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When I am asked who the audience for this book is, the only real answer is myself. I would like the audience to be everyone, or at least all Course in Miracles students because I think it might help a bunch of them, but I really just write for myself as I go along my own journey. I write down what I learn in order to clarify my own thinking so I can take a step back from it and see if I really believe what my small, human mind has just wrought. I edit endlessly, because I can always make it clearer to myself. I add or eliminate whole sections when my approach changes. There are so many subtleties to learning, yet what I have learned is that there is really only one simple thing to learn. I have no expectations at all for this book's success. I can only hope that it gets into right the hands.

I suppose if I had to answer that initial question with a more corporate focus, I would say that this book is an advanced understanding of A Course in Miracles, so this would appeal to anyone who has spent any time studying the Course, especially if you teach the Course. I have known many Course students who seem to have followed it for years without any real understanding of the incredibly powerful message it carries, and I have experienced many Course teachers who seem to be teaching something almost unrelated to the Course.

But this book's appeal shouldn't be restricted to Course readers, because the message of the Course is simply a larger truth that applies to all of us, so I imagine any sincere seeker of God will get something from it. At least I hope so. My journey isn't over yet, so what do I know? But even more than appealing to those God-seekers, I would also hope that this writing will inspire everyone to start examining their own life in a sincere way. If there really is a God, well, read on.

The first question we all have to ask ourselves is What do we believe? Do you really believe in a god and, if you do, what is that belief about that god you believe in? Just who or what is He? And who or what are you in relation to this big picture? You've got to have context or it doesn't mean anything. Your ideas and opinions and your life choices can't just exist on their own without fitting them into something that really matters. Doesn't it seem that we are all very opinionated about God but that precious few of us care about explaining what we believe within a larger concept of life?

I believe most people make very weak spiritual choices, even if those choices seem to be for a good reason. The options we have been presented with are very limited and unsatisfying. The world of religion does not offer us a context for life that makes any sense at all, and doesn't explain God in a reasonable way. It's all based on ancient, revered texts and silly and/or epic stories, whether that means the Bible, or the Quran, the Bhagavad Gita, or dozens of others, that are confusing and interpreted thousands of ways, without any clear meaning of Why? And because religions can't do a very good job of offering us real logic or context when it comes to God and the meaning of life, we leave the details to the "experts," and trust them to tell us what we need to know and do. We could never do it without them. Besides, we don't have the time. We have our lives to deal with, after all. So consider this...

A Course in Miracles is not your grandmother's spirituality. One thing that makes the Course stand out from all other belief systems is that it does describe the context of this life. It tells us quite clearly, in astonishingly rational terms, who we are, why we're here, and what this world is for. And it backs that up, in my opinion, with unassailable logic. That leads us to one major idea in the Course that sets up that context. If you can't accept this idea, then the Course will not work for you. If you do accept it, it will turn your world upside down, and initially scare the living daylights out of you. Either way, I believe we will all come to embrace it eventually. This book (Living a Radical Life) begins with this major idea from the Course.

After rejecting all forms of conventional religion while growing up, I started reading voraciously while attempting to apply spiritual principals for over 40 years. I read every author and teacher I could get my hands on. Many of them are extremely good. Some are not. After decades of searching, when I was finally able to accept the ideas presented by the Course, it changed my life significantly, although not in a way you may anticipate. Most spirituality taught today conforms to very safe, related ideas. The Course took all of that, everything I had read up until that point, and kicked it to the side of the road and left it in the dust. I was now left with the singular beauty of the Course, layered on top of a rich spiritual background that made it all the more breathtaking.

Right now, there is a dramatic difference between you and me–and God. You know that's true. Most of us believe in God in some weak, undetermined way. We really don't know exactly what we believe or what our God may be like. There is a powerful disconnection. Many of us generally believe today that God can be found in this world and in the lives we lead, yet most of us live lukewarm, pseudo religious lives with eyes closed, trying vaguely to be better somehow by attending a church or occasionally volunteering for something, or reluctantly smiling at a jerk to hide our judgment. Most of us may think that something wonderful or transformative happens when we die, like going to heaven and getting a nice house. But what have you ever done in your life to warrant that dramatic change in your experience after you die when nothing much has changed in your earthly life or in your thinking in all of your years here on terra firma? Have you earned heaven somehow? Are you doing anything about yourself, or are you just strolling along, letting nature take its course, hoping for the best, reacting to life like everyone else?

