If Life Is A Game, These Are The Rules

Notes & Commentary

Built Around The Rules For Being Human

1. You will receive a body.
You may love it or hate it, but this one body will be yours for the duration of your lifetime on earth.

2. You will be presented with lessons.
You are enrolled in a full-time informal school called “life.” Each day in this school you will have the opportunity to learn lessons. You may like the lessons or hate them, but you have designed them as part of your curriculum.

3. There are no mistakes, only lessons.
Growth is a process of trial and error: experimentation. The “failed” experiments are as much a part of the process as the experiment that ultimately “works.”

4. A lesson is repeated until learned.
A lesson will be presented to you in various forms until you have learned it. When you have learned it, you can then go to the next lesson.

5. Learning does not end.
There is no part of life that does not contain lessons. If you are alive, there are lessons to be learned.

6. “There” is no better than “here.” When you’re “there” has become a “here,” you will simply obtain another “there” that will again, look better than “here.”

7. Others are only mirrors of you.
You cannot love or hate something about another person unless it reflects to you something you love or hate about yourself. Each reflection is an opportunity for growth.

8. What you make of your life is up to you.
You have all the tools and resources you need, what you make of them is up to you. The choice is yours.

9. Your answers lie inside you.
The answers to life’s questions lie inside you. All you need do is look, listen and trust.

10. You will forget all this at birth.
Throughout the process of life, you will have opportunities to remember if you choose.

"These rules form a foundation of how we can live a fulfilling, meaningful life."

''Every person on the planet has his or her own set of lessons to learn that are separate and unique. They will [reappear] until they are mastered.''

The purpose of our bodies are to act as buffer between mind-self microcosm & worldly macrocosm and provide the former with transportation through the latter. A body is more than a mere vessel but something sacred to love & cherish. Our most fundamental relationship is between our inner self and our body. This relationship will have huge impact on quality of life experiences.


 * Acceptance = embracing what life presents with a positive attitude.


 * Self Esteem = feeling worthy and able to meet life's challenges.


 * Respect = treating a relationship (with self, person, object) and the physical forms of both parties as valuable and irreplaceable.


 * Pleasure = The physical manifestation of joy.


 * Openness = Receptiveness to the inherit value of events and individuality. It comes with adapting to what is going on with acceptance rather than outrage or anxiety.


 * Grace = To be in harmony with a spiritual higher power. In this context, a state of grace comes when we joyously connect the inner and outer macrocosms: mind-body-spirit.

Body appearance is very often what we use to define ourselves and what others use to define us. Don't criticize, judge or find fault with bodies even when they are not at their healthiest or most attractive. Approach self-improvement and helping others from a place of love vs. feelings of annoyance or inadequacy. Love all the parts of yourself- and your relationships with others. What you can't love? Change? What you can't change? Accept as a part of your reality to be challenged by until it changes through some other means.

Acknowledge the limiting beliefs you have about yourself and others so you can move into a deeper connection and make positive changes for positive reasons or reaching acceptance that allows you to value what exists. Acceptance and self esteem are ephemeral and will be lost, found, nurtured, rebuilt, challenged as the life game goes through its chapters.

Judgement and self judgement are detrimental to happiness.

Respect carries reciprocal energy. You will (usually) be honored by those you respect. Abuse or ignore your body or a friendship and it will break down in various ways.

No specific diet/health program works for everyone the same way. Learn what you need to have the kind of life/performance you desire and to make a commitment to the path that leads there. Treat yourself and others with deference and respect. Listen to inner and outer wisdom and play the game of transforming who you are into who you are happiest being.

Pleasure is experienced through the body via the five senses and what we do or how we respond to what stimuli. Tension, irritability, negativity can be countered with clicking into pleasure. Healthy pleasure doesn't dishonor our body or other people.

Every person discovers unique life purpose and creates a unique life path. There will be endless lessons that help define and fulfill life purpose. Essentially, every action we take or event we participate in = a stroke on the canvas of our life portrait. The key to happiness is to cease setting self as the "victim" on the game board and instead empower self as the protagonist of an interesting story where things aren't always fair, where bad things happen to good people, where even good people can do really bad things, and there is an overwhelming disparity and injustice in the world.

Moving from resistance, outrage, or anxiety to openness requires: 1. recognizing those negative feelings when we're having them. 2. remind ourselves we have a choice to be resistant or to act with acceptance.

Choice & Decision-making comes with actively selecting our actions and responses. Opting for the selections in what we say, do that provide the most happiness and respect tends to lead to more positive outcomes. Choosing is more instinctual; decision-making comes from rational, reasonable measuring of circumstances. Choosing is intuitive and improves with "attunement with the higher self."

Fairness = expectation of equity in ourselves and others. Focusing on the unfairness of circumstances keeps us comparing ourselves with others rather than appreciating our uniqueness as equitable in its own way and honoring ourselves.

Grace comes when we understand and accept every person (and place and object) to be of equitable value but unique in personality and life story, accepting their uniqueness and honoring them all. During a state of grace, we trust ourselves and the universe, celebrating all of its blessings and bounty without negative or limiting thoughts and feelings.


 * continued in part 2**