Being quarantined really brings up unfinished business.
It reminds me of something I wrote on page one of my novel DOWNWARD DOG about Corpse Pose.
“Just try lying still for ten minutes. With nothing left to do, you’re finally forced to come face to face with yourself.”
Speaking of unfinished business…
For me, there’s always a moment when you know it’s over.
(And often it evokes the moment when you knew you shouldn’t have started anything in the first place!)
When I look back on a particularly challenging journey with one remarkable individual, I can pinpoint several such moments of clarifying insight…
But one, in particular, stands out during this quarantine.
One of my favorite things to do is play the board game Transformation.
(It’s both extremely obscure and has a devoted cult following.)
In brief: it’s a spiritualized version of monopoly (sorta) where you ask a life question and go deep for answers.
You play with 2-4 people.
You get various cards––angels, awarenesses, setbacks, and pain.
You move through physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual levels.
My shortest game was 45 minutes…My longest was 4 1/2 hours.
And––without overselling it––often magical synchronicities and breakthrough insights occur.
(And it’s a great way to hang out with your friends and have deep, open-ended conversations with wine.)
Anyway, I knew this particular relationship was over when this person and I started playing and they, more or less cheated.
How, you may ask, did they cheat at a spiritual board game?
In the beginning moments, you draw various cards and fill your unconscious envelope.
In the first round, eyes closed, you draw one of your angel cards from the envelope.
It becomes your Overlighting Angel for the game.
As a group, you and your fellow players talk about what that angel might mean in terms of your question.
Quite frankly, it’s often the most enlightening part of the game for me.
Well…this person rejected their Guardian Angel.
Not once, but twice.
“I’m just not feeling it,” they said, putting the card back in the envelope.
Second angel also rejected.
Finally, they settled on a third one.
One that, more or less, allowed them to force the answer they wanted to their life question.
They stacked the deck, not so much in their favor, but in line with what they’d already decided.
In other words, although technically they’d shown up, they weren’t really willing to play the game.
Part of why this resonates with me now is that I think that’s how a lot of us are feeling.
We’d like to change our cards, in other words.
We’re desperately hoping to improve our luck.
We want a better hand.
But here’s the thing: the game (and, more importantly, life) doesn’t work that way.
As my angel-rejecting player learned months later when the game’s question played out in real life, cheaters never prosper.
One of my favorite things to do each morning before I get out of bed is to use the Transformation Game founder’s app to draw an angel card.
Just as in every police procedural, where you only get one phone call…you only get to choose one angel card per day.
At first, I found this frustrating.
But more and more, I’m trying to work with my daily Angel Card, my one phone call to the Cosmos.
Sometimes I stare at it wondering how what I’ve drawn could be even remotely relevant to the challenges I know are ahead.
Especially when the answer does not seem obvious, I’m trying to listen a bit longer, with more curiosity and openness.
I’m willing to let things play out, see what’s revealed, and allow myself to be surprised.
I’ve often experienced that during the board game as well.
One such moment stands out.
During another game, a dear friend was really disappointed, even annoyed with her Guardian Angel.
Midway through she suddenly realized, even though it wasn’t the angel she’d expected, it was actually the perfect answer for her question.
(Maybe that’s how the angel got the job in the first place.)
So…Here’s the point of all this…
Right now, I think very few of us are feeling that we’ve been dealt a Royal Flush by Life.
But rather than trying to cheat with aces up our sleeves…
Or rejecting the Guardian Angels that life offers us…
The wisest thing we can do is simply to do what I’m trying to practice every day:
Learn to play the hand you’re dealt.
Ultimately, that’s the only way to really win, the only victory that counts.
Namaste for Now,