For your life to change, something has to happen! That "something" is a choice you have to make. You have to make a substantially different choice at some point–a world changing decision about who you think you are. It's not about taking another class or reading another book or trying a new technique, and no one is going to do it for you. There is something else beyond this existence that we are all trying to achieve. It is reuniting with God; and on earth we call it enlightenment, or a dozen other names, but what it takes to get there seems so far beyond our ability or desire, that we don't even try for it. It would even be arrogant to say out loud that we desire it. It's just not for us. It's for "them;" those wacky spiritual people who still wear tie-dyed shirts and have long, uncombed hair and beards and beads way beyond the dignity of their years, or for people of other cultures who were brought up believing in that weird stuff from birth.

What do you really believe about God? With this book, Living a Radical Life, I hope to challenge you, Mr. and Ms. Average Citizen, to rewrite your life in a profound and meaningful way. This is about completely changing your idea about yourself and the larger context of your life. It's time to question your life, and make some very important decisions. If you make the choice to change what you think about this world, nothing will stay the same in your life. This life is not at all what you think it is. It is not what your religion tells you it is, it is not what most spiritual teachers tell you it is, and it is most certainly not what society tells you. Our current idea of life is a tragic tale of suffering and competition, control and cruelty. We may have convinced ourselves that there is a God behind this and that He/She/It created it and somehow condones it, or approves of it, and supports our efforts here. When I challenge you to change your idea about life, I mean to change your idea about life to match the Truth that you feel way deep down inside yourself, instead of the ridiculous farce we are all living today, served up by some other human's lame beliefs.

I'm not kidding. I'm not being dramatic, even though it may sound that way. The Truth of who we are has nothing to do with the life we are now living. But the only way to change it is for you to first realize it, and accept it, without anything more than the words in A Course in Miracles. It uses those mere words to convey an idea that is beyond our current understanding, and for which we cannot see proof, because it is something beyond this world and beyond our senses and our ability to measure. It is an idea beyond superheroes and movie scripts and wild imagination. It is not something we can pass on to each other in words, because we each have to experience it personally. We can only use our words to point out the direction to each other and hope for the best.

You are more remarkable than you can ever imagine, and the human you think you are now is a tiny, scared speck of your true magnificence. Every single human on the planet knows this, but we are so set in our beliefs in this silly, small life and we have pushed our understanding of the Truth so far down inside ourselves, that we are afraid to go there and look at it, because we know it would upend this world and these human lives in which we have invested so much. We also think that finding this huge being inside of us is an impossible task. We are afraid of our immensity, because we have become comfortable with our smallness. What you are now is all you know and so, on the surface, you accept your humanity as something sacred and real and total. But it's just not true. We are all selling ourselves short. And it will take a tremendous leap of faith to change your mind. I implore you to try.

This book is about you, and I intend to ask you questions along the way to get you thinking. It's not about religion, and it's not about what other people think about you or God. The first Noble Truth of the Buddha is the truth of suffering. All life is suffering. What he meant of course, is life on earth–physical life. Life here is certainly not all suffering but there is quite a bit of it and it touches everyone to a different degree throughout our entire lives. Everyone suffers, and life always ends in death, no matter how you slice it. So, my first question has to be Why the heck do we have to suffer? What kind of a god came up with that idea? OK–so that's two questions.

Once again, what do you believe about God? Right now, unfortunately, you think you're a human being and that seems to be a very important thing for you to believe about yourself. Right now things may or may not be going very well for you. From the human perspective, things are imperfect and even if life is going well for you, it could certainly be quite a bit better for the vast majority of people alive today. If you're an atheist, life is fairly easy to explain: life is a series of randomly generated events, so you're bound to crash into a few bad ones. If you do believe in God, and that He's "up there" somewhere looking down on us, why do you think life on earth presents itself so poorly? Do you think that's just the way things are supposed to be? God must have something to do with all this crap, right? The buck stops here! What kind of a god do you believe in for you to accept the overwhelming confusion and suffering in this life? Seriously, what kind of god?

