What you are doing on Earth is playing. Sometimes there is a skirmish, sometimes fun, and sometimes there is rest. Yet all the while you are on a playground called Earth.

When you wonder what you are doing here, remember you are here to play. Of course, life on Earth seems alien to you and you are not quite certain about it, about its rules, stated and unstated, overt and hidden. Life on Earth often seems more like a puzzle than a game. And, of course, life on Earth feels alien to you. Earth is not your natural habitat. Heaven is. For a while you are a participant and spectator in a game of Let's Pretend.

Yet, so earnest are you, you have made of life on Earth something that it is not. You have made it jungle and desert with some oases thrown in. I am talking about your feelings about the world you live in, the twists and turns and bumpiness you perceive and give allegiance to.

What if Earth were called Elysian Fields? Would you not walk and hunt differently? Would not the whole ambiance of the world change? Would you not stroll rather than clamber? Would the world not settle down knowing that it is Paradise, the abode of God? What if the world understood that it is not supervised by God but loved?

What if the world did not see itself as a knotted ball of yarn but rather as serene flowing silken thread, impossible to knot because it ever flows the way a stream of water flows, so sparklingly, so charmingly, so effortlessly, so powerfully. A stream of water streams. Whatever it streams over doesn't change the streaming. A stream streams along merrily. Can you not be a stream of consciousness that does what it does and doesn't mind so much what it travels over and what is going on by the sides of its banks?

Life on Earth is important. But what if it weren't all-important? What if you knew your present life was a tiny detour and all you had to do was walk it? Whether fast or slow, skipping or tripping, what if you knew you would traverse your path of life and reach where you started from?

What if you knew Me?

What if you knew there is not a step that I haven't prepared and smoothed for you, even when you stumble?

What if you knew that My hand is on your shoulder lightly, steering you over the rough terrain?

What if you knew that I pick you up and restore you and cover you with My love and protection, and that you are never without?

What if you knew that your physical body and the whole physical world exist only in imagination, and that your imagination is very good?

What if you knew that nothing whatsoever happens to you, that nothing ever did, that nothing ever can? What if you knew that you were inviolable? What if you knew, even when your course through this imagined life may seem like running through the gauntlet, that you can only come out unscathed and laughing?

What if life on Earth is creative dramatics?

Life, as you live it, is very vivid. You really get into it. You assume a role and think it's true, and you think that you are nothing at all but a role you play, as if the role were more important than everything else, as if there were nothing else, as if this plane of existence on the playground called Earth were all that there is when, in reality, life on Earth is only a drop of existence escalated into action and more action, rolling up its sleeves, and flexing its muscles, calling the shots, when all the while, you, beautiful you, could stand strong with your hands on your hips, feet planted firmly, and adore the dream before you.