We take up the work of doing better by looking around. If this is the best God can do, God should be ashamed. And if this is not the best God can do, God should be ashamed. Or, letting the way things are work their magic on us, it could be that we have a twisted view of God. Maybe God isn’t who we have always heard it said that God is. You know, Omni-everything, Almighty, All Glorious, etc.
Think of God is that which is with us, within us, as The Will To Good—as that which needs our collaboration and cooperation in bringing The Good forth into physical existence. Think of God as that which needs physical help in actualizing The Good within the sphere of space and time—not from the standpoint of implementing commandments, and laws, and eternal standards of righteousness, but from the standpoint of having the freedom to do what needs to be done in each situation as it arises.
Jacob Bronowski said, “If you want to know the truth, you have to live in certain ways.” He meant we have to live truthful lives. The same thing applies to knowing God: If we want to know God, we have to live in certain ways. Specifically, we have to live a godly life—a life that incarnates, expresses, exhibits and brings God forth in the world of normal, apparent, reality—in each situation as it arises.
In order to know God, we have to BE God. In order to be God, we have to be who we are.
As we live in this way—serving the good as it needs to be expressed in each situation as it arises, out of the gifts, art, genius that are ours to bring forth in our life, we are aligning ourselves, not only with The Will To Good, but also with our own secret life—the life that is hidden from even us until we actualize it by living it out in the world. As we bring God forth, we bring ourselves forth. As we bring ourselves forth, we bring God forth. In this comes true for all of us: “The Father and I are one,” and, “If you have seen me, you have seen the Father.”
It has long been held that we accumulate merit, and receive heaven as a reward for our diligence, by cultivating virtue. Integrity has no use of either merit or virtue. When we live to integrate ourselves with ourselves and with that which has always been thought of as God, we have no need of anything on earth or in heaven. When “The Father and I are one,” what else is there to have, or want, or need, or aspire to?
Jim Dollar's Published Works 