The Divine Game
Daniel
Clark
Copyright
© 2023 Daniel Clark
Printed in the
United States of America, February 2023
All rights
reserved.
ISBN: 9798374219562
CONTENTS
Preface v
You are the Self 1
Notes to the Self 3
It’s All the Self 7
Spiritual Notes 7
About
the Author 21
PREFACE
This is the fourth in a series of small books addressing fundamental themes
from spiritual notes and writings I’ve published over the last ten years. In the preface to the first of the present
series, “The Dream and the Dreamer,” I described how in 2013
I was surprised to find myself awakening in the early hours of the morning in a state of Knowing. On such occasions, there are no boundaries to Being, and the resulting insights and words representing them are not simply intellectual ideas. Their Truth has been directly experienced, giving the sense of complete certainty Ralph Waldo Emerson describes in his famous essay, The Oversoul, as well as the imperative that they be written down. I have since shared sixty of them with others in a book titled “Notes to the Self”…(and) have continued to write down such insights to help me return to the Truth of our Wholeness and also to share with others….
Many of these statements have been collected in “Experiences with Truth” (2022), a single volume containing four previous titles, “Notes to the Self” (2013), “You are the Self” (2014), “It’s all the Self” (2018), and “A Spiritual Journal” (2018).
“The Dream and the Dreamer” focused on a frequently recurring theme from the notes that seemed particularly fundamental to me, as did the second and third in the series, “The Paradox of Perfection” and “The Persistent Presence.”
As in the first three, this volume addresses another topic presented in bold portions of spiritual notes created on a variety of days from 2018 to 2023, as well as in the pages of “You are the Self,” “Notes to the Self” and “It’s All the Self.”
Daniel Clark, January 2023
THE DIVINE
GAME
From YOU ARE THE SELF, 2014
THE GAME
Our Game is the creation of form. You are formless, the eternal being, whole, complete, ever present here and now, the only Self. Your Game is to create definition, what is limited, to experience becoming, to know time and space.
TIME AND TRUTH
From NOTES TO THE SELF, 2014
OTHER
There is no Other; other is a Game of Self.
The Other is the riddle of
life. The Self is the solution. The Other is the object of our interest, the
source of our problems, the mystery and suspense of our existence, a continuing
challenge, the unknowable and perplexing.
Other threatens us, attracts us, fascinates and repels us. Overcoming our separation from Other is our
primary goal, taking many forms and underlying most of our actions. As a single part of life among many others,
we will continue to be uneasy about our separation until we realize the true
Self underlying all diversity, and know it as our only Reality.
BECOMING
Becoming is the Game of playing at what you’re not.
Being is what you are; becoming is the adventure of trying to be and to perfect what you are not. Being is complete, perfect, lacking nothing, single. Becoming is the Game of multiple players seeking to perfect themselves as separate beings in time and space, thereby realizing the Good. As the players gradually come to understand, the problem is that the separate parts of life are inherently imperfect and unstable in themselves, and that all their striving falls continually short of the Good, which is already Here, and is to be found effortlessly in the universal essence of each player.
ALTERNATION
The life force is continually alternating between expansion and contraction.
All of life is a constant movement between out and in, adventure and security, increase and decrease. Movement never continues in one direction without turning back, resting, seeking balance. All things have their timing. Learn to know what time it is. What goes out must come back. Be sensitive to the rhythm of life, which is complex, including myriad cycles and epicycles at all levels of existence. Every ending becomes a new beginning, every beginning will have an end. The Game of Life itself in space and time will ultimately have a rest in the Eternal before a new beginning.
GOD
The World is made of God; there is nothing else.
God is the only Substance. Our greatest mistake is to think we have an existence separate from God. God is all that exists. Our ignorance is God’s play, a Game of hide and seek. All of life is a response to the need of the Divine for movement within the Eternal. Realizing this, when we are quiet and attentive to the deepest stratum of our Being and Awareness, we can know and experience the Divine Substance. Though seeming to originate in us as separate individuals, all motion comes from the single, Divine Source, whose will, as Tao, moves the universe.
From IT’S ALL THE SELF, 2018
PLAY
SPIRITUAL NOTES, 2017-2023
April 4, 2019
This is my Game, the only Substance. This is your Game, your Substance. There is only one I, your I and mine.
November 17, 2018
January 24, 2019
This is the Nature of the Way, our Game, which pulsates between Truth and illusion, Freedom and attachment.
