Again, even if you don’t believe you have a duty to yourself and to God to do the right things, whether you believe in sin and God’s judgment or not, you will benefit from righteous behavior.  If you disregard doing the right thing for its own sake, people will constantly disrespect you.  For someone who believes that this world and their ego is all there is, disrespect is worse than death because it leads to a miserable life.  Those who think highly of you will eventually see you for who you are and abandon you.  Good people will avoid you and you will make enemies who will slander you.  No one will want to come to your aid and you will continually have to take advantage of those who don’t know you to get what you want.  Therefore, you should strive to live a righteous life whether you believe in God or not.

Since there will always be difficulties to overcome, both pleasurable and painful experiences, material gains and losses, victories and defeats, if you can see both as two sides of the same coin and do your best, not for the sake of reward, but just for the sake of doing the right thing, you will spare yourself a lot of mental and emotional agony.

Even if you don’t believe in God or the image of God within, there is no reason to lament the things of this world.  Everyone who is born will undoubtedly die and everything you have done and everything that has happened to you will eventually be forgotten.  You should not mourn things that are inevitably inconsequential.  But we live in the world here and now so it is our duty to fight on and do our best.

While the things we experience through the body are temporary and will inevitably die just as the flesh dies, that part of you that is the image of God is not killed when the body dies. If you really understand that you are eternal, essentially indestructible, you will also understand that nothing can touch you and there is no reason to worry, get upset or grieve about what happens in this world.  Furthermore, you will find no reason to waiver in your resolve to do good things, since it is inevitable that there will be difficulties and equally inevitable that they will pass away.  Your indwelling spirit is invulnerable to the vicissitudes of life.

The way to avoid the despondency that comes with unpleasant circumstances is to patiently endure the experience with a calm mind, knowing that it is temporary and will come and go like any other experience, whether pleasurable or painful.  If you are not tossed about by these unpleasant sensations, you will find an inner peace and contentment that few realize in this world.

Sometimes it will seem like it is better to give up, give in and let your natural tendencies win.  You might not be able to figure out what the right thing to do really is.  When we struggle with anything we are trying to do it can leave us despondent and longing for an easy way out.  It is then that you have to shake off your perceived weakness and remember that you have a spark of the divine within you that has no weakness.   Your sorrow is sheer delusion with no more substance than you allow it to have.

Initially it might not seem worth it to give up the things you love for the sake of doing good and being good.  Learning how to behave properly is difficult and can often be discouraging, especially at the beginning.  But over time, the life that emerges from it is so much better, you will not regret what you had to let go of.