Life Is Not A Monopoly Game
So stop playing it that way.
The story goes that the young man, who had left home and wasted his inheritance, returned home humbled and grateful.
His father celebrated his return without a trace of punishment or rebuke.
His brother was dismayed. He had not left home but had stayed and served his father well. Why was there no celebration for him?
The answer from his father was simple and profoundly important, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine.” Luke 15:31
It’s beautiful, but what does it mean?
After all, we have all been on both sides of this story.
As I walked one morning, filled with gratitude for the day's beauty, the words All that I have is thine popped into my head.
We often speak of being “one with everything,” and sometimes, we even experience the truth of that statement.
That morning, I had a new level of understanding when I added “All that I have is thine” to the concept of Oneness, or omnipresence.
Walk with me a moment into this idea as we marry the statement “All that I have is thine” to the awareness that our quality of life is our perception, and often misperception, of the omnipresence of God, good.
As I walked that day, I studied what I saw more deeply. It was richly beautiful but would be flawed and limited if I saw it as a material world.
The material world looked to me like a giant Monopoly game.
In our worldview, that is exactly what we have created.
Some of us have many “houses and hotels,” while others still wait for the dice to roll in their favor.
In Monopoly, the rich get richer, and the winner takes all.
Is this what we want—a game of Monopoly to be the model for our lives?
The brother who left home and squandered his inheritance was playing a game of chance.
The brother, who stayed home, was playing too. He was holding on to what he felt he owned.
The father understood the omnipresence of God.
He viewed what he saw from a spiritual perspective. Instead of playing the worldview game of lack, limitation, and ownership, he lived in the awareness that all is good, God.
We can shift our perception away from the worldview into the spiritual perception of the consistently abundant Reality of One God.
We can begin to understand ourselves as the compound idea, the full representation, the action, and the expression of this One God—not material, but spiritual.
When we accept that “All that I have is thine," there is no need to hoard, grab, fight, worry, or even win.
There is nothing to do but let go of the false perception of the worldview.
The sunlight melts away the fog and dissolves the mist, revealing what has always been present.
With each increase in awareness of God's omnipresent and omnipotent good, our misperceptions melt away, revealing more and more of the grandeur and beauty of the infinite.
“All that I have is thine” is yours and mine to acknowledge and live as Truth.
As we pay our bills, raise our families, build our businesses, plant our gardens, or cook our dinners, let’s shift our perception to a spiritual awareness that it is all God in action.
It is not a giant monopoly game but an infinite expansion of Love, and all of it is ours.
Take possession of this idea and let it dissolve away every bit of lack and limitation in every aspect of every life.
“Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” is a true statement. Not to be lived in a future time and place, but it is here and now for each of us because we are all One in Truth.
That’s what the father knew and what both his sons had to learn.
“Men who are devoid of the power of spiritual perception are unable to recognize anything that cannot be seen externally.” —Paracelsus