Do you think you suffer on this planet for mysterious reasons, or no reason at all? Is it because God is non-existent or absent by choice or frivolous or maybe God is testing us for some deep, almighty purpose? Are you waiting for death before you understand everything? Do you believe we will be rewarded when we die? Life doesn't go well for many of us and it certainly hasn't gone very well for me and most of the people I know for many years. It may not be awful, but it sure ain't perfect.

All humans have a sense of what we think life is about and, in general, we base that sense on our own personal definition of God. Whether you are aware of it or not, the way you conduct your life depends on that definition of God. From the atheist to the enlightened, we all live our lives here on earth based on what we believe God to be, or not to be, whether it is a conscious concept or not. In other words, I am speaking about the larger context of our lives. We all have a philosophy of life and that's what we live. We have all chosen which pigeonhole to climb into. Every religion is merely a different definition of God. They are all just different descriptions of who God is and what He expects from us. Which of them is correct? What if they are all wrong, in spite of their beliefs that they are all infallible or the "true" religion? Is that belief really logical, or just a desperate attempt by leaders to convince themselves and to control others through fear? Now that's something to sign up for!

Looking at it from another perspective, what does your belief in God predict for the future? Describe God based on what you believe he wants to do to each of us and the world. Is God going to send Jesus back to earth with a sword to slice up all the undesirables? Will people who don't believe be sent to hell for all eternity for a few rotten things they did in one short lifetime? Did God need us to love Him and so He created us and put us into a world of suffering and death and now has the nerve to get mad at us for acting out in anger against this ridiculous idea of life? If you have any strange ideas about what God is going to do, then what kind of a strange being must he be? Do you really want to worship him because he's going to kill all the bad people, and desperately hope that "bad" doesn't include smug, self-righteous people? Do you really want to spend the rest of eternity with this god guy?

We live our lives based not only on what we believe God to be but also on how strongly we believe it, although these really are the same idea, because your investment in your belief stems from your definition of God. So, if God is this or that, then the next question is Who are you? How you define God, in turn, determines how you define yourself, because for many of us, God created us, so there must be some character traits that we share ("in His own image" and all that). Whatever you believe about God is vital to what you believe about yourself, including what role you play here on earth, and how you conduct your life from minute to minute.

Most of us, even the religious or spiritual, have taken our poorly thought out, shallow understanding of God and decided that we don't need any more information than this, and so we have relegated any deep understanding to a far back corner of importance in our minds, no matter how fervently we currently "believe" or how intensely we "worship." We are firmly caught up in this world, and pretty much focus on going after what we want in this physical world and we react strongly to what happens to us. We aren't so much looking for God as much as we are trying to redefine God into a guy who is OK with our mediocre behavior. We invent easy ways to please God, so we can convince ourselves we are doing exactly what he wants, like saying we accept his son into our hearts (whatever that means), or sacrificing animals or non-believing humans, or writing checks to a charity (and getting that tax write-off!), or going to church, or not eating meat once a week, or making patterns in the air with our hands, or beating ourselves with chains. All of our striving is based on this world and what we can get out of it, perhaps with "God at our side." Most of the time, we don't know how to apply our beliefs to life on earth, so we live our lives based on some vague opinion/definition of, or belief in, God, while we pray to win the lottery or for our soccer team to win or Aunt Gladys to get better. So, for most of us, a real God doesn't play a big role in our daily lives, because we don't seem to play much of a role in God's life. He doesn't seem very engaged with us at all. Take that, absent God!

Religions have convinced many of us that God is mysterious, that our suffering is inexplicable but we will get our reward in heaven. We aren't very certain of what God wants from us, so we make it up. We have to be "saved" or accept some belief. We dimly believe our reward for our vague attempt will be that nice house (or mansion) with a manicured lawn while we are nurtured by some group of smiling, obedient beings who resemble the Stepford angels. And in heaven, there is also lots of...(fill in the blank). Hopefully, there will be lots of whatever you liked here on earth; whiskey, ping pong, virgins, quiet time, Pez dispensers, etc. So slow down for a moment and really read this. What about this?...what if there actually is a God? Think about that for a moment as if you haven't heard it before; especially if you believe in God–stop and think again. What if...what if...there really is a God, apart from this world, with Whom you may be spending eternity? There is a thing, an immense being who lives beyond our range and senses and comprehension who is our Creator. It made us and, behind the scenes of this life, there is a very specific purpose for us being here. It knows everything you do and somehow everything you do is recorded on some massive spiritual digital hard drive that never crashes, and, there really is some reason for this!

