This book, if you have not noticed it yet, is non-religious, non-dual, non-everything. We do not pretend here to be teaching any kind of a particular teaching, in fact we are not really doing anything in particular or anything of importance. Why? Because it gives us a carde-blanche to do pretty much everything.

For instance, I am now going to ask you to pretend to be God. Please take this pretending at least a little bit seriously. In order to do this, you do not need to believe in any kind of a particular God, in fact it might be even better if you do not believe in God, for then you are less biased by your existing beliefs and images that might be in your sub-conciousness.

Now, enough small-talk. From this moment on, I grant you the temporary ability to imagine that you are indeed a God. You are a being of infinite power, infinite love, and infinite… well infinite everything. In short - you can do anything.

So, there you are, sitting/standing/flying/existing and non-existing in your [Please imagine a place that your kind of God would hang out in]. Suddenly, you decide that being a God is nice and all with the whole infinite life thing. However, just to make things a bit easier, you decide to play a game. This game is called: “Can I make myself truly happy?”

Does not seem so hard, does it? The only issue is, since you are a God, you have already tried everything imaginable, and after billions upon billions of non-time years, you are kind-of blissed out beyond belief already. You are now kind of used to this state of being, and you have nothing to compare it to. Therefore, as a result you are not really sure if you are indeed happy or not, because you have no point of reference. Technically you are sure and you know exactly what is going on (This has something to do with the fact that you are God, and it is really hard for you to trick yourself), but you are making yourself not sure, in order to experiencce this joy of discovering happiness, or perhaps more aptly called “love”, all over again.

There you are, an all-encompassing being (if it is okay to call you a being, as you are technically all beings imaginabel), who wants to actually experience love and joy for the first time, but can’t because he/she/it/them/they are already experiencing it for eternity. What would you do?

Think about it. Before I tell you what I would do, before you are deprived of your own creativity, and have to endure mine. Give it a good five minutes, perhaps even close your eyes. Yes, really, do it. The book can wait, it is probably not going to go anywhere.

[This is a placeholder space, so you get the idea and actually try to imagine yourself as God]

[I decided to insert some more text, for those too stubborn to actually do a simple exercise that might help them understand something profound in their lives, I mean - why listen to some non-guru, non-nothing guy who asks you to do very weird things, am I right?]

[This is the third place-holder text merely because someone said that in writing beautiful texts, people like when things come in threes. So there you have it. Hope you have by now returned from your short five minute journey.]

Now, you may have come up with something much more creative than what is about to ensue, but when I did this exercise [in all honesty, I never did this exercise, the whole thing just came to me after I tried meditating shortly after making love to my wife, and discovering what enlightenment might be, but definitely not achieving it, but that is a story for another chapter. Not the sex part. The enlightenment part.], the first creative idea was - I must forget myself, the whole God thing, and in order to give myself a chance to experience this ultimate joy & love, I will use an old trick - contrast.

If one wants to make something stand out, we use contrast. To see a black dot really well, it seems logical to use a white piece of paper as a background. So, if you want to experience ultimate love, ultimate joy, ultimate freedom - what is the best background against which to experience it?

Thinking time. Thinking time. Thinking time. At this moment, I am not talking about something bad, or evil, or dark, as we did not even create a universe yet. What I am talking about is ‘The Great Nothing’, you might think of it as death, but I think ‘The Great Nothing’ is a little more accurate, because we have all experienced it before we were born, and not all of us have experienced death.

‘The Great Nothing’ is basically our blank, white canvas, against which we want to create a drawing that will make us experience joy, bliss, love. So, dear God, what would you draw?

First, you might try to create something infinitely beautiful. Hmmm. How about an infinitely beautiful creation that has pretty much all beauty in it? Something that starts on one end and never finishes, stretching into infinity, that has pretty much everyhing somewhere along the way. All kinds of shapes, colors, materials, patterns, every beautiful thing ever imaginable. You snap your fingers. Done. This creation might resemble something akin to our universe - with all its stars and shapes, and everything.

Okay, great. We have a pretty ‘everything’, that has all the beauty in the universe in it. The ultimate painting. The ultimate creation. Happy? Experiencing joy yet? Probably not, right? There is no entity, no being that can actually experience this joy. Forgot that part. Okay, let’s code that in.

In order to feel the joy, the beauty, the love, you need something or someone who will actually do the feeling. So, as God, you decide to render a few of those entities. It can be any kind of entity, but because we are playing a game of imagination, let’s imagine you decided that a tall body with a few arms and legs would do the trick. Basically, a human.

Man, it is taking a while to get to the whole greatfulness thing, but we are getting there. Just a little longer. (This was not a note to you, dear reader, but to myself, as I am righting this at 04:02 AM and my body seems to remind me that although I can imagine myself being a God, I have not yet learned how to disable the sleep functionality of my body).

