunger. I have given you all the resources with which to do that. You have all the tools with which to make that choice. You have not made it. Not because you cannot make it. The world could end world hunger tomorrow. You choose not to make it.

You claim that there are good reasons that 40,000 people a day must die of hunger. There are no good reasons. Yet at a time when you say you can do nothing to stop 40,000 people a day from dying of hunger, you bring 50,000 people a day into your world to begin a new life. And this you call love. This you call God’s plan. It is a plan which totally lacks logic or reason, to say nothing of compassion.

I am showing you in stark terms that the world exists the way it exists because you have chosen for it to. You are systematically destroying your own environment, then pointing to so-called natural disasters as evidence of God’s cruel hoax, or Nature’s harsh ways. You have played the hoax on yourself, and it is your ways which are cruel.

Nothing, nothing is more gentle than Nature. And nothing, nothing has been more cruel to Nature than man. Yet you step aside from all involvement in this; deny all responsibility. It is not your fault, you say, and in this you are right. It is not a question of fault, it is a matter of choice.

You can choose to end the destruction of your rainforests tomorrow. You can choose to stop depleting the protective layer hovering over your planet. You can choose to discontinue the ongoing onslaught of your earth’s ingenious ecosystem. You can seek to put the snowflake back together — or at least to halt its inexorable melting — but will you do it? You can similarly end all war tomorrow. Simply. Easily. All it takes — all it has ever taken — is for all of you to agree. Yet if you cannot all agree on something as basically simple as ending the killing of each other, how can you call upon the heavens with a shaking fist to put your life in order?

I will do nothing for you that you will not do for your Self. That is the law and the prophets.

The world is in the condition it is in because of you, and the choices you have made — or failed to make.

(Not to decide is to decide.)

The Earth is in the shape it’s in because of you, and the choices you have made — or failed to make.

Your own life is the way it is because of you, and the choices you have made — or failed to make.

But I did not choose to get hit by that truck! I did not choose to get mugged by that robber, or raped by that maniac. People could say that. There are people in the world who could say that.

You are all at root cause for the conditions which exist which create in the robber the desire, or the perceived need, to steal. You have all created the consciousness which makes rape possible. It is when you see in yourself that which caused the crime that you begin, at last, to heal the condition from which it sprang.

Feed your hungry, give dignity to your poor. Grant opportunity to your less fortunate. End the prejudice which keeps masses huddled and angry, with little promise of a better tomorrow. Put away your pointless taboos and restrictions upon sexual energy — rather, help others to truly understand its wonder, and to channel it properly. Do these things and you will go a long way toward ending robbery and rape forever.

As for the so-called “accident” — the truck coming around the bend, the brick falling from the sky — learn to greet each such incident as a small part of a larger mosaic. You have come here to work out an individual plan for your own salvation. Yet salvation does not mean saving yourself from the snares of the devil. There is no such thing as the devil, and hell does not exist. You are saving yourself from the oblivion of non-realization.

You cannot lose in this battle. You cannot fail. Thus it is not a battle at all, but simply a process. Yet if you do not know this, you will see it as a constant struggle. You may even believe in the struggle long enough to create a whole religion around it. This religion will teach that struggle is the point of it all. This is a false teaching. It is in not struggling that the process proceeds. It is in surrendering that the victory is won.

My purpose in creating you, My spiritual offspring, was for Me to know Myself as God. I have no way to do that save through you. Thus it can be said (and has been, many times) that My purpose for you is that you should know yourself as Me.

This seems so amazingly simple, yet it becomes very complex — because there is only one way for you to know yourself as Me, and that is for you first to know yourself as not Me.[...]

Now, to keep things simple, I’m going to use your children of God mythological model as a basis for discussion, because it is a model with which you are familiar — and in many ways it is not that far off.

So let’s go back to how this process of self-knowing must work.

There is one way I could have caused all of My spiritual children to know themselves as parts of Me — and that was simply to tell them. This I did. But you see, it was not enough for Spirit to simply know Itself as God, or part of God, or children of God, or inheritors of the kingdom (or whatever mythology you want to use).

As I’ve already explained, knowing something, and experiencing it, are two different things. Spirit longed to know Itself experientially (just as I did!). Conceptual awareness was not enough for you. So I devised a plan. It is the most extraordinary idea in all the universe — and the most spectacular collaboration. I say collaboration because all of you are in it with Me.

Under the plan, you as pure spirit would enter the physical universe just created. This is because physicality is the only way to know experientially what you know conceptually. It is, in fact, the reason I created the physical cosmos to begin with—and the system of relativity which governs it, and all creation.

Once in the physical universe, you, My spirit children, could experience what you know of yourself — but first, you had to come to know the opposite. To explain this simplistically, you cannot know yourself as tall unless and until you become aware of short. You cannot experience the part of yourself that you call fat unless you also come to know thin.

