The vast majority of games, whether tennis or cards, baseball, or monopoly involves determining winners and losers. What is the divine perspective on contests where there are winners and losers? Is there truly such a thing as friendly competition? And do light beings in the divine realm engage in competitive recreational activities?

This creates an interesting study in contrasts because your world is quite different than the world of the light being. The whole notion of competition stems from manipulation to believe in power and control as an ultimate attainment. So in that mode of thinking, with power and control as the standard of excellence, becoming better, becoming stronger, more capable, more successful, more accomplished, and having the greatest possible degree of control over one’s life as well as the lives of others is the only way to grow and to gain through one’s efforts in a meaningful fashion. We would say all of such notions are faulty. The creation of each individual and their soul represents a kind of perfection. You, in that sense, are equal in being one facet of a gem-like creation consisting of a family of independent beings with a lofty origin and a lofty purpose. Your differences should be exalted, not used as a kind of measure to compare and contrast with others to see who is bigger or better, or faster or stronger, or quicker or smarter. The very fact you were created to be unique means comparing you strictly to another by any arbitrary standard of measurement is a kind of folly to begin with. It is a given that no two people will be alike, but the idea that one is better than another, in the end, if you look dispassionately at such contests, the distinction really has little meaning or value. Is there a practical purpose for running a 100-yard dash faster than anyone else? The only distinction and value, from a human perspective, is you become better than the other person if you best them at this physical contest. But what does that really mean if you were born with longer legs so your stride is more pronounced, enabling you with the same muscle mass to cover more ground and have an advantage in a foot race? Does that make you better or only different? If you ponder the true meaning of this contrast, you will see the folly in assuming one is better than another. No matter what criteria are applied, there are always things for which any person will best another in some way or perhaps many ways, but that is because of the differences that are designed in, and so, to attribute those to the individual as a kind of exalted status is a faulty notion entirely. In a sense, it is the luck of the draw. Certainly, people can refine and hone their skills, they can work on increasing their strength and stamina, as in developing muscles in the body, they can study and become learned and through diligent application of the mind, develop greater discernment and capabilities to ponder complex ideas and enhance their creativity, and so on. But humans are complex and all are a product of what has come before. No two people have the same starting point, so to have them run a race against one another is a quite arbitrary snapshot of circumstances with little true meaning. If you trace their histories back further to where they started their lives and all that happened in between leading up to this hypothetical athletic contest, you will see that you are, in the final analysis, comparing apples and oranges because the people’s backgrounds, histories, and life experience will be quite different and will have a hand in determining the outcome. Drawing meaning from such a contest is totally arbitrary with respect to looking at the bigger picture and loses any real significance. In the end, it becomes a shallow exercise in finding a way to look better than someone else so one can feel pride and be flattered in having a title or a trophy their opponent lacks. In the end, the body dies and turns to dust, of what value then are trophies? We would say what matters is the growth of the soul from the accumulated life experience. That, too, is subjective and will be highly variable because no two individuals have the same makeup, the same starting point, the same experiences happen to them, because the goals vary, the ideals, the intentions and desires, so any idea of competition is a faulty premise and a waste of time and energy. It is done in service to simplistic notions of power and control and therefore non-divine. There are practical benefits in making measurements of such things as skills, strength, energy, agility, coordination, balance, and so forth, if one has a practical utility in mind. We would say that a healthier outlet for such endeavors to hone the self towards perfection would be devoted to having fun as a form of play to see what one can do and delight in that physicality, when the skills are apparent and the person is rewarded for their efforts in doing well with a task of some kind, which could indeed be playing a game—that is a game rather than a contest. This is the difference between physical humans and the light being, as the light beings play many games which are tryouts and explorations and experiments for the learning they provide, but not as a means to rank one another and pick winners and losers. The former is divine and uplifting, the latter is limiting and demeaning because it results in the diminishment of some participants because of a narrow set of constraints stemming solely from an arbitrary set of criteria used to judge performance that has little relationship to the real world.