Look around you and then think about the way you live your life. This universe and everything in it behaves according to some very clever principles. They are so clever that there are millions of scientists all over the world working day and night, non-stop, trying to figure out how everything works. Medical scientists, physicists, chemists, hydrologists, meteorologists, botanists, geologists, astronomers, etc. And in spite of the billions of dollars and countless man‑hours over many centuries by the brightest people here on earth, we have barely scratched the surface of what it takes to make this universe work. As a matter of fact, in spite of our progress, the more we understand, the more we understand what we don't know. It is generally believed by most world religions that God created this universe and probably so do you, unless of course you are an atheist.

So then, what is your definition of God? Is your definition based on your religion? In order to believe in God, most people need a religion. Have you thought about the different things that different religions say about God and the universe and why we are here? They don't really talk much about that, do they? They mainly focus on our behavior and what God wants from us, and then they repeat the same old, tried and true stories to keep our attention. For example, I have never understood the idea of Jesus sacrificing himself and dying for our sins. What are the mechanics of that? One guy supposedly suffers a couple of hours and dies, and suddenly all of mankind has a new chance? Who exactly wanted this sacrifice? God? Who else is there? So, do you believe in a God who demands the death of his son as payment for something? So then, God's love is conditional on the death of someone he loves dearly? What other strange things is this psychologically odd god going to impose on us? What is the reasoning behind this, and why is it so easy for us to accept something so ridiculous just because so many people have kept saying it for so many centuries? How loyal can you be to a god who is described like this? Even if you don't think about it at all, deep down, you know this has to be a very unsettling god. And that's only one simple example. Where do we get these insane ideas? Am I being too harsh, or is your idea of God too vague?

It can also be very difficult for many of us to question our religion. Society and family have made it a serious offense to question anything about God. How dare us to think that their lame ideas about God and life might be incorrect! This can be a tremendous source of guilt. I understand that it's not easy to just throw out your religion because it doesn't really make sense when you start questioning it. What would you do then? If you change your ideas and defect, it may seriously affect your family life in an unpleasant way. It's so much easier to just buy into the ridiculous rather than to go looking for a new religion. After all, aren't they all just as ridiculous? Can you really believe in a god if your definition of that god doesn't perfectly explain the world we live in? What exactly are you believing in?

Note: When Steve Allen was on TV, he would read authentic letters to the editors of newspapers as if he were the person who wrote the letter. When reading, he would try to express all of the anger and frustration he thought that the writer felt, and it was very funny. There are parts of this that I wrote with tremendous passion, so use your best judgment to imbue those passages with all of the passion of Steve Allen screaming at the TV cameras. Be dramatic.

So, let's think about this universe. Every tiny atom of substance on this planet serves a function, and serves that function according to very clever laws–without fail. And this god supposedly behind it all is so clever that we can't even agree that he/she/it exists! He/she/it has hidden him/her/it‑self from us so cleverly that the only way any of us now believe in him/her/it is through faith–not through empirical evidence. Some extremely clever being has created this unbelievably complex and diverse universe that functions perfectly down to the subatomic level without pause and then mysteriously decided to hide him/her/it-self from detection by the very experimentation that makes the universe knowable. Our science can't find him/her/it. Our religions can only speculate about the god that created this world but offer such differing versions that we kill each other over the different stories we have made up about him/her/it. Does this make sense to you? Really? Does this make any sense to you at all? This seems like utter madness to me.

So, if there is a God, and this God is so absolutely clever, then why the hell are we here? What is this about? Honestly, take the time to repeat this again. What is this all about? Why are we here? Don't these questions seem not only worth examining but vital to us as the subjects of this "plan?" Why are we going through this game? And where is God? Why would a supposedly loving god play this game with us and hide him/her/it-self, hide our purpose, and allow this chaos and pain that ends in our death? Why can't we see him/her/it? What's the purpose of a life of suffering? Are we doing something right now to deserve this? How does the whole thing end? What kind of a god would create a world that contains all of these horrible imperfections? Probably not a perfect god. How much slack do you give God, or rather, how much slack do you give yourself for not caring or thinking about this?