Taken to ultimate logic, you cannot experience yourself as what you are until you’ve encountered what you are not. This is the purpose of the theory of relativity, and all physical life. It is by that which you are not that you yourself are defined.

Now in the case of the ultimate knowing — in the case of knowing yourself as the Creator — you cannot experience your Self as creator unless and until you create. And you cannot create yourself until you uncreate yourself. In a sense, you have to first “not be” in order to be. [...]

Of course, there is no way for you to not be who and what you are — you simply are that (pure, creative spirit), have been always, and always will be. So, you did the next best thing. You caused yourself to forget Who You Really Are.

Upon entering the physical universe, you relinquished your remembrance of yourself. This allows you to choose to be Who You Are, rather than simply wake up in the castle, so to speak.

It is in the act of choosing to be, rather than simply being told that you are, a part of God that you experience yourself as being at total choice, which is what, by definition, God is. Yet how can you have a choice about something over which there is no choice? You cannot not be My offspring no matter how hard you try — but you can forget. [...]

Each soul is a Master — though some do not remember their origins or their heritages. Yet each creates the situation and the circumstance for its own highest purpose and its own quickest remembering — in each moment called now.

The agents play thousands of rounds of hide & seek in parallel for many days. They train against each other, as well as past versions of themselves.

Each [soul] creates the situation and the circumstance for its own highest purpose and its own quickest remembering — in each moment called now.

You are, have always been, and will always be, a divine part of the divine whole, a member of the body. That is why the act of rejoining the whole, of returning to God, is called remembrance. You actually choose to remember Who You Really Are, or to join together with the various parts of you to experience the all of you — which is to say, the All of Me.

Your job on Earth, therefore, is not to learn (because you already know), but to re-member Who You Are. And to re-member who everyone else is. That is why a big part of your job is to remind others (that is, to re-mind them), so that they can re-member also. [...]

[But] you must first see your Self as worthy before you can see another as worthy. You must first see your Self as blessed before you can see another as blessed. You must first know your Self to be holy before you can acknowledge holiness in another.

If you put the cart before the horse — as most religions ask you to do — and acknowledge another as holy before you acknowledge yourself, you will one day resent it. If there is one thing none of you can tolerate, it is someone being holier than thou. Yet your religions force you to call others holier than thou. And so you do it — for a while. Then you crucify them.

You have crucified (in one way or another) all of My teachers, not just One. And you did so not because they were holier than thou, but because you made them out to be.

My teachers have all come with the same message. Not “I am holier than thou,” but “You are as holy as am I.”

This is the message you have not been able to hear; this is the truth you have not been able to accept. And that is why you can never truly, purely, fall in love with another. You have never truly, purely fallen in love with your Self.

And so I tell you this: be now and forever centered upon your Self. Look to see what you are being, doing, and having in any given moment, not what’s going on with another. [...] You have brought your Self to the relative world so that you might have the tools with which to know and experience Who You Really Are. Who You Are is who you create yourself to be in relationship to all the rest of it.

FROM BOOK 1:

There once was a soul who knew itself to be the light. This was a new soul, and so, anxious for experience. “I am the light,” it said. “I am the light.” Yet all the knowing of it and all the saying of it could not substitute for the experience of it. And in the realm from which this soul emerged, there was nothing but the light. Every soul was grand, every soul was magnificent, and every soul shone with the brilliance of My awesome light. And so the little soul in question was as a candle in the sun. In the midst of the grandest light — of which it was a part — it could not see itself, nor experience itself as Who and What it Really Is.

Now it came to pass that this soul yearned and yearned to know itself. And so great was its yearning that I one day said, “Do you know, Little One, what you must do to satisfy this yearning of yours?”

“Oh, what, God? What? I’ll do anything!” The little soul said.

“You must separate yourself from the rest of us,” I answered, “and then you must call upon yourself the darkness.’

“What is the darkness, o Holy One?” the little soul asked.

“That which you are not,” I replied, and the soul understood.

And so this the soul did, removing itself from the All, yea, going even unto another realm. And in this realm the soul had the power to call into its experience all sorts of darkness. And this it did.

Yet in the midst of all the darkness did it cry out, “Father, Father, why hast Thou forsaken me?” Even as have you in your blackest times. Yet I have never forsaken you, but stand by you always, ready to remind you of Who You Really Are; ready, always ready, to call you home.

Therefore, be a light unto the darkness, and curse it not.

And forget not Who You Are in the moment of your encirclement by that which you are not. But do you praise to the creation, even as you seek to change it.

And know that what you do in the time of your greatest trial can be your greatest triumph. For the experience you create is a statement of Who You Are — and Who You Want to Be.

[...]

