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NOTE: Saturday is Prose & Poetry Day here on the blog, a time to take a moment once a week to relax the mind, open the heart, and access the soul through the gift of prose from one of the many books of The New Spirituality, and through the poetry of m. Claire, author of the forthcoming volume, Openings & Deepenings.
This week’s prose…the fourth in a series of excerpts from Happier Than God.

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Not needing God is not the same as not having any use for God.
I want to say that twice because it’s too important to be glossed over. I said, not needing God is not the same as not having any use for God.

In fact, it is precisely because we have an extraordinary use for God that we have no need for God.
How can we “need” something that we always have, that we cannot not have under any circumstances, that we can always use, and that we cannot not use no matter how we might deny that we are?
You cannot not have God in your life, as part of your life, and this is something that many people cannot believe. They can’t believe the highest promise of God: I am always with you, even unto the end of time.
You cannot not use God, even if you deny that you are, and this is something else that many people cannot believe. They can’t accept the most wonderful truth taught by all religions, each in their own way:
Ask and you shall receive.
Because people can’t accept this truth, they completely and utterly misunderstand the formula by which they can create what they wish to experience in their lives.
I call this formula the Process of Personal Creation—what some people call the “Law of Attraction”—and it does not render God obsolete, but exactly the opposite. It makes our experience of God more present, more relevant, and more real than ever.
All great truths begin as blasphemies.
George Bernard Shaw famously said that, and he was right. His observation explains why so many great truths must be very gently introduced, with voices soft and the truths themselves understated.
Yet there comes a time when they can’t be understated any longer. They bubble up to life’s surface and burst forth in all their glory. These are times of great moment for humanity, for it is through such bursting forth of great truth that our species evolves.
Take the idea that you can be happier than God.
What a thought! What a concept! It’s revolutionary! So a lot of people have been resisting it. For years they’ve been pushing against it, denying it, even making it “wrong.”
Yes, people—and, ironically, religions—have been making it wrong to be even a little happy, much less happier than God. (Well, maybe they haven’t made it wrong to be happy, they’ve just made it wrong to do most of the things that make you happy.)
Many people believe that life was meant to have a lot of pain in it. Suffering should be “offered up” to God. It should be endured in silence. That earns you points in heaven.
Our culture has so completely adopted this idea that some people don’t want to be happy all the time. When you talk about how you can be “happier than God” they become fidgety, uncomfortable. They warn that you’re being “unrealistic.” You may even be “trafficking with the devil.”
They will tell you that life was meant to be unhappy. Life is a trial. It’s a school. “No pain, no gain,” and all that. People in large numbers believe this. When you say to them that life was never meant to be unhappy, that no one has to be unhappy ever, they look at you cross-eyed.
They don’t know what to do with that. They don’t know where to go with it. Often, they’ll tell you where to go with it…
Yes, this is blasphemy, this idea that you can be happier than God. Yet it’s true. It is not too good to be true, it is too good not to be true.
The Good News is that you do not have to go through hell to get to heaven.
Did you hear that? Let that be shouted from every rooftop! Let that be heard from every pulpit and lectern. Let the word go forth from this time and place: Happiness is your natural state of being, and you can occupy that space all of the time. You never have to be unhappy again.
This does not mean that you’ll never be sad again, but sadness and unhappiness are not the same thing. We’re going to explore that here, as we look deeply at how you can be happy all the time.
Am I happy all the time? No. I’d by lying if I said I was. Am I happy more of the time than ever before? Yes. Is this starting to feel like most of the time? Yes. Do I really think I can be happy all of the time? Yes.
And you can be, too. You can be happier than God.
None of this involves materialism, or “me-first-ism.” In fact, the formula doesn’t work that way.
The formula does allow you to create anything and everything you want, and I know that sounds like materialism, but once you know the whole formula, once you hear the Unspoken Truth in full, you’ll be very clear.
So let’s start with a basic truth, and then we’ll get to the truth behind the truth…more of that Unspoken Truth.
The basic truth was given to you in the first six words of this book.
Life was meant to be happy.
(This series of excerpts from Happier Than God continues in this space next Saturday. The book is scheduled for release March 1 and may be pre-ordered at www.Amazon.com)
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This week’s gift of poetry
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You
understand my need
for Beauty.
Why it might be only Your eyes
or a rose
that I need
– though a rose has been written of
through many histories of a Love –
it doesn’t pale,
or dim
the light
for a Seeker,
who’s only purpose
is
to See.
(Need for Beauty – m. claire – copyright 2007 – all rights reserved)
For more of the work of this new poetic voice you are invited to www.mclairepoet.com.