Most people base their beliefs about God on history. A history is a collection of stories, or “his story.”   Our history of God has been passed down for many thousands of years. Our parents had these ideas about God. Their parents had them. And so did countless generations that came before. These same ideas about God are taught today by respected, knowledgeable and inspired religious leaders.  If you go to a place of worship, it is highly likely that you will hear the same God story or a similar variation of the God theme. If you happen to listen to God programs on the TV or radio, this common God story is the message that is most likely to be relayed. Many politicians hold these beliefs. So do celebrities.  So do people who have achieved extraordinary success in life. So do our friends and neighbors.  Everyone in our part of the universe, it seems, believes the stories that we have been taught about God. 

With such overwhelming agreement, it simply does not occur to us to question the validity of the thought system upon which we base our lives and our deaths. Most of us take the path of least resistance. We embrace the ideas that have been passed down to us and walk the same path that millions have walked before us. But now you are being asked to consider a different perspective and a different, less worn path–a new way of thinking that might enable you to make another decision about the nature of the world and your role in it.

We use the name “God” to symbolize the Source of all Life. The idea that we come from this most radiant, divine, holy Source is not new or controversial or questionable. What’s new and totally radical is the idea that we are not with Him, at this very moment, because we do not choose to be with Him.  For most of us, this is a tremendously different and revolutionary way of thinking. We have been taught that we are not with God because He made a punitive choice against us. But what if it’s the other way around? What if we willfully made the choice to reject God, to separate from Him, and to forget Him as much as humanly possible.

Traditional Judeo-Christian theology teaches that God expelled us from the Garden of Eden where life was perfect because we were disobedient, wayward children who did something bad we weren’t supposed to do. The basic idea is that God put us here on earth as a kind of time out place for our punishment. We are here to experience pain and suffering until we come to our senses, confess or atone for our badness, and die. At the moment of our death, we are also taught that God judges us and our earthly performance. If our performance is good enough, we are allowed to reunite with Him and with the other do-gooders in heaven, where we have eternal love and life. And if we’re not good enough, we’re doomed to a life of eternal banishment, pain, and suffering in hell along with other hell-raisers. 

An updated interpretation, using A Course In Miracles as a reference point, teaches that separation from God is rooted in the power of our own decision. Likewise, our reunion with God will also come about through the power of our own decision. A decision is important and powerful because it always produces a result.  This is how the basic law of cause and effect operates, and we are not exempt from it. Our decision to separate from God is the cause, and our experience of separation from Him here on earth is the effect. The result will stay in effect until we change our minds and make another powerful choice. The whole purpose of A Course In Miracles is to give the reader the motivation and the tools for making another choice. We are here, on this planet, at this time, under these circumstances, because we have not yet made the decision to return to God. 

Still, there is a mystery. Why would we choose to be here and not to be in heaven? Why would we choose to be apart from God, the Source of all love? It’s the very same reason that we don’t want heaven or God right this moment. At the very least, Heaven is perceived as quiet, dull, devoid of fun.   And at the worst, it’s perceived as a total sacrifice of everything we want and hold dear. Why would we choose heaven, when everything we want is right here on earth? Our families and our friends and our houses and our jobs are here. Who wants to be without them? Our bank accounts, our TVs, our malls, our natural wonders and our endless pursuit of entertainment is here. Who wants to be without these excitements and distractions? For most of us the idea of not being on earth is frightening and unappealing. We do not want to experience life in any other way. And so we actively resist the idea that any other way of life is possible. We resist the idea that life with God is enjoyable, valuable, or rewarding. 

But there’s still another reason, a darker one. We chose to separate from God because we want the experience of special attention. The story about Adam and Eve is frequently interpreted as a story about the quest for carnal or sexual knowledge that God did not want us to have. It can also be viewed in another way, as a story about the quest for special attention. We chose and continue to choose to separate from God and from each other because we want the experience of special attention. We want special love, special treatment, special care, special support, special consideration, special pleasure, special sympathy, special status. We want adoration. We want to be idolized. We want to be valued. We want to be needed. We want to be respected and important. This is the very heart of our darkness.

