Montaigne said that to be a successful liar the number one qualification is a superb memory. A successful liar needs not only to keep the facts straight, but also to keep straight all his various and contradictory versions of the facts. It's a big job.

The Truth is simple. But our approach to the Truth is dreadfully complicated because we make it complicated. Certainly, our theologians have proven this. To keep straight the dogmas, doctrines and regulations of a single religion requires entire libraries tended by devotees of the faith. It's a lot of work.

The Truth is simply this:

...There is an infinite Presence that creates your life as a mirror to your beliefs by a Law of its own nature.

That's it. That's all you'll ever need to know about your relationship with God. If it sounds like a shallow platitude to you, then you need to keep working. It's not a platitude, it's a vision of a perfect universe wherein the wise person's life is a progression from glory to glory.

We're all liars. We look at our present circumstances - our homes, our jobs, our bodies, our personalities, our likes and dislikes, our friends and relatives, our cherished assumptions - and we tell ourselves, "This is real. This is what it's all about. This is who I am."

It's a damn lie. We live in a universe where every world is contained within larger worlds. Just when you think you've got it all sorted out, you know where you're at, there comes the disturbing suspicion that just beyond the walls of your little world is a larger world with a place in it for you. And beyond that another and another and another.

To live in such a universe and not be curious is the worst kind of ingratitude. To be given everything that Spirit has to give and then refuse to accept more than the tiniest piece of it is worse than self-destructive; it's an insult to the Creator.

God is infinite. It has no boundaries. It never ends. God goes on forever. There will always be more for us to learn about God. No matter how highly evolved we become in whatever future life, we will never know everything about this Infinite Being. So, the next time some guy tells you that his 2,000-year-old religion is the last word on God, tell him he's a liar.

I'm a liar. The ideas in this book are only a piece of the Truth. If you want to throw it in the trash, go ahead. That's what's going to happen to all the copies of it eventually anyway. Any spiritual writer worth his pen knows that his work will ultimately be forgotten. There are no immortal classics of Truth. Sooner or later, another teacher must come along with a clearer vision, with a higher expression, and wipe out all memory of previous teachers. That's the way it is.

A human being "searching" for God is like a bird who's heard of some life-giving essence called air and is flying around trying to find it. We learn what God is like not by locating It but by living in It. When we learn the first lesson of spiritual study - the Infinite responds to us through the events in our lives and the condition of our bodies - we soon cease to complain that God is silent, aloof and hard to find. On the contrary, we begin to wish that God would shut up once in a while, leave us alone and call off the damn dogs.

It is not enough for you to believe. You must know. As far as your spirituality is concerned, you can't know something by reading it in a book or by hearing about it from some august personage. You can only know it by experiencing it. To grow in Spirit, we don't need to go off to a forest glade with a book. We need to roll up our sleeves and get to work.

There are three components to any program for spiritual growth. The first - the one most people leave out - is skepticism and rigorous questioning. The second is listening; you listen to the Infinite, bathe in It's radiance, let It inspire you with It's serenity, let It fill you with It's light and wisdom. The third is practical application: ya gotta do it. Please don't attempt a spiritual growth regimen without all three of these. If you leave one of them out, you risk becoming . . . well, a real moron.

The concepts and techniques in this book explain the mechanism of God, but they barely touch on the love of God, the warmth of God, the infinite friendliness of God, the joy It takes in It's own Being. Now you want know, "How does it work?" But some day you'll know how it works and you'll still want to know more. You will bridge the transition from making to being.

A word of caution: too many people try to get into the love-and-joy stuff without first doing the work that leads you to the love of God and the joy of God. They want dessert served first. They don't want to eat their greens.

They'll never get away with it.

Just do your work and enjoy it. The delight of God will find you when you're ready for it.

Isn't that interesting?

Gregory Flood, a New Thought practitioner, presents dynamic and thought-provoking seminars in major cities nationwide, and for three years served as the director of the Spiritual Science Foundation in Seattle, Washington. He is the author of The Liar's Prayer, from which the above is excerpted. Letters to the author may be addressed to Greg Flood, c/o Brob House Books, 305 Bellevue Ave., E, #100, Seattle, WA 98102.

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