TABLE OF CONTENTS:

Introduction - page 7

Chapter 1 - purpose, what you need, doing, the Bible, simplicity, the impossible - page 13

Chapter 2 - importance, busy-ness, life span, value, uncertainty, certainty, money, the lottery, wanting -page 24

Chapter 3 - being God, being a person, appearance, humor and pleasure, flow, alternatives, on target - page 34

Chapter 4 - time, future, past, good/bad, mock certainty, pick-a-hand game, hard work, job, Balancers - page 45

Chapter 5 - death, immortality, health, disease, perspective, cause and effect, seriousness, amusement - page 56

Chapter 6 - painting, doing and saying, sit down, illusion, free choice, perspective, freedom - page 68

Chapter 7 - authority, good/bad, truth, selfishness, grades, value, change, quality, celebration, smile, inaction - page 79

Chapter 8 - meaning, fear, holding on/letting go, practice, threats, marraige, sex, emotions, importance - page 91

Chapter 9 - distance, perspective, reality, creativity, possibility, value, serious, limitations, thinking, thought - page 104

Chapter 10 - fun, theroy and practice, the mind, celebration, more time, evaluation, speed, social security - page 113

Chapter 11 - boxes, leaving, bologna, mother nature, end, story, religious or spiritual words, parting - page 129

End Note - page 134

Epilogue - page 135

 

 

Introduction

Imagine that you are sitting across from God.  You are very much alive and have the opportunity to ask five questions.  What would you ask?  Rather than interacting with this scenario as if it were theoretical, pretend that it is real—and let the revelations begin!

Laughing with God is quick and easy reading.  It is a dialogue that can be read in an evening and re-read many times.  The book is both simple and truthful.  In conversation, flexibility and the importance of amusement and playfulness is valued over the seriousness which is currently robbing us of thoroughly wonderful lives.  The dialogue is between two characters, a person and God, who explore the human condition together.  God is representative of the inspired bliss that exists in all of us.  The person takes on the role of being truly ignorant, sometimes embarrassing, always sincere and continually willing to learn.

While the author has a background in psychology, philosophy, neuro-linguistic programming and sales, he does not claim to be God or know God’s response to your questions.  His research for this book revealed a fascinating discovery:  The precise questions you would ask God (if you found yourself in His or Her presence) uncovers a story about you, reveals problems and unlocks the door to a life filled with childlike simplicity, warmth, ease and curiosity.  Many people have reported that the process of thinking of their five questions for God was a revelation in itself.  Laughing with God explores possible answers to many commonly-asked questions.  What are your five questions for God?  The answers to them may be waiting for you in this book.

What would like be like if you could celebrate and delight in waking, breathing, moving and thinking?  How would like be if you could celebrate everything?

 

At thirteen I bought a puzzle ring for $8.00 which, at the time, seemed like a lot of money to me.  Upon its purchase, the puzzle was solved and the ring was intact.  In the inevitable event that I should take the ring apart, the manufacturers included an index card with instructions on how to solve the puzzle and put the ring back together.  After several days I took the ring apart.  With the confidence of a person who has the right instructions, I started to put the ring back together.  After several frustrating, puzzling hours, my ring still did not resemble a ring, and I was both angry and upset.  I read the instructions over and over, but I just couldn’t solve the puzzle.  My $8.00 investment seemed like a big mistake.

At wits end, I showed the instructions and jumbled mess to a friend of mine.  To put it bluntly, this friend was not as smart as I was.  I had ample evidence to support this assertion, ranging from school grades to peer consensus.  My friend looked at the instructions and converted the jumbled silver mess into a ring in less than a minute.  He then taught me how to put the ring together by doing exactly what the instructions described.  His trick was simply to follow the instructions without adding anything to them.  Rather than following the instructions, I had attempted to figure them out and had made them much more complicated than they were.  Putting the ring together was a simple task made difficult only by adding my own complexity.

With practice, I was soon putting the ring together and taking it apart in less than a minute.  Learning to assemble the ring, I developed a newfound respect for my friend and his abilities in practical matters.

As you read this book, I suggest that you read it like my friend read the instructions to the ring.  Read the words without trying to figure them out.  Read the book without adding your own complexity.  This may not be easy because we have been taught that big questions require complex answers—they don’t.  There is nothing for you to figure out in this book and nothing for you to fill in.  Read the words that are here and notice the changes that happen in your body, mind and perspective.  Above all, enjoy reading it, and if the book gets complicated for you, go back to reading the words on the page and stop trying to figure them out.  Relax and read on.  Simply read the book and read the book simply.

A NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Imagine that you have an attic and it is a mess.  In it you have the dried out corsage from your first high school dance, a tea service from your first marriage, your best blanket preserved in plexiglass, a receipt for your first therapy session, S & H green stamp books, baseball cards and more.  Your attic as so full that you cannot ever seem to find anything you want, only what you stumble upon.  As a result, your attic is a stimulus that you must respond to.

Reorganizing things is not an option anymore.  There is too much stuff.  And you keep getting more.  You read a new self help book and more great ideas go into the attic.  People keep giving you opinions to store away.  Unless you start throwing things out or in some way get rid of them, you will become dangerously top heavy.

“Help, I’m stuck in my head and I can’t get out.”

Nobody is around to help; other peoples’ attics are all bulging too.  You do not have room for one more answer, solution, fad or thought.  Thinking clearly can’t happen under these circumstances; neither can being sane.

Reading Laughing with God as a release, a letting go.  It does not tell you what to think or how to think but offers you a philosophical spring cleaning with laughter along the way, a mental renaissance that can result from clearing out the theoretical debris and clutter that keeps you from having a practical and pleasing life.  If your life is predictable, consistent, or manageable, it is time to let go.

This book is not intended to give you some new philosophy you have to find room for and which will further clutter your life.  Nor is it intended to fit in with your current beliefs.  It is offered to you so that you can clean up your life and have more fun and energy in the process.  In the rough and tumble world of spiritual growth, there will be many false prophets, people who talk or write well but do not live quality lives, people who, like yourself, have sufficient clutter to choke their creativity and delight.  Read Laughing with God, free yourself, and have more fun philosophically and otherwise.

With peace, love, and light,

Jerry

 

Chapter One

 

Go blue and fair weather Chevrolet fender.

                What?

Tip ran to Jane’s fender.

                What does that mean?

How is chew?

                Do you mean, “How am I?”

Oui.  How am I?

                I don’t know how you are.  Who are you?

Sorry, I do not talk often, and each time I speak I have to learn the language.

                You just taught yourself English?

Yes, I used to speak Hebrew, but English is new to me.

                I wish I could learn that fast.

You do.

                I do?

Yes, the only thing that slows down your learning is when you have to compare what you are learning to what you already know.  I do not know anything.

                But I have to make sure things fit together.

Do not worry; everything fits.

                I wish I could believe you.

You already believe in me, but you do not believe me.  Try just believing me.

                But, who are you?

 

Moments before the birth of my daughter, I heard a distant rumbling laughter, sort of like thunder.  As I looked around for the source of the sound, I could see more clearly and think more clearly than ever before.  I relaxed, my wife relaxed and my daughter, Emily, left the womb, entering our world.

Emily was born on September 7, 1987—Labor Day.  At her birth I learned more about the beauty of life, love, caring and being human than I had ever known.  Like most humans, I was not really present at my own birth—at least the “I” that I define myself as today.  At my birth I was Earth—all life—all possibility.  I was complete and whole, beginning a journey and probably ending some other journey.  At Emily’s birth I was there watching and participating.  I was born myself.

My relationship with my wife rose to new heights during labor as I watched her surrender to the naturalness of childbirth, laughing and crying and melting into each other.  I cannot describe the feelings of watching Emily emerge, but I have relived the feelings and emotions many times.  The birth of my son, Judson, five years earlier provided me with the life-changing transition from man to father and altered my very being, which I have since discovered was only a beginning.  At Emily’s birth my curiosity and love for all human beings expanded into new terrain.

On Emily’s second day I heard the laugh again, only much closer.  It seemed to be coming from Emily.

But my story really begins when Emily was three days old and began speaking in complete sentences.  She wasn’t really talking.  It was the wisdom of the universe speaking with simplicity and accuracy beyond anything I imagined possible and me hearing it through her innocent presence.  This wisdom did not come from Emily’s mouth; its source was indistinguishable but could be heard in my ears with more resonating clarity than any sound I had heard before.  The voice was neither male nor female—high pitched or low.  For the sake of my story, I will call the voice God.  God spoke with a familiarity and a compassion.

Emily’s personality would develop later, and she would have no recollection of these dialogues.  Their effect on her is apparent to me, however, every time I look into her pure, trusting eyes and see her relaxed, easy and frequent smiles.  But I am getting ahead of myself.  Emily was three days old and asleep in her crib the evening that I first heard from God…

Is there anything you would like to know?

                Who are you?

I am your daughter and yet not your daughter.

                What do you mean by that?

I am speaking through your daughter, but I am not limited to her, nor is she limited to me.  Your daughter will develop her own unique personality as she grows and matures.  There is, however, a period here before her consciousness arrives where she and I are obviously one.  During this period, you and I will speak from time to time.  At some point your daughter will develop her own world and I will only speak through her being as I do with everyone else.

                I don’t quite understand.  Are you God?

Yes.