FROM BOOK 3:

Do you remember the parable of The Little Soul and the Sun that I gave you in Book 1?

Yes.

There is a second half to that parable. Here it is:

"You may choose to be any Part of God you wish to be," I said to the Little Soul. "You are Absolute Divinity, experiencing Itself. What Aspect of Divinity do you now wish to experience as You?"

"You mean I have a choice?" asked the Little Soul. And I answered, "Yes. You may choose to experience any Aspect of Divinity in, as, and through you."

"Okay," said the Little Soul, "then I choose Forgiveness. I want to experience my Self as that Aspect of God called Complete Forgiveness."

Well, this created a little challenge, as you can imagine.

There was no one to forgive. All I have created is Perfection and Love.

"No one to forgive?" asked the Little Soul, somewhat incredulously.

"No one," I repeated. "Look around you. Do you see any souls less perfect, less wonderful than you?"

At this the Little Soul twirled around, and was surprised to see himself surrounded by all the souls in heaven. They had come from far and wide throughout the Kingdom, because they heard that the Little Soul was having an extraordinary conversation with God.

"I see none less perfect than I!" the Little Soul exclaimed. "Who, then, shall I have to forgive?"

Just then, another soul stepped forward from the crowd. "You may forgive me," said the Friendly Soul.

"For what?" the Little Soul asked.

"I will come into your next physical lifetime and do something for you to forgive," replied the Friendly Soul.

"But what? What could you, a being of such Perfect Light, do to make me want to forgive you?" the Little Soul wanted to know.

"Oh," smiled the Friendly Soul, "I'm sure we can think of something."

"But why would you want to do this?" The Little Soul could not figure out why a being of such perfection would want to slow down its vibration so much that it could actually do something "bad."

"Simple," the Friendly Soul explained, "I would do it because I love you. You want to experience your Self as Forgiving, don't you? Besides, you've done the same for me."

"I have?" asked the Little Soul.

"Of course. Don't you remember? We've been All Of It, you and I. We've been the Up and the Down of it, and the Left and the Right of it. We've been the Here and the There of it, and the Now and the Then of it. We've been the Big and the Small of it, the Male and the Female of it, the Good and the Bad of it. We've all been the All of It.

And we've done it by agreement, so that each of us might experience ourselves as The Grandest Part of God. For we have understood that...

In the absence of that which You Are Not, that Which You ARE, is NOT.

In the absence of 'cold', you cannot be 'warm.' In the absence of 'sad,' you cannot be 'happy,' without a thing called 'evil,' the experience you call 'good' cannot exist.

If you choose to be a thing, something or someone opposite to that has to show up somewhere in your universe to make that possible."

The Friendly Soul then explained that those people are God's Special Angels, and these conditions God's Gifts.

"I ask only one thing in return," the Friendly Soul declared.

"Anything! Anything," the Little Soul cried. He was excited now to know that he could experience every Divine Aspect of God. He understood, now, The Plan.

"In the moment that I strike you and smite you," said the Friendly Soul, "in the moment that I do the worst to you that you could ever imagine - in that selfsame moment... remember Who I Really Am."

"Oh, I won't forget!" promised the Little Soul. "I will see you in the perfection with which I hold you now, and I will remember Who You Are, always."

If you choose to be a thing, something or someone opposite to that has to show up somewhere in your universe to make that possible.

Indeed, Bohm believes that our almost universal tendency to fragment the world and ignore the dynamic interconnectedness of all things is responsible for many of our problems, not only in science but in our lives and our society as well. For instance, we believe we can extract the valuable parts of the earth without affecting the whole. We believe it is possible to treat parts of our body and not be concerned with the whole. We believe we can deal with various problems in our society, such as crime, poverty, and drug addiction, without addressing the problems in our society as a whole, and so on. In his writings Bohm argues passionately that our current way of fragmenting the world into parts not only doesn't work, but may even lead to our extinction.

The level of a society's advancement is reflected, inevitably, in the degree of its duality thinking. Social evolution is demonstrated by movement towards unity, not separatism.

Why? Why is unity such a yardstick?

Because unity is the truth. Separatism is the illusion. As long as society sees itself as separate units, it lives in the illusion.

All of life on your planet is built on separatism; based in duality.

You imagine yourselves to be separate families or clans, gathered in separate neighborhoods or states, collected in separate nations or countries, comprising a separate world, or planet.

You imagine your world to be the only inhabited world in the universe. You imagine your nation to be the finest nation on earth. You imagine your state to be the best state in the nation, and your family the most wonderful in the state.

Finally, you think that you are better than anyone else in your family.

Oh, you claim you don't think any of this, but you act as if you do.

Your true thoughts are reflected every day in your social decisions, your political conclusions, your religious determinations, your economic choices, and your individual selections of everything from friends to belief systems to your very relationship with God. That is, Me.

