Flo's Game of Life: Your Word Is Your Wand

I'm endlessly interested in what people have to say and how they say it. Or write it. Or otherwise express themselves. One strand of communicated thought returns over and over again right through the year 2013, and that's "the power of the word / the Word."

Where does it all come from? Stuff like, "When one door shuts, another door opens" or "Everything happens for a reason?"

Most of this kind of expression is not new, that's for sure, even if many people who express such things seem to think they thought of the exact phrasing -- for the very first time -- all by themselves. What's more wonderful is how, in repeating these phrases and keeping them going, they are really melding with other minds and transcending time.

To show just how long these beliefs have been floating in the ether of collective (un)conscious(ness), let's take a quick look at two works by Florence Scovel Shinn that have been around for nearly a century: The Game of Life and How to Play It (1925) and Your Word Is Your Wand (1928).

The "another door opens" saying is repeated several times, mostly as an affirmation, throughout Shinn's writing.

Shinn also has much to say about "The Power of the Word" (a chapter in The Game of Life.)

She delves into "The Law of Karma and the Law of Forgiveness" (another chapter in The Game), ideas -- especially the basic notion of Karma -- that seem to be embraced or known about by just about anyone I ask anywhere.

What we've got with Florence Scovel Shinn is an interesting mix of Bible sourcing, "New Thought" Christianity, touches of Hinduism (maybe Buddhism also) and psychology, a tinge of Christian Science and some charismatic magic. And clearly, along with her spiritual cousins, her writings continue to "spread the word / Word" throughout the world-realm even in the shiftily shimmering early decades of the twenty-first century.

Here are a couple of affirmations from Your Word Is Your Wand:

Adverse appearances work for my good, for God utilizes every person and every situation to bring to me my heart's desire. . . 'Hindrances are friendly' and obstacles spring boards! . . . I now jump into my good!

Now that's a great, if pretty funny, too, image. The second:

I now exercise my fearless faith in three ways -- by thinking, speaking and acting. . . I am unmoved by appearances, therefore appearances move.

Woah -- that's somewhere between groovy and mind-blowing. I dig it.  

Do you, dear reader, read, hear, think or speak any of this kind of notion? How about friends and family along your path or forks in life?

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.