So, do you really believe in God? Or do you just say you do, without really being very attached to the idea, because you can't really reconcile this world, and you feel you are supposed to believe, and most other people say the same thing, so it's the politically correct thing to say, and it's easier to agree to a belief in God than to feel ostracized by society by not believing? Would you believe in God if no one told you about him when you were a kid? Don't we all believe in the god we were taught to believe in, based on the country or culture we were born into and the religions of our family? You must admit that you could have just as easily been a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu or a Jain if the circumstances of your birth were different, because different ideas would have been drilled into your head from the time you were born. So, is your belief in God an honest belief based on real searching and questioning, or is it an easy belief that you simply accepted because you grew up with it? Again, do you really believe in God? I'm not asking for an answer based on what all the people around you will think if you give the "wrong" answer. Try to separate your answer from anyone else who cares about your opinions. What role does that belief have in your life? What do you do on a daily basis that supports the fact that you believe in God; a god that created you may expect something from you, and may be waiting for you to discover the purpose of life, so you can really do something with your life? How often do you let that belief in a god slip away as you slip back into a disinterested life, the same as most other people live?

When you look around you at the way the world works, the way people treat each other, the way the collective thinking of corporations and governments treat people, and the terrible events that you see every day on the news, do you think that most people around the world believe in God? Maybe most people believe in God but that belief requires them to suppress, torture, judge and persecute others who don't believe the same way they do. Or they don't know what they're supposed to do with their belief because God seems to be extremely absent. The only directives we have from God are ancient texts that are confusing, contradictory, judgmental, and painfully outdated, and the vastly different ways we interpret them seem to have very little to do with love, tolerance, non‑judgment, and all the other nice words that we throw around to make ourselves seem kind. When we live in this world for a while and see all of the seeming injustice and suffering, we tend to alter our definition of God to describe a being much less kind and loving, and a lot more like us.

What is the point of this confusion? Many of us who have an opinion about God one way or the other make our views very annoying for others. There is so much judgment and extremism about what we should believe or not believe that God has become just another commodity, paraded in countless conflicting, superficial, angry, insubstantial, unofficial advertising campaigns, numbing us to any real meaning.

So, if you believe in God, what is our role in this? In other words, what is the purpose of life? What is behind this universe that we live in, so full of suffering, cruelty, intolerance and anger, as well as love and kindness? Why was it created? Do you just think those answers are unknowable? If you do have the answers, do those answers really satisfy you about God? These questions have always been described as the unknowable, imponderable questions. There are no answers to be found, at least until after we die. But the answers to those questions are the substance of life–your life. What if God created this world for an entirely different reason than you think? And what if that, in turn, means that the context of your life has just changed dramatically? George Carlin said that maybe the earth allowed humans to evolve because it wanted plastic, and now that we have created plastic for it, it's going to shrug us off like fleas from a dog. He may not be right, but are you? What if this world came about for reasons that you never even thought of? Are you open to something beyond anything you may have heard before? Doesn't the real purpose of life and the real essence of God have a direct effect on you and your behavior?

Doesn't a sincere belief in and understanding of God change everything!? Seriously! What do you think you're doing here? If there is a God–if there really is a God–and if you don't know why we're here and why this was created, then isn't that the most absolutely important thing for you to discover in your life? Think about that. If there is some unseen, omniscient being out there, who is responsible for everything about you, created you, watches over you, expects something from you (whatever that may be), then isn't that the most important thing for you to know? Don't you think God wants to be found? And who do you think is going to do that? Doesn't the answer determine everything about how you live your life? If God created this and God also seems almost totally absent from it, then don't you think it's up to you to do something about it? Doesn't that fill you with a sense of urgency deep in your soul to know something more?