You feel so separate from Me that you imagine I won't even talk to you. And so you are required to deny the veracity of your own experience. You experience that you and I are One, but you refuse to believe it. Thus you are separate not only from each other, but from your own truth.

As a practical matter — again leaving esoterics aside — if you look to what is best for you in these situations where you are being abused, at the very least what you will do is stop the abuse. And that will be good for both you and your abuser. For even an abuser is abused when his abuse is allowed to continue.

This is not healing to the abuser, but damaging. For if the abuser finds that his abuse is acceptable, what has he learned? Yet if the abuser finds that his abuse will be accepted no more, what has he been allowed to discover?

Therefore, treating others with love does not necessarily mean allowing others to do as they wish.

Parents learn this early with children. Adults are not so quick to learn it with other adults, nor nation with nation.

Yet despots cannot be allowed to flourish, but must be stopped in their despotism. Love of Self, and love of the despot, demands it. This is the answer to your question, “If love is all there is, how can man ever justify war?”

Sometimes man must go to war to make the grandest statement about who man truly is: he who abhors war.

There are times when you may have to give up Who You Are in order to be Who You Are.

There are Masters who have taught: you cannot have it all until you are willing to give it all up. [...]

This should put to rest some pacifist theories that highest love requires no forceful response to what you consider evil.

Love is the ultimate reality. It is the only. The all. The feeling of love is your experience of God.

In highest Truth, love is all there is, all there was, and all there ever will be. When you move into the absolute, you move into love. The realm of the relative was created in order that I might experience My Self. This does not make the realm of the relative real. It is a created reality you and I have devised and continue to devise — in order that we may know ourselves experientially. Yet the creation can seem very real. Its purpose is to seem so real, we accept it as truly existing. [...]

Fear is the other end of love. It is the primal polarity. In creating the realm of the relative, I first created the opposite of My Self. Now, in the realm in which you live on the physical plane, there are only two places of being: fear and love. Thoughts rooted in fear will produce one kind of manifestation on the physical plane. Thoughts rooted in love will produce another.

The Masters who have walked the planet are those who have discovered the secret of the relative world — and refused to acknowledge its reality. In short, Masters are those who have chosen only love. In every instance. In every moment. In every circumstance. Even as they were being killed, they loved their murderers. Even as they were being persecuted, they loved their oppressors.

This is very difficult for you to understand, much less emulate. Nevertheless, it is what every Master has ever done. It doesn’t matter what the philosophy, it doesn’t matter what the tradition, it doesn’t matter what the religion — it is what every Master has done.

This example and this lesson has been laid out so clearly for you. Time and time again, over and over has it been shown to you. Through all the ages and in every place. Through all your lifetimes and in every moment. The universe has used every contrivance to place this Truth before you. In song and story, in poetry and dance, in words and in motion — in pictures of motion, which you call motion pictures, and in collections of words, which you call books.

From the highest mountain it has been shouted, in the lowest place its whisper has been heard. Through the corridors of all human experience has this Truth been echoed: Love is the answer. Yet you have not listened.

Now come you to this book, asking God again what God has told you countless times in countless ways. Yet I will tell you again — here — in the context of this book. Will you listen now? Will you truly hear?

What do you think brought you to this material? How does it come to pass that you are holding it in your hands? Do you think I know not what I am doing?

There are no coincidences in the universe.

Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.

Few people understand the rhythms of life more than women. Women live their whole lives by rhythm. They are in rhythm with life itself.

Women are more able to “go with the flow” than men. Men want to push, pull, resist, direct the flow. Women experience it — then mold with it to produce harmony.

A woman hears the melody of flowers in the wind. She sees the beauty of the Unseen. She feels the tugs and pulls and urges of life. She knows when it is time to run, and time to rest; time to laugh and time to cry; time to hold on and time to let go. [...]

Yet that makes me feel sad. That makes me feel as though women are somehow superior beings. That they have more of the “right stuff” than men.

Part of the glorious rhythm of life is the yin and the yang. One Aspect of “Being” is not “more perfect” or “better” than another. Both aspects are simply — and wonderfully — that: aspects.

Men, obviously, embody other reflections of Divinity, which women eye with equal envy.

Yet it has been said that being a man is your testing ground, or your probation. When you have been a man long enough — when you have suffered enough through your own foolishness; when you have inflicted enough pain through the calamities of your own creation; when you have hurt others enough to stop your own behaviors — to replace aggression with reason, contempt with compassion, always-winning with no-one-losing — then you may become a woman.

When you have learned that might is not “right”; that strength is not power over, but power with; that absolute power demands of others absolutely nothing; when you understand these things, then you may deserve to wear a woman’s body — for you will at last have understood her Essence.