God’s love, of course, is not special. God’s love is perfectly ordinary, perfectly available, and perfectly equal for all his creations. But our love for each other, or at least what we call love, is highly specific and apportioned to certain people who meet certain conditions. This specificity is a limit on love and is therefore a love unlike God’s. God’s love is formless and available to all. Our love is highly dependent on specific forms and is only available to a select few. Typically, the forms that most commonly receive our special love attention are spouses, significant others, lovers, children, parents, best friends. But don’t panic. You are not being asked to give up or sacrifice your special relationships in any way.  You are simply being asked to look at them in a new light.   

Special attention can only be possible if we are different and unique from one another. Everyone believes they are one-of-a-kind, never to be replaced or replicated.  No two in the whole wide world are quite the same. No one who came before was ever the same.  No one who comes in the future will be the same either. We are taught and firmly believe that everyone has something special and unique to offer the world. We are universally encouraged to discover this specialness, and to develop and express it. You may have heard the phrase “nature abhors sameness.”  What we’re really saying is that nature, or another code name for our creator, has mandated we be different from each other and that we celebrate and exploit that difference. We all believe this is true, and never question it. Nature, of course, continually affirms and demonstrates this point to us. No two fingerprints are exactly alike.  No two DNA prints are exactly alike. Not even identical twins are exactly alike. Each snowflake is different. Each water drop is different. Each grain of sand is different. Physical form makes differences possible.  

The entire concept of form and formlessness is critically important for our new understanding of God.  We have chosen physical form so that we can be special, apart and different from one another. But God is formless. How do we know God is formless? Because God is completely invisible to our human senses. Look around. Do you see God? No, you only see God indirectly through life forms. We can discern God’s presence, but we cannot see Him. He is in us and each other. We know He is in us and in each other, because there’s a difference between a human corpse, which is only physical form, and an alive human being, which is physical form plus a mysterious Life-force energy. If you could take a living human body and study it or cut it open, you would not be able to identify the condition or thing that makes it alive or divine. You could see the signs of life – the heart beating, breath coming through the mouth or nose, movements of all kinds – but you could not see the Life-force itself. The Life-force is formless. And this is how we know, without any doubt or hesitation, that God is formless. 

Obviously, the tangible quality of physical form makes it seem very real and very true. It does not require any faith or great intelligence to believe in a form. Our earthly world of humans, plants, animals, mountains, buildings and things does not require faith. Seeing is believing. And seeing is enough for most people. Our money says In God We Trust. But to be more accurate, it should really say in form we trust. Faith is needed to believe there is another world beyond the form, a formless world that can’t be perceived without a higher level of awareness. This formless world is heaven. Belief in formlessness to bring about joy or to solve a problem is a leap of faith because you are believing in something that can’t be perceived through the senses. You are believing that there’s something going on behind the scene. You are believing in an invisible power. This is God’s realm. 

Everything that comes from God’s world is formless. Peace is formless. Love is formless. Joy is formless. Learning about miracles is formless. Guidance from within is formless. Changing your mind is formless. Connection to God is formless. And everything that comes from our earthly world is linked to form. Can you see the difference between form and formlessness? And can you begin to see how form gets in the way of spiritual progress? We all want the form. We don’t want what’s formless. To move forward dramatically, you must decide, willingly and all on your own, to change your mind about what you want. You must want to develop your spiritual vision and see behind and beyond form to a higher level of perception and awareness. Big Heart uses the term spiritual awakening to describe the process of developing spiritual vision, which is the willingness to see beyond form, and spiritual growth to describe the expansion of human perception to the highest level possible. 

Spiritual awakening begins with the recognition that there’s an invisible, benevolent, perfect power that’s in us and constantly available to us. We all have tiny glimpses of this loving power, brief moments here and there when we recognize our own inner spark. Big Heart uses the term Christ as a name for this invisible divine power. Spiritual growth comes from the deliberate willingness to accept our Christ self, from the intentional extension of Christ self to others, and from the unshakeable reliance on Christ self to correct mistakes and to solve problems. 

