The Game of Life and How to Play It

Florence Scovel Shinn presents life as a game governed by spiritual laws rather than a battle to be fought. Drawing on biblical scripture and her experiences counseling students, Shinn lays out principles she believes determine a person's health, wealth, love, and self-expression.

Shinn opens with the book's central metaphor: Life is a game whose rules are spiritual laws. The foundational rule is giving and receiving: Whatever a person sends out in word, deed, or thought returns to them with precision. Equally important is the imagination, which Shinn calls the "imaging faculty." What a person pictures mentally will eventually manifest in external circumstances, as illustrated by a man who feared a rare disease, continually pictured it, and died of it. To explain this process, she introduces three departments of the mind: the subconscious, a directionless power that carries out whatever is impressed upon it; the conscious or "carnal mind," which perceives the world of appearances; and the superconscious or "God Mind," the realm of perfect ideas containing each person's unique Divine Design, or perfect destiny. Words are as powerful as mental images: A woman who repeatedly said she wished she lived in a trunk eventually lost her home and possessions. Fear, Shinn contends, is the sole obstacle between a person and their highest ideals: It is "inverted faith," or faith in evil rather than good.

The next chapter presents what Shinn calls the Law of Prosperity: God is every person's supply, and the spoken word, backed by perfect faith and active preparation, releases abundance. A woman facing a $3,000 lawsuit has no money. Shinn instructs her to act as though she is already wealthy, demonstrating perfect faith, and the woman's cousin unexpectedly provides the money just before the deadline. Shinn introduces the metaphor of "digging ditches" from a biblical story of three kings stranded in a desert: One must prepare for what one has asked for even when there is no evidence it is coming. A woman searching for an apartment during a severe housing shortage buys blankets in advance as an act of faith and secures a home despite 200 other applicants. Shinn warns that doubt and fear rise from the subconscious before major breakthroughs, and that it is often easier to hold steady faith for someone else than for oneself.

Shinn then examines the power of the spoken word, arguing that people unconsciously create personal laws through habitual speech. A father who always says he misses his streetcar invariably does, while his daughter, who declares she always catches hers, invariably does as well. Shinn explains that objects thought to bring luck have no inherent power; rather, belief in them creates expectancy in the subconscious. She connects disease to mental states, asserting that all illness has a mental correspondence. A woman with an incurable skin disease is healed after releasing hatred toward someone who caused her dismissal from a theatrical production. Criticism, Shinn argues, produces rheumatism; jealousy and hatred cause growths; unforgiveness hardens arteries. She extends these principles to business, contending that blessing one's enemies robs them of the power to harm.

The chapter on nonresistance argues that nothing can resist a completely nonresistant person, just as water wears away rock. Shinn introduces the technique of "baptizing events," or giving every event, including failure, the name "success." A woman in business with a man who makes her feel poor stops resisting and blesses the situation; through this man she meets a woman who gives her several thousand dollars. Resistance perpetuates problems: A woman who ran away from a domineering mother married a man exactly like her, facing the same dynamic again. Life is a mirror, and one can change external conditions only by changing oneself.

Shinn presents the Law of Karma, the Sanskrit word for "comeback," as the mechanism by which thoughts, words, and deeds return to their sender. She warns against using personal will to force outcomes: A woman who coveted another person's house mentally pictured herself living in it, and the owner died. She moved in, but her own husband died soon after, and the house became a burden. The remedy is to ask for the "divine selection" rather than a specific object or person. Shinn then introduces the Law of Forgiveness, or grace, as a higher law that transcends karma. A woman who receives a counterfeit bill traces the cause to having sent stage money to a friend as a joke; by invoking the law of forgiveness, she returns to the bank and receives a replacement with apologies. Shinn also argues that outward prosperity requires inner order: A woman seeking wealth is told to organize her disordered house, after which she receives a large financial gift.

The chapter on "Casting the Burden" presents Shinn's primary practical technique. Intellectual knowledge of spiritual truth is insufficient, she argues; one must impress the subconscious with good by transferring problems to the superconscious, or "Christ within." The core affirmation, "I cast this burden on the Christ within, and I go free," is repeated silently or aloud, sometimes for hours, gradually clearing one's vision and bringing relief. A woman separated from her husband denies the appearance of separation and sets a place for him at the table every day; after more than a year, he returns. Shinn introduces "signs of land," small preliminary indications that a demonstration, or manifestation of what one has been affirming, is near. She stresses that fear is misdirected energy that must be transmuted into faith by walking directly toward the thing feared.

Shinn devotes a chapter to love, calling it "God in manifestation" and the strongest magnetic force in the universe. Jealousy is its worst enemy because fearful imaginings manifest if not neutralized. A woman torn by jealousy is instructed to give perfect, unselfish love without demanding return. After months of inner work, the man who left her proposes, and they marry within a week. Shinn warns that lack of appreciation leads to loss, and that contempt for money separates a person from it. Money must be kept in circulation: A wealthy woman who hoards dozens of necklaces and closets full of clothes she never wears gradually becomes paralyzed in her arms and loses control of her affairs.

In her chapter on intuition, Shinn argues that after speaking the word, one must wait for definite inner leads rather than reasoning toward a solution. She advocates tithing as a practice that reliably brings increase, warns against condemnation, and cautions against relying on horoscopes or numerology, which she says deal only with the karmic path.

Shinn then addresses Perfect Self-Expression, or the Divine Design: Each person has a unique place to fill and something to do that no one else can do. This perfect plan, which Shinn calls "the square of life," includes health, wealth, love, and self-expression. She distinguishes between visualizing, a conscious-mind process, and "visioning," a spiritual process governed by intuition. Fear is the main barrier to self-expression, and Shinn argues that one must be a good receiver as well as a good giver, since refusing gifts blocks one's channels of supply.

The book closes with a chapter on denials and affirmations, the practical tools for decreeing good and dissolving false conditions. Shinn stresses the importance of wording demands correctly, always specifying "under grace in a perfect way" to avoid unintended consequences. She advises never turning back once a demonstration has begun, noting that breakthroughs often come at the eleventh hour when a person finally lets go. The book ends with affirmations organized by category, including prosperity, health, guidance, and freedom from bondage, and a final declaration that the simple rules of the game are "fearless faith, nonresistance and love" (93).