Ultimately, many of us resign ourselves to a belief that life is random and that love and peace are fleeting. Minimizing risk by not repeating previous mistakes becomes our mantra. Compromise is seen as wisdom. “I may not be in a relationship, but at least I won’t get hurt”. “My career is unrewarding but look at what the salary affords me”. We try not to sustain or inflict any ‘collateral damage’. Security grows with importance as we age and this manifests in our increased police, security guards, home security and prisons.

Some of us will remonstrate that this is not the case at all – we live life to the fullest and remain positive no matter what. Power walking, a healthy diet, giving to charities and a busy day from sun up to sun down help us sleep in peace.

Underneath it all lays a deep seated fear that all is not well…. and for good reason. We know the Truth. We know we are operating in illusion and the denial of our real self and we feel guilty. Although we have not been raised to know our true self we can sense it. We are afraid because our ego wishes us never to find ourselves as it spells the end of illusion and disillusionment.

There is a way to achieve lasting peace and love, one way to make sense of our lives and its purpose, but it requires a paradigm shift. It is the simple recognition that this illusion of life – our body, personality and life experiences to date, are but a dream. We can choose to wake up from it at a moment’s notice and when we do, we will realise that we are eternal beings who are part of a whole that is guiltless and beloved.

How different would this life be if we knew, really knew that we have nothing to be guilty of – that we did not have to earn love and forgiveness? How differently would we react to people if we knew that nothing could hurt us, that there was nothing to lose?

Returning to peace requires unlearning who we are and letting it go and you can begin right now. Here is a simply technique to practice that will return the perception of your true self immediately. Every time you are in conflict …do nothing!

That’s right, do nothing at all except ask to see the truth and have faith that the outcome will reveal the truth of who you are. In every situation, it is not winning or losing that is important. I can see your mind scrambling already to find exceptions to this rule. This is a clear indication that the ego is at work, which is of itself an indication that you are on the right path!

Every time we practice doing nothing we are allowing ourselves and others to be revealed for who they are. Attack and defense serve only the ego. It keeps us from discovering that we have nothing to protect and that there is nothing we can lose. “We can lose our life!” I hear you say. I am not asking you to remain in life threatening situations and not react, however in the extreme, the Truth holds true – there is nothing to lose.

When we cease to react in conflict, we mirror to the other party that we see beyond their ego to who they are and a healing takes place. They may not get it immediately but at a deep core level, a tiny memory of who they are is restored. The same applies to you. Every time you overlook a so called wrong doing, you are restoring your memory and the eternal peace of who you are. By doing nothing, we are practicing faith and our faith is always rewarded.

There have been many instances of conflict in my life where I have been challenged to attack or defend, especially with those closest to me. I have found, in all cases where I have ‘let go’ that I have reclaimed a part of myself. The outcome has always been better than I could have imagined. At times it has been a real struggle. The ego paints terrifying pictures of disaster and provokes me to act to either attack or defend (both the same action in truth) the situation. I have had times where all I can do is pray and recite “I need do nothing’ for hours on end. Through it all, I have learnt that I am not alone – that I have a relationship with the eternal, that I belong to the eternal and that the eternal wants me. And with that realization, peace returns.

By: Take Me to The Truth

Nouk Sanchez and Tomas Vieira are authors of ‘Take Me to Truth, Undoing the Ego’ Released Sept. 2007. For more details visit: www.takemetotruth.com

It is my observation that it is not necessary to remain at one place, but to keep rowing your boat, experiencing all the sights and sounds that there are for us around the seas of existence.

When one day you realize you have sailed around the circle and arrived back at the beginning, you can then climb to the top of the lighthouse and see the view all around you and how far you have sailed.

I liken this feeling to one of being a Butterfly as it is only at that moment that you seem free to fly and land anywhere you want to land, just for a brief moment or to stay a little longer. Arriving brings you to a place where you can in a day, do whatever you want to do.