Rant: If there is a God, then isn't it absolutely up to you to get off your ass and start living life in a way that reflects that there is a God? There's a reason for this! Figure it out! Figure it the hell out!! Open your eyes and start looking! If you believe in God, don't you think it should be your primary and only duty to figure out what the heck this is all about? It's God, for God's sake! Stop living a life of meaningless, robotic acceptance of the way humans have ruined this planet, the way our institutions–corporations, religions and governments–treat people, the meaningless suffering we mete out to each other. This is all wrong, wrong, wrong! There is something much bigger and much different out there. It is the end of suffering. It is up to you–not someone else–to figure it out! For God's sake, get up and do it. You! Right now! Oh, I'm sorry. Do you have to get to work? Are the kids making noise? Well, it's really not important. Go ahead and forget I said anything.

If you don't know the purpose of life, then you don't know anything. If you don't know the purpose of life, then your life has absolutely no context. If you don't know why you're here, then it stands to reason that every time you take any action or think any thought, that it might go against your purpose, since you don't know what that purpose is. Why would you spend your entire life fumbling around doing this and doing that without first knowing why you're doing it? You have to embrace a context for this life before anything else can happen; before you can make meaningful decisions, or have solid opinions, you must understand how every thought of yours fits into a bigger picture. Otherwise, everything you think is just one more unsubstantiated random thought, floating by itself in a confusing murky ocean, and it will change as quickly as the wind.

If I'm saying that it is our responsibility to step up to the plate and figure out this life, then I must also be saying that it's actually possible to figure it out. Was this created for us to solve somehow? Is it a puzzle that's so clever that God made it to fool us to the fact that it's even a puzzle? You and I know that there are many incredibly smart people on the planet, but what does intelligence have to do with a belief in God or understanding life? You have to accept the fact that God is way smarter than you, not to mention all of us put together. This is a very clever universe we live in. Maybe the first step to finding out anything is coming to the realization that this is something we're here to figure it out. There are people who build your cell phone and your TV. They're good at it. They know about that stuff. Let them figure it out. Same with God. Let the people on Sunday tell us what we need to know. But this isn't a cell phone or a TV. It's God, and this is about you.

It's up to you! Not religious leaders or philosophers or authors of books. You! The most important question for you to answer is Who Am I? Maybe the absolute and only reason we're here is to figure out who we are and why we're here, and every second you spend focused on earthly life, trying to enrich yourself in a vain search for money and happiness is time sorely wasted. And if you are getting your spiritual teaching from someone who doesn't know why we're here, then I submit to you that person has nothing important to teach you.

Now, let's take it to the next level. If God created us, and there is a purpose to life, then that purpose is God's purpose. We are here not only to discover that purpose, but to align ourselves with it. God didn't create us with a purpose in mind, and then hope that we would stand by disapprovingly and observe it from a distance. We are here to understand it and get on board! We are here to align our desire with God's desire for us. Doesn't that make it even more vital that you find out what that desire may be? If God's desire is for us to reunite with Him, then shouldn't that be our desire, and shouldn't it be our primary focus? Shouldn't it be our one and only focus? Being a "spiritual" person requires being something beyond ritual and showmanship; it requires that you fundamentally change who you are; your thoughts and reactions to your life. If you do not change who you are, then you have done nothing.

Have you ever thought for a second that if you are a part of God in some respect, that you really do have access to all of the information and answers you need? Do you know that within each of us, no matter how suppressed it may be, is the desire to know who you are? Your curiosity is fundamental to who you are. Perhaps it was our curiosity that got us into this mess, and maybe it can get us out if we use it correctly. Right now, most of us are squandering or suppressing that curiosity to learn instead about earthly things. We are using our curiosity to delve into the small things in the physical universe that concern us. We want to know about the latest electronic devices and what's going to happen on the next reality show or how to cook or make tons of money, how to do our jobs and raise our children. As a matter of fact, most of us are much less likely to be interested in any sort of internal soul searching if our external lives are going well. Ultimately, however, all of us will eventually reach the same point in our lives, when we will realize, as A Course in Miracles says, "...there must be a better way," and we will all come to the same conclusions about ourselves because it is inevitable that we will eventually discover who we are. God will never force us to learn or do anything, but we will all eventually learn the Truth. So ultimately, and very naturally, we will slowly find all of our answers and satisfy all of our curiosities no matter where we start. So, if it's going to happen anyway, why am I getting all bent out of shape now? Because I would like you to consider that we not only have access to all of that information, but the primary reason we are here now, alive on this planet, is to figure it out! And the bottom line is that the sooner you figure it out, the less suffering you must undergo. And that is a very important reason.

