Seven Games of Life | Free Book
Life can seem to be a serious business. We could also look at it as a game—or a series of games.They include survival, love, power, pleasure, courage, creativity, and the Master Game!
In this insightful book, Richard Smoley gives a lively but profound account of these games. He talks about how we play them, the mistakes we make, and how we can play them best.
The culmination is the Master Game. Richard explores practices
from the great spiritual traditions to show how to reach this
mastery. If you play this game, you will reach new heights of
wisdom, courage, kindness, and performance.
Richard, the author of thirteen books including G&D’s Introduction to the Occult, interweaves ideas from great thinkers and traditions with his own dry and irreverent wisdom, gleaned from forty years of study and practice, to show how to play the most important game of all.
“There is only one question: what are we to make of this life? Most books that aim to help with that central question fail, because they amount to lists: eat this, pray to that, think about the other thing, follow one truth, carry this thingamabob. Richard Smoley offers something better. It is like a conversation with a wise friend who trusts you, talking about this reality so you’re better able to relate to the ones beyond. – Quentin Hardy, Head of Editorial,Google Cloud
In The Press
KIRKUS REVIEWS
Survival, love,and spiritual enlightenment are among the prizes we must seek, according to this lively treatise on the human predicament.
Smoley,the author ofInner Christianity(2002)and editor ofQuest: Journal of the TheosophicalSociety of America, posits seven metaphorical "games"that depict prominent aspects of
existence. The survival game is won by procuring basic needs, but
these can be quite different, henotes, depending on whether you're an
English aristocrat or a homeless tunnel dweller in Las Vegas. Love is
a game that's usually transactional, Smoley contends, with lovers
judging each other by "the Equation" of desirability, but the secret
to love is"the perception of the unity of all being."The power game
can involve Machiavellian cunning-"it is never wise to underestimate
the extent to which your subordinates can sabotage you"- or a numinous
"power-from-within" that draws on a universal "life force." The
pleasure game motivates us in everything from oral sex to champagne
connoisseurship, while the creativity game is an interplay between
form and innovation in everything from classical architecture to the
absurdly standardized rules of movie scripts, which requires that the
big plot break occurs on page 25. Smoley celebrates the courage game
through the deeds of warriors like Confederate Gen. Stonewall
Jackson-an example whom some readers will find problematic-and he
proposes"death in battle is like a famous ride in an amusement
park-something not to be missed at one point or another in a sequence
of earthly lifetimes." Finally,the master game is the real rare souls
who awaken to deeper wisdom, often through meditative exercises.
Smoley's pensees mix an acerbic realism, complete with advice on
office politics, with a mystical and even occult sensibility; he is
influenced by spiritualist G.I. Gurdjieff, cites astrology as a useful
means of assessing romantic compatibility, and mentions a "strikingly
and unexpectedly accurate" palm reading he received. The book has a
free-wheeling curiosity and erudition, and it approaches profound
questions in prose that's lucid and entertainingly tart:"The
lifelessness and superficiality of the current American literary novel
cannot be because it has reached the technical limits of what is a
very broad and accepting genre, but because, one senses, of some
larger social vitiation: a masturbatory self-obsession has supplanted
great themes and vistas." The result is a stimulating read.
An eclectic, spicy smorgasbord of&philosophical food for thought.
- Title: Seven Games of Life | Free Book
- Author: Steven
- Created at : 2024-10-24 16:20:31
- Updated at : 2024-10-27 04:26:30
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- License: This work is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0.