• Read your horoscope
• Visit a Cathedral
• Chant  Om
• Read the bible
• Have a tarot reading
• Eat meat
• Not eat meat
• Watch the wheel of the year
• Make some magic etc.

You can do whatever you want to do, because you have broken free of all the fears and restrictions that being part of one of those places you have visited on your journey has shown you. Yet you have acknowledged and gathered their gifts.

If you stop too long you become part of the structure whatever that is, and as human beings we are meant to be free

Many places you have encountered have said;

• You have to believe in this
• You have to read this
• You have to attend this
• This is how it is

Well how is it? In truth none of us actually KNOW. Our individual and unique selves can only listen and learn about all that is and then just live our lives.

The ideal situation would be for us all to get together socially, as the selves we are and put aside all those groups etc. That would be surely more enriching as we all have wisdom that is pure and we all have our own truth.

Without the need to attach to others, to gather together freely to exchange our gifts, this would give us the ability to talk to anyone from any group in life. It all comes back to the one us.

By: Juliana Glanfield

“…the kingdom is inside you and it is outside you…What you look for has come, but you do not know it…the father’s kingdom is spread out upon the earth, and people do not see it” Jesus (Gospel of Thomas)

Earth’s crammed with heaven  And every common bush alive with God. Only he who sees takes off his shoes;   The rest sit around and pluck blackberries.  Barrett-Browning, Elizabeth (poet)

The Promise

The world’s voluminous spiritual literature bursts with mystics, scholars and everyday folks asserting not only that Heaven exists but that it can be found right here. Is this contention, and its experiential basis, a wishful fantasy or the long-promised coming of Heaven on Earth?

Let’s begin by defining our terms. What is Heaven on Earth? As implied by the above quotations, Heaven on Earth may be defined as the ordinary world transfigured in the experience of Divinity’s Presence, where it found to be an immanently holy, infinitely precious, and extraordinarily beautiful place – right where you are.

In the Torah, Heaven on Earth takes the form of Eden, which in Hebrew means “place of delight.” In the Garden of Eden, believed to be an actual paradise on Earth, the first human beings dwelled in God’s Presence without self-consciousness, worry or suffering. God expelled them from the Garden, however, for eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. In this creation story, therefore, we first lived in Heaven on Earth but then lost it. We’ll see why in a moment.

Heaven on Earth becomes a present reality once again in the words of Jesus and later Christian mystics. The New Testament refers to Heaven on Earth as the Kingdom of God, and many Christians believe it will arrive only after Armageddon, a time during which the evil world created by humankind is destroyed and replaced by the perfection of the Heavenly Jerusalem. However, some translations of the “Gospel of Luke” suggest that the Kingdom already exists among us, and in the “Gospel of Thomas,” Jesus says that Heaven is spread all over Earth but men do not see it.

Joseph Campbell, the famous scholar of world mythology and religion, explains that these statements mean the experience of Heaven, here and now, requires only a transformation of consciousness, not the literal end of the world. He asserts, “This is Eden. When you see the kingdom spread upon the earth, the old way of living the world is annihilated. The end of the world is not an event to come, it is an event of psychological transformation, of visionary transformation.”

The Experience

This visionary transformation has in fact been repeatedly described by Christian mystics. Over 200 years ago, the English poet and mystic William Blake promised that if the “doors of perception” were cleansed, we would see the infinite standing directly before us. Jacob Boehm, a German shoemaker transformed by a profound mystical experience in 1600, confirmed, “Heaven is throughout the whole World…It filleth all…without division,” but added, “Men seek and find not, because they seek it not in the naked Ground where it lieth; but in something or other where it never will be, nor can be.” Similarly, Thomas Traherne, a seventeenth century Christian mystic, recalled vivid memories of Heaven on Earth from childhood, concluding, “Certainly Adam in Paradise had not more sweet and curious apprehensions of the world, than I when I was a child.”