Who are you? Really–who are you? What are you? Are you really satisfied with the answers your church gives you, if they do give you answers? Those answers never made any sense for me for one simple reason; the answers from church leaders were created and maintained by well‑intentioned but not very smart, or deep‑thinking men, who were usually very interested in power, money and position in society, not to mention their jobs, and so they crafted their simplistic answers to confuse or control followers.

Again, the bottom line about all of your beliefs stems from one simple premise: what is your definition of God? Each religion or philosophy or belief system is nothing more than a definition of God. Each variation is merely a series of vague ideas and rules that put words in God's mouth about who He is and what He expects from us. I would guess that most people join a church or follow a belief system without really having any idea what their group's definition of God is. You learn that they allow this and don't allow that, based on the latest moral sound bite, and that's enough for you. You learn what the church thinks by listening to sermons and hearing what your particular church leader says about life, and therefore, God. So, you end up with a general idea about their idea of God, but specifics are usually rare and changeable. There is generally a lot of contradiction, like an "unconditionally" loving God who will banish you to an eternity of hell and unthinkable suffering for calling in sick when you weren't, or kicking your sister when you were nine.

You are here to figure this out and wake up from the stupor of this life that has swindled you out of your inheritance. Every single second you keep living your life on earth as if this life were more important than your search for God, is a second you have wasted. You are here for something else. Maybe you're here to change! Maybe you're here to become something better than you were yesterday. Maybe it's not about the actions you take but the way you think about every single thing that happens to you. Figuring it out may require some large leaps in your thinking, but they are only leaps backwards to what you really were a long time ago. They are natural and they can be scary but nonetheless, we will all eventually take them. This life on earth should not be taken seriously, but the exit strategy should.

Every time you get into any conflict, big or small, with another person, what are you saying about that person on the other end of your behavior? Who are they in relation to you? When we fight wars, who are we killing? Did God create both of you? So who you are and what are you doing? Where do you stand with them? Where does your idea of God go when you are in conflict with another human? Is this anger OK because everyone else does it? Are yelling and physical superiority the proper solution to problems? How are you applying any of your beliefs about God to your actual behavior? Or don't you have to because no one else seems to? We all seem to be in the same habit of reacting angrily to anger and injustice. Does it work?

Now, of course, you don't have to think about God or the meaning of life or anything else of any importance. In fact, most religions are not interested in deep thinking; only in following their vague ideas of worshipping a vague god. The only reason to think about God is to bring different results into your life. The ideas you have about God only make a difference if you use those ideas to see things differently and to alter your thinking. Do the ideas most people have about God make this a better world? Are any of us using our knowledge to improve ourselves, or to make positive differences in the world, or just to judge our brothers and sisters in an attempt to shame them into compliance with our own twisted beliefs? Do you think most people really know anything about God? Do you think it's possible that there is anything you could know about God that you don't now know that could make a difference in the quality of your life? Do you think God wants any suffering from you?

So, after everything I've said, and all of those questions I've asked, is it even possible to believe in a worldly context that makes sense or that makes God seem like a cool Guy? Does it seem possible to accept a God of unconditional love, who wants no sacrifices from you, and no pain or suffering? I wouldn't have written all of this if I didn't have something good to end with. A Course in Miracles is the only book I have ever found that explains life on earth in a beautiful, life-changing way that happens to include a perfect explanation of suffering and death that also happens to include a God of unconditional love. It turns out He's not a psychopath after all! The Course calls you to action, for reading is not enough. It is based on a workbook that will slowly help you break down your preconceived notions of life and help you to transform yourself into something much more wonderful and profound than you even thought possible, even if you are already on a spiritual path. The hundreds of pages of text merely explain the workbook and, in so doing, set life on its ear.

A Course in Miracles is not another book; it is a merely an accurate description of life on earth and beyond, as well as a description of a God that lives up to everyone's best and wildest dreams. It requires us to jump over some daunting mental hurdles, hurdles that we ourselves have put in place, but we will jump them whether we read the Course or not. It's simply a matter of when. Why not now? Get it over with, for God's sake!