Okay, back to the whole human thing we created. This thing can feel things, so the only thing remains is to make it feel some joy. Easy, right?

You put it in the middle of some flowers, a beautiful meadow, showcase a falling star that gets reflected in a serene lake. Everything is perfect. Joy is… not really there though. What? Why? A bug? A miscalculation? Not really, you just remembered that you wanted to feel the ultimate joy, not just some mediocre, tiny joy. To do that, we need even more contrast, so the being can feel more. You decide to create duality, a smart feature.

If you can make the being also, not-feel joy at first, and then arrive at joy - then you will have it just the way you want it. So, you introduce some difficulties into the equation, but not too much - you are an all-loving God, afterall. Just enough for joy to stand out against the background, no real complicated mother-bein-full-of-trauma-that-she-tries-to-get-out-of-by-thinking-you-are-the-solution childhood trauma thing. No, that you will have to come up with later. For now - just a boring birth, boring life, everything mediocre. No real magic.

Then, the big reveal. Enter the ultimate perfection. The lake, the star, the reflection. Here comes the joy. You feel it, for you are the being in this scenario and you forgot you were God. Right, forgot to mention that basically as God, you pre-planned everything, then you coded in the ‘forget God memory function’ and you basically launch yourself into the scenario.

The human kind of likes it, feels nice. But then he thinks to himself: “Great start, but it was a bit cold outside.”

Disappointing. You re-do the whole thing, and add some heat.

“The angle of the falling star is not ideal, and maybe it will hit me.”

No joy. Try again. Less scary falling-star angle this time.

“The star is amazing, the temperature outside is great. But why am I looking at all this alone? What if there was another me, but prettier and who would hug me while I was looking at the star?”

You give them that too. Unfortunately it does not help. So, you keep going for a long time, until you realize that since you wanted to experience the ultimate love, you created a system where it would not be that simple. The greater the challenge, the greater the reward, right? So, you try again, but nothing seems to work.

It is a little confusing for you, as you think that you have given it pretty much everything - you know, an actual existence instead of “The Great Nothing”, a universe to experience joy in, a complete planetary system that does not kill it immediately, oxygen (Not an easy design feature, trust me), all the atoms and quarks and other things that make the whole thing work, and of course all the other things such as fruits and plants, animals, water. You gave it fresh air, and a body, and all the rest of it. But it keeps wanting more. No matter how much beauty you give it, it says to you “No joy. Give me more.”

So, you comply and give it more joy. You come up with ‘kids’ so it also can feel itself as a creator, you give it art, and dance, and sound, and singing. You give it everything you can possibly think of. What does it say to you: “No joy. I want more.”

No matter how much you give it. It seems to want more. Not even a simple “Thanks, I never would have existed, and never would have had anything that I now experience, if it weren’t for you.” Instead - “No joy. Give me more.”

Now, dear reader who is imagining themselves as God, you have put yourself into this mess. What are you going to do about it?

One way to solve it is - “The Path Of Contrast & Pain”. To show the beauty of its existence, perhaps you can give your human the experience of pain, disease, suffering, loss, so that when you do bring this being out into a beautiful meadow - where it is finally all perfect - it will cry from joy and perhaps even thank you for it.

Another way to solve it - “The Path Of Beauty & Love”. More love, more birds singing, more Burning Man, more sex, more success, more luck, more sponteneuity, more travel, more discoveries. Perhaps even a “More, More, More” song will exist in your version of this universe.

Here you are. In front of a stubborn human being and you have two paths of how to help it find the ultimate joy. One path - more love. Another path - more pain. Both with a pretty decent end-goal in mind. You can choose either, and of course most of you would love to choose love, right.

But before you do, imagine that this human being in front of you can be one of two kinds.

The first kind is the ‘complainer’. No matter how much beauty you throw at them, they do not notice it, and complain about somethign or other not being just perect enough. You give them a new job, they complain they might lose it. You give them a chance to move to a new country that will lead them to become extremely succesful, they don’t go because they are afraid to fly. You give them a sunset, they complain about the temperature outside. They always want more of you and make you feel like you are not enough, that even God almighty can’t make them happy.

The second kind is the ‘greatful one’. This one, always thanks you. Whatever you give it, it says ‘oh wow, isn’t this beautiful? Thank you universe for bringing this into my life’. They are happy that a tiny flower started growing in their garden. They are greatful that they have a roof over their head, no matter how bad the roof is. They are happy that the sun rises in the morning. They are happy that you gave them tomatoes. They are always thanking you for everything that you do.

Now, dear God, if you are honest, which method of solving the ‘love and joy’ problem would you choose for our two candidates? “The Path Of Contrast & Pain” or “The Path Of Beauty & Love”.

Being Greatful Is A Bliss In And Of Itself