It's kind of funny, being raised in the christian faith and having my mother and all the church people talk about heaven as if it were some Utopia in the sky somewhere. A reward for all of our hard work on this planet and having to endure all of lives troubles and heartache.
I have never really felt all that connected to heaven or what will lye ahead when I die. In fact, maybe some of my fears revolving around death have alot to do with this lack of connection to something greater then here.
I have spent a lifetime trying to capture this feeling, a few precious moments of pure connection. Though there is much pain on this planet, there is also so much beauty. Moments of love with another person, moments of solitude and spiritual bliss, the connection that pains brings us in order to bring forth our greatest qualities, stregnth, endurance, and peace.
I notice so many people talking about leaving this planet for good. Almost like they will be able to leave all this pain behind and live in some heavenly bliss up in the clouds where everything is "perfect". A place where we will be handed grand mansions and every delicious fruit ever exsisted. Where we will live for all eternity in loves embrace and never will a tear be shed again.
Sure, it sounds great on the surface. But I notice how quickly people are ready to leave this world behind. Look at where this world was 5 thousand years ago, then look at us now. We were handed a beautiful paradise that provided for all that we need, on all levels of our exsistance. Now that mankind has destroyed it, we want to leave and start over? Why would the creator of the universe give us a new paradise, if we can't take care of what he has already given us? What if the point is not to whisp us away to some new paradise? What if that new paradise has already been given to us and it is here?
Jesus said that the kingdom of God is within, which means it is already here. What if we are wrong and it is not some place up in the sky a million lightyears away? What if this is our heaven and hell and we are not given another place to rest?
Or what if the prophets are correct and we are given a new heaven, a new place? The theory is that we will be changed, transformed, however, we were already given domain of this earth. Will we be stripped of our free? Because this is what would have to happen in prder to create this sacred Utopia. If it wasn't done before , why would it be done later?
My point is not to strip people of their hopes of a better world, but maybe the better world that is to come is the world we presently live in. If we are running from one of the greateast paradises that the Divine could give , if we are always searching for something greater and never stop to see what we do have, how on this earth or in heaven are we going to appreciate "heaven"? We won't.
I'm beginning to realize that heaven and hell both co-exsist within us. One is connection to the divine and all the things that represent that. Hell is the opposite, seperation from the divine all that represent it. If the kingdom of heaven is within, that means the kingdom of heaven is not up in the cosmos, it is here, the place we exsist in the here and now. With this theory, we may not get another paradise, we may have to go on what we already do have. And if there is going to be change, we are the ones who will have to step up to the plate and make those changes, not just for us, but the future generations.
Maybe we lost the whole point of our exsistance. Maybe we have lost site of the treasures that have already been given to us because we are constantly searching for more. Reading this in a blog post may sound absurd, but look at the people who you love the most, your pets, your friends. What about the beauty within the sound of the waves, the cool breeze on a hot summer day,, the beauty of the moon as it turns huge and orange. When we will ever stop looking for the golden cup and realize how sacred the tin cup in front of us really is? When will we realize that when we are crying out for courage, that the pain within is the gift of courage?
This is just food for thought, things running around in my own head and needed to be released.