Many people routinely deny any conscious awareness of their divine Christ power. While this lack of awareness does not negate the power in any way, it does dramatically inhibit its expression. This also greatly diminishes enjoyment of life and creates confusion about life purpose. All anger, all unhappiness, all feelings of low self-esteem come from the belief that we’re limited, powerless, victims of circumstance. Inner peace, happiness and other good feelings are an automatic by-product of rediscovering your own inherent Christ power. Nobody gives you Christ power. Nobody gives you perfection or divinity, either. They’re already yours. These characteristics are dormant until you recognize them and use them. They exist only as potential until you make them real in your own mind through first-hand personal experience. 

Remembering our Christ truth is a choice, a decision. Expressing and extending our Christ truth is a decision. When we make the decision to remember our radiant truth in every thought, every word, and every gesture, we are in heaven. We don’t get to heaven by the earthly experience of dying. Rather, we get to heaven when we recognize that we’re already in it. When we realize, through our own deliberate mindful choices, that there’s no difference between heaven and earth. No separation whatsoever.  If you remember you are Christ, what difference does it make where you are? If you act with full Christ-conscious awareness, place becomes irrelevant and arbitrary. Everything on your spiritual path ultimately leads to awareness of your Christ self, and everything on your earthly path blocks it. 

The biggest earthly block is the perception that the continual sustained choice for Christ-conscious awareness is too hard or even impossible. This is why it’s immensely useful to approach the development of conscious awareness as a life skill that can be practiced and learned rather than as a huge, difficult goal to be surmounted. We are beginners, not trained Olympic athletes. Therefore, we need to learn a simple, doable, practical beginner step. Start by taking one baby step and then another and then another. Maybe you will always take baby steps. Maybe you will sometimes take a giant step. The size of the step doesn’t matter. What matters is your willingness to take the first step and to continue taking more steps despite every obstacle the world puts in your way. 

Here’s the simple beginner step. Suspend judgment for an instant. In that instant accept life fully, no matter how distressing it appears. An instant of non-judgment cannot be perceived as too hard, too complex, too demanding for anyone. Whenever you suspend judgment you filter out or disengage your ego and allow your Christ-awareness to come through. Can you think the highest thought for an instant? Can you see through the eyes of love for an instant? Can you let your inner light shine for an instant? Of course you can. These are not difficult requests. The $64,000 question is whether or not you’re willing to do it.

The Course calls this moment of non-judgment a holy instant. The instant is holy because we are accepting rather than rejecting the moment of life that is experienced “now”. The choice for love is the choice to accept and join. It is not a physical joining. The joining happens in your mind. The choice for hate is to reject and separate. Hate is the “gap” in our minds that keeps us apart from God and from each other. Every time we make the decision to join we are reinforcing and strengthening our decision to return to God. Every time we make the decision to reject we are reinforcing and strengthening our separation from God. The practice of one holy instant of awareness after another holy instant of awareness enables us to join with the Christ in each other and with God. Joining is the process for undoing the separation and for going home. How often will you practice a simple holy instant of suspended judgment? How long will you hold a simple holy instant? These are the decisions that are left to you.

Do not be daunted by the perception that this is a huge leap of awareness. Yes, it takes great intention and willingness. Yes, some people may think it’s hard. And maybe it is. But then again, maybe it isn’t. It’s not as hard, for example, as being miserable for your entire life. It’s not as hard as thinking you’re unlovable or of no value. It’s not as hard as feeling alone and separate from others.  It’s not as hard as feeling anxious and afraid all the time.  It’s not as hard as being tormented by hate in your heart and mind. Yes, there is an effort. But it is effort without sacrifice. The only things you’re asked to consider giving up are the things you don’t really want to think, the things you don’t really want to say, the things you don’t really want to do. Everything else is yours to keep, forever and ever.

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This article is excerpted from Ten Radiant Ideas, Awaken Your Passion for Living Consciously by Karen Anne Bentley. This book can be ordered by calling 800-247-6553.  For more information about the author, other books, and seminars go to www.big-heart.com.