                And I can just talk with You about anything I wish?

Yes.  Is there anything you want?

                I don’t really want anything.

Nothing?

                Well, I do have a few questions that I would like answered.

What are your questions?

                Why are You talking to me?

Why not?  I do not talk to myself, so who else would I talk to?

                You could talk to really religious people or other species on other planets.

On Earth there is enough uncertainty and curiosity to make speech interesting and fun.  Earth is one of the noisiest places in the universe, linguistically.  You are what is called a new talking planet.

Like a young child who has just learned to speak, people on Earth incessantly talk.  They can talk about what is for dinner or what the weather will be for hours.  So, naturally, when on Earth, I speak.

                You haven’t answered my question.  Why are You speaking to me?

I am speaking to everyone.  This is not personal.  Have you got any other questions.

                What is the purpose of life?

That is for you to know and for you to find out.  What is the purpose of life?

                I don’t know—that is why I asked.

That is one of those questions that, if I were you, I would answer soon.  That way you would have some idea of what you are doing or even why you are doing it.  It is an important question and I suggest that you answer it often.

                Do You have any hints for me?

Yes.  I gave you everything you need to make up a purpose.  And, you already live with a purpose.  That purpose is evident and obvious in everything you do.  Look at yourself and your life.  These are some of the obvious results of your purpose.  Now determine whether or not you like the results.  If you do, keep the purpose, and if not, change it.

                My purpose doesn’t look obvious to me.

So your first purpose is to find out what your purpose is, and the second one is to determine whether you want that to be your purpose.  Are you having fun yet?

                Do you mean am I having fun in this conversation or am I having fun in my life?

What is the difference?

I get your point.  But it can’t really matter to You whether I am having fun.  I mean, is the Pope having fun?

Who?  It is accurate to say that I do not care if you are having fun, but you do care.  It seems that one of the things I constantly hear from people on Earth is that they want to have fun or that they want things to be better than they are.  Usually they call on me because they have come up with some new answer to what they need in order for life to be more fun and rewarding.  That is why I originally asked you what you wanted.  I keep getting requests from Earth for all kinds of things (a pony, a new car, tennis shoes) none of which I keep in inventory.  If you cannot be perfectly content with nothing, you obviously cannot be content with anything.  At birth, I gave you everything you need to be happy and to have a meaningful, rewarding life.  If you needed a new car or a new house, I would have given them to you at birth.  I did not, and nothing that you add after birth has any chance of succeeding in having your life be more important or rewarding.  The moment you focus on anything that you did not have at birth, you are buying the line that you are somehow incomplete and can be fulfilled from outside yourself.  This sort of approach is never going to work very well and may ultimately result in the end of your species.  What you had at birth is what you need, nothing more and nothing less.

                You mean I already have everything I need?

Yes.  Not only do you already have everything that you need—you always did.

                That is easy for You to say.

True.

                Do you mean I shouldn’t buy the new car I have been saving for?

No.  I never said that you shouldn’t buy it, but if you expect it to contribute to the quality of your life or if you expect things to get better when you get it, then you will end up being disappointed.  Personally, I don’t care if you buy the car.  It makes no difference to me.  If it makes a difference to you, then you are making something important that I do not make important, which puts you on shaky ground.

                You mean that I should make important the same things that You make important?

It would not hurt.  You could do worse than using me as a model.  If you doubt that, look around you.

                What do You make important?

That is something for you to discover.

That sounds like it could be an interesting purpose:  to find out what is important to God and then have those same things be important to me.

That makes sense to me, though I suspect you might make a big mistake in how you go about it.  People have continually attempted to determine what is important to me by looking through their eyes.  This process results in looking at the infinite in a short-sighted way.  When people do this, they do not see the infinite—they see a little of the infinite and think that part is all there is to infinity.  This sort of approach has allowed people to fight, kill and love in my name.  I do not take sides and never have; if it looks like I do, that is the part you add.  Since you will be looking at me with your eyes, you cannot see me, so you might just as well look at yourself.  After all, you are not some accident.  I gave you everything you need at birth, so all of your answers, questions and roots of satisfaction are within you.  Look at yourself and you will find me.

                Thanks for that.  Can I ask a different question?

Yes.

                What am I to do?

I cannot understand why you would do anything but go ahead if you want to.  I put you in paradise and thus far you have been expending mass quantities of effort attempting to improve on it.  You build cities, and then you have to build parks.  The whole Earth is a park with enough variation to be interesting and enough similarity to be familiar.  It amazes me that you think you can improve on my creation.  Good luck.  Remember that you had everything you needed at birth; everything else comes after birth.  People have made “afterbirth” into an industry, many industries.  There is nothing for you to do.

                But I have to do something; otherwise, what is the point in being alive?

