The New Game of Life and How to Play It by Florence Scovel Shinn & Ruth L. Miller

Author:Florence Scovel Shinn & Ruth L. Miller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atria Books

Anger, Fear, and Worry

Anger has been named one of the worst sins because its effect on us is so harmful. Anger blurs the vision, poisons the blood, is the root of many diseases, and causes decisions that lead to failure. Poised and centered in our true Self, however, we think clearly and make right decisions quickly. We never miss a clue. So the student of these principles has one goal: Poise! Poise—fearless, unwavering, focused presence—is power, for it gives divine Power a chance to rush through us, to will and do good.

The player of the Game of Life learns that the word sin has a much broader meaning than the traditional interpretation in our culture. The Greek word used in the New Testament to translate the Hebrew word chata, meaning to “go astray,” was an archery term, hamartano, meaning “missed the mark.” The English translation of that word derived from a very different Germanic root having to do with guilt. The Latin word sin, also present in Spanish, Italian, French, and other languages derived from Latin, means “without.” Used to describe a belief in separation from our good, it becomes a far more useful and accurate way of understanding the original Hebrew concept of sin than most of us have been taught. We see that to sin is to act from the belief that we are separated from our source, our good—that we are without the good that is ours by birthright.

Fear and worry, therefore, could well be considered the real deadly sins. They are inverted faith, and through distorted mental pictures they bring the very thing we fear into our experience, too often with dreadful symptoms of distress and disease in the process.

Sadly, fear stands between us and our Perfect Self-Expression. We must be careful that we are not what Jesus called the “wicked and slothful servant” who, out of fear, buries the talent he was given. 8 There’s a terrible penalty to be paid for living in fear and not using our ability.

Stage fright, for example, has hampered many a genius. When freed of it, the individual loses all self-consciousness and feels like a channel through which Infinite Intelligence expresses Itself in marvelous ways.

As we’ve read in the previous chapters, we can only vanquish fear by speaking the word and walking up to the thing we’re afraid of. In Buddhist legends, when a bull elephant came raging through town, all others ran away but the Buddha sat quietly in its path, meditating, and the elephant stopped and knelt in front of him. In a Hebrew Bible story, when Jehoshaphat and his small army prepared to meet the enemy, singing, “Praise the Lord, for His mercy endures forever,” they found that their enemies had destroyed each other, and there was no one to fight. 9 In our culture, opportunities like these are more likely to come up in the workplace or among friends.

A woman was asked by a friend to deliver a message to another friend. The woman feared

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