“Eternity is not the hereafter… this is it! If you don’t get it here, you won’t get it anywhere.” – Joseph Campbell
Heaven is not a place, but a state of mind, heaven is a state not a place.
A 2014 Religious Study found that 80% of younger adults (those under the age of 40) don’t believe that heaven exists.
Some people say you should never discuss sex and religion but they are the very subjects that are surrounded by ignorance and confusion. And they should be brought up into the light where we can see them and understand them more clearly. However, not in a dogmatic, rigid, fanatical conversation.
WE ARE A CONDITIONED PEOPLE
For example, when people with set beliefs converse with others, they try to justify their identities by espousing and defending their opinions. They show little interest in allowing any real conversational interaction to take place. Their judgments seldom change as a result of any new information they may encounter.
People are addicted to their beliefs; which is why so many of civilisation’s greatest insights and advances have at first been greeted with such passionate denial.
“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds” – Albert Einstein
So, yes it can be challenging to believe that this is where heaven really is – heaven within you. We’re trying to go somewhere else to find heaven – being unconscious, or having an out-of-body experience, or dying and going to heaven.
CONSCIOUSNESS
Heaven is a consciousness it is not a place. It’s right here and right now. So in truth we’re not looking for a different place where heaven is, what we’re actually looking for is a different vibrational attitude in this place where we are here and now.
Over the many centuries, people have written extensively on this inner kingdom of heaven and their personal experience of it. Here are two that I really love:
St. Augustine: “I entered into the innermost part of myself. I entered and I saw with my soul’s eye an unchangeable light shining above this eye of my soul and above my mind. He who knows truth knows that light, and he who knows that light knows eternity.”
St Teresa of Avila: “My soul at once becomes recollected and I enter the state of quiet or that of rapture. Everything is stilled, and the soul is left in a state of great quiet and deep satisfaction. From this recollection there sometimes springs an interior peace and quietude which is full of happiness, for the soul is in such a state that it thinks there is nothing that it lacks and it would like to do nothing but love.”
GOING BEYOND
I’ve been meditating since 1973 (I was 23 years of age living on a farm) and my ‘experience’ is that there is a beautiful place inside that is quiet and still. It is beyond and behind the internal dialogue of thoughts. My experience is that it is the birthplace of happiness, joy, bliss, tender feelings of empathy and love.
I distinctly remember feeling beautiful experiences coming out of my study in the morning having just finished my meditation. Walking into the kitchen where my children were having breakfast before school, and just feeling this overwhelming feeling of love for them. And I know it was my meditation that had cleared the gunk out of my brain and now I could see my children as they really are – astonishingly beautiful Beings.
And when I sat down to have my breakfast the food tasted better and water tasted sweeter. When you discover the silence and quiet in your mind, you no longer have to pay attention to all those patterns of thought that trigger worry, anxiety, and fear.
This pure awareness is extremely refreshing for the mind. Which then makes it easier and easier for you to stop clinging to old patterns, rigid thoughts, and emotions that block your joy and happiness.
Meditation is effective because you quiet your mind, you slow thought, you stop resistant thought, and you’re right there.
APPRECIATION
However, appreciation is also powerful because it is like being in heaven, because you’re blessing, you’re celebrating, and you’re enjoying positive thoughts and feelings. A powerful thing about appreciation is that you’re aware and with an active focus on changing your energy, your mood, your attitude, your energy. And it is far more effective to be in a moment of appreciation, or in a moment of love and passion. So what you’re reaching for in meditation or in appreciation is a different frequency, a different energy, a different state of mind.
There are many ways of finding the quiet and silence and you must find what works for you. We are all unique and one size does not fit all. So being exposed to your own deepest nature through whatever method works for you is worth pursuing.
WALK IN THE PARK
Experiencing the kingdom of heaven within is not a walk in the park. Later on in his book St. Augustine says: “If I could only remain permanently in that state, would be something not of this world, not of this life. But my sad weight makes me fall back again; I am swallowed up by normality.”
St Teresa of Avila says: “This condition lasts for some time, and may even last for long periods.”
THE JERK IN A PORSCHE
Since the late 70’s I’ve been telling this joke (originally to my salespeople in our paving business). There’s the guy who is an absolute jerk. But he says: “If I had a Porsche the ‘chicks’ would love me and the guys would respect me.” So he goes out and buys a Porsche, but he is still a jerk in a Porsche.
So you can go to the Mosque, the Temple. You can read self-improvement books, scriptures, say your prayers. You can listen to relaxation CDs and call it meditation (transcendence is the only true meditation). You can do your ‘gratitude journal’ and say your affirmations. BUT! If you don’t SHIFT or don’t practice ‘feeling good’ until you own it, until it sticks, and until it’s steady and sure and easy to come by because you’ve practiced it – you’re still just a jerk in a Porsche.
So this is something you have to work on ‘daily’ and then these beautiful experiences you desire come SPONTANEOUSLY! You can’t buy this cheaply or superficially you have to be authentic! You have to be the ‘real deal’. It has to be in your bone marrow, in your blood corpuscles.
“Without transforming individual human beings there will be no transformation in the world” – Satguru
WISE GUYS
- “We are not human beings having a spiritual experience; we are spiritual beings having a human experience.” – Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
- “Heaven goes by favor. If it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.” – Mark Twain
- “The dog is a gentleman; I hope to go to his heaven, not man’s.” – Mark Twain
- “Heaven and hell seem out of proportion to me: the actions of men do not deserve so much.” – Jorge Luis Borges
- “You’ve gotta dance like there’s nobody watching,
Love like you’ll never be hurt,
Sing like there’s nobody listening,
And live like it’s heaven on earth.” – William W. Purkey - “When we choose not to focus on what is missing from our lives but are grateful for the abundance that’s present… we experience heaven on earth.” – Sarah Ban Breathnach.
- “Seek first the kingdom of heaven and all else will be added unto you.” – Bible
- James Taylor sings….
Carry Me on My Way
I forget what to ask for,
There isn’t anything
I haven’t been given.
How could I wish for
Anything more as I
Am here living in heaven