Our Essence is Whole, the eternal Self. Our Motion appears to divide Essence, but is merely
an overlay on it. The goal of the Game of Life is to reveal the Completeness and Perfection of the Self.
February
22, 2020
The Game of Life can’t be won by an individual player, but by
rediscovering the unlimited Nature of the Self as the Creator of all diversity.
The apparently limited
is in Reality the Infinite.
The highest goal is to
know the Knower in the known, the Seer in the scene.
The Spirit, the Divine, is able to satisfy all our needs.
Our Motion continually
creates what is new, and dissolves the old.
The Truth contains all
the illusions of our Divine Game, and
challenges us to remember who’s playing.
All roads eventually lead back to our Home, the Unlimited, the Infinite.
To leave Home requires diminishing our Being, our Self, which is the Game.
April 12, 2021
Whatever appears fixed
and solid is an illusion, part of our Game.
Truth is fluid,
transparent, infinite, and universal.
The piercing of illusion
brings our highest Joy.
Liberation is the
immediate experience of the Uulimited, our unbounded Being.
August 29, 2021
The eternal Perfection
of the formless Self is always Here, the Fundament of our Being, Mind itself,
after the experience of which we return to the Game, with its fascinating and perplexing variety and polarities.
We are the single Am. Doing satisfies our Nature.
September 1, 2021
Our Game requires duality, division, lack. The Truth is whole, lacking nothing.
What is Here is
Wholeness; what is there is our creative Play.
September 12, 2021
Find the Source within you, and be rooted there.
We are that which persists
without dimension. The rest is our Game,
our passing Play.
We can't leave the Source, only our Attention can.
October 1, 2021
We seem lost in a Game of lack, of hide and seek, until we recognize the Perfection of the eternal Player, the Self.
November 3, 2021
Seek reintegration of the Eternal and the temporal, Being and becoming.
Subject and object, Knower and known, Mind and matter, are One Self.
June 24, 2022
Life is a Game of forms, limitations, and how to overcome them.
October 14, 2022
We are whole in every way, though we play the Game of division.
Our thoughts are ripples in Infinity.
November 23, 2022
I am God playing the Game of
multiplicity. And so are you.
December 26, 2022
All time is pretense, the Divine Recreation of our perfect Mind. There is only the Self.
The Author of the Divine Play is the eternal Way of our Nature.
All of This is our eternal Body-Mind, and is always right where it belongs.
Our Play is the eternal Game of
coming and going with Reality.
Honoring the Way is to respect each thing in its time as an end in itself.
December 31, 2022
Beneath our Game of wanting we are complete, lacking nothing.
We are the Player of the Divine Game of Oneness and multiplicity, separation and Reunion.
We are all the Divine I, the Single Self.
The Present is the Absolute, the Divine Self at Play.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Daniel Clark was born and raised in Walla Walla, Washington, where he retired from law practice in 2010. He has also written “A Privileged Life: Memoirs of an Activist” (2013); “Come Dancing: A Collection of Contras, Circles, Squares, & More,” (2014); “Historic Sites and Markers of Walla Walla County,” (2019), “Experiences with Truth,” (2019), containing “Notes to the Self,” (2014), “You are the Self,” (2014), “It’s All the Self” (2018), and “A Spiritual Journal,” (2018); “Public Places & Private Interests: Protecting Historic Cemeteries & Other Projects,” (2020), “What Sayest Thou: A History of the Walla Walla Friends Meeting” (2021); “Hanford Nuclear Reservation: Civil Disobedience in the 1980s” (2021); “Peace Brigades International: Roots and Early Years” (2021), “Criminal Justice Reform: Walla Walla’s STAR Project & Other Stories (2021), “Diversity and Unity in the Walla Walla Valley” (2022), “The Dream and the Dreamer” (2022),“The Paradox of Perfection” (2022), and The Persistent Presence” (2023).
In addition, he has co-authored “Words: Dan & Barbara’s Deathless Prose, and a Few Poems” (2014), co-edited “A Prospect Point Reunion Book” (2014), and edited “A Garrison School Reunion Book” (2015) and “Walla Walla 2020 & Beyond” (2020). He can be contacted by writing to PO Box 1222, Walla Walla, Washington, USA, 99362, or to clarkdn@charter.net. His websites are danielclark.zoomshare.com and unitiveself.blogspot.com.
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