Exactly, what is the point in being alive?

I didn’t ask the question for You to agree with me.  I was hoping that You would give me the answer.

I am always giving you the answer, but you do not hear it.  I cannot help but give you the answer even though I do not think it is a good idea to do so.  I am an open book, and the answer is right here anytime, all the time.

                Is the open book the Bible?

Sorry, I have not read it, so I am hardly qualified to discuss it.  I can, however, tell you I have never seen the same book interpreted so many different ways by so many different people.  I plan on reading it someday, but I am a little afraid of it.  People have used that little black book to justify so many things.

                You have not read the Bible?

That is right.  If you had observed a group of people turn paradise into a living Hell or a hollow shell, would you want to read the book most of those people were reading?  Isn’t it obvious that somewhere you are finding justification for the silliness you folks are so occupied with?  I suspect that when I read your Bible, I will discover that it does not really say anything or that it says everything and that either way it can be interpreted to mean anything.  It can result in the feeding of peasants one minute and the filling of them the next.  It never ceases to amaze me that people can think they know me, try to improve on my creation or ignore me altogether.  What you all miss is that on Earth everything you need to know is obvious.  Your surroundings and your appreciation ad respect for your surroundings indicate how you are doing and how you should live.  I arranged for you to populate Earth so that if you ever got confused within yourself, you could look outside yourself and observe your effect on others to know how you are doing.  I have not yet figured out how to make a simpler, more obvious place than Earth.  I did the best I could, but people do not get it.  Sometimes I wonder how many times you will stumble over the obvious before you see it.  You seem so intent on confusion.  The more time you have, the more complex you make things.  There is nothing particularly complicated on Earth.  Everything is as simple and clear as it could possibly be.

                You mean what we have here, life on Earth, is easy?

Yes.

I still don’t know what to do.  You said it was all right to buy a new car, but how should I raise my children?

I did not say it was all right to buy the new car.  I said that it does not matter.  It seems that even in your conversations with me you misinterpret what I have said.  The next thing you might do is say that God told you to buy a new car.  I did not tell you to buy it or not to buy it.  Buy it if you buy it, and do not if you do not.  That is part of the simplicity of Earth.  Have you ever noticed that you always do what you do and that you never do what you do not do?  Amazing, isn’t it?

As to your children, you might want to notice how I treat you since I am the father and mother and you are the son and daughter.  I watch you and learn from you.  Though I may occasionally experience infinite anxiety or wide-eyed disbelief as I watch you, I still trust you.  If you treat your children the same way, they will live and grow.  They will learn whatever you teach them, not by what say but by who you are.  Your children will either accept or reject who you are, but either way, they will respond to who you are.  And who you are will determine who they are.  It cannot be otherwise.  The only way you work on or with your children is by what you do with yourself.

                I am again not sure what to do with what You are saying.

I repeat: do nothing.

                I can’t do nothing.

I know.

                Then why would You ask me to do nothing?

I do not ask anything of you that you would not ask of yourself.  You ask the impossible of yourself every day, yet you are indignant when I ask the impossible of you.

                In what way do I ask the impossible of myself?

Each day you ask yourself to know what you do not know, to be where you are not and to have what you do not have.  Each day you ignore your limitations while arguing for them.  Each day you methodically forget who you are as you struggle to discover who you are.  You spend each day occupied in hope that things will work out sometime in the future.  I ask you, are all of these not sufficiently impossible?

                Well, when You put it that way, they sound familiar, but not very much fun.

I did not put it that way; you did.  They ought to sound familiar, and I am delighted to hear you say that they do not sound like fun.  Remember when I asked you if you were having fun?  Your answer could have been, “Compared to what?”  And my answer to that is, “Compared to infinite fun.”  You can have infinite fun while doing nothing.  If there were a Heaven, and there might be, it would be a place of infinite satisfaction with nothing to do and nowhere to get to.  It would be one nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all.  Do you know of such a place?

                I think so, but it doesn’t look so much like Heaven to me.

I know.  But it could, you know.

                I don’t see how.

Exactly.

                I do have a few ideas as to how You might be able to make my future a bit brighter.

I suspected that you did.  Write a book.  I am unwilling to hear one more set of wishes.  You have what you need, actually much more than what you need, and I am mildly curious as to where you will go from here.  You have my blessing and my love, but you do not yet have my sense of humor.  A sense of humor might be a good place for you to start.  One last hint:  the moment you can find inspiration and humor in both the littlest and the biggest things you can think of, you will also find them in everything in between.  When this happens, you will not be able to wipe the smile off your face, nor will you want to.  I gave you paradise and I suggest that you might want to start recognizing it as such.  Good luck.  Have fun.  And notice the obvious.  We will talk again whenever we do.

 

 

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