Everyday folks, too, caught up in unexpected mystical experiences, report the same visionary experience of Heaven on Earth. The popular Jungian writer Robert Johnson recalled, “Suddenly I was in a glorious world. It was pure light, gold, radiant, luminous, ecstatically happy, perfectly beautiful, purely tranquil, joy beyond bound…It was all that any mystic ever promised of heaven, and I knew then that I was in possession of the greatest treasure known to humankind.” Remembering her spontaneous encounter with Heaven on Earth, Katharine Trevelyan described, “The wonder was beyond anything I have ever read or imagined or heard men speak about. I was Adam walking alone in the first Paradise…Every flower spoke to me, every spider wove a miracle of intricacy for my eyes, every bird understood that here was Heaven come to earth…Every prayer was fulfilled, every possible desire for the whole world consummated; for His Kingdom had come and I had beheld it with my very eyes.”

Abraham Maslow, the humanistic psychologist who studied mystical experiences for years, characterized them as akin to “…a visit to a personally defined heaven…and the conception of heaven that emerges is one which exists all the time all around us, always available to step into for a little while at least.” It is, he said, like “standing in Eden.” Hidden in the mystical experience, therefore, lies the promise of Heaven on Earth,

The Problem

If  Heaven on Earth exists all around us as these testimonies suggest, why don’t we see it? The answer is associated with the problem of thought. We have become so enamored by our concepts about the world that we mistake them for the world itself. In other words, we see our thoughts, not what is. For example, the word or idea “cat” is only a concept; it is not the same as “Tabby,” this wondrous moving being standing before me. But if we look and say “cat” and turn away, we will think we understand what we have seen, failing to realize that we have instead retreated into an inner world of concepts – a lens through which we name and interpret everything, which in turn brings us back to our exile from Eden.

Psychologists have long suggested that creation myths symbolize the evolution of human consciousness. Interpreted symbolically, it might be said that as human beings began conceptualizing themselves and their lives – particularly in dualistic terms such as good-evil and right-wrong – they replaced the consciousness of Creation with this highly conceptual inner world of thought. Thus, eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil symbolizes the development of a dualistic consciousness that results in two very distinct worlds: the original divine world which never left and the world of thought superimposed upon it.

Learning to See Again

How do we learn to see the divine world of Heaven on Earth again? It begins with wonder. Abraham Heschel, the Jewish theologian and philosopher, explains, “As civilization advances, the sense of wonder declines…Awareness of the divine begins with wonder…(and)…the greatest hindrance to such awareness is our adjustment to conventional notions, to mental clichés. Wonder or radical amazement, the state of maladjustment to words and notions, is therefore a prerequisite for authentic awareness of that which is.” What happens when we awaken from the thought-world to the wonder of “that which is?”  Discussing the medieval Christian mystics, Anne Bancroft answers, “By becoming awakened to the isness of creation, we find ourselves in Heaven – fulfilled to running over, and wonderfully in accord with all beings, human, animal or mere substance.” Thus, temporarily freed from the veil of thought, we once again witness the omnipresent imminent divine as the world itself in its incredible beauty and perfection.

Actually we have all experienced Heaven on Earth countless times but, attached to our conceptual worldview, simply dismissed it. Perhaps it happened when you fell in love for the first time and all was perfect, or astonished by a scene of magnificent natural beauty, your mind stopped and you saw its shining splendor. Perhaps it happened in a holy place or during a retreat. In these kinds of experiences, the perception of Heaven on Earth opens naturally into consciousness. In fact, the experience of Heaven on Earth actually represents a shift in consciousness that changes how you experience the world. This shift has the following characteristics:

The mind becomes quiet. The inner world of racing thought and fantasy, with its focus on “me” “my” problems, and all those “to do” lists, grows silent and peaceful. This stillness soon surrounds and fills everything.

• Attention moves to the immediate present, no longer focused on past or future worries and fantasies. Shifting from conception to perception then has the interesting effect of heightening awareness.
• As sensory perception increases in the present, you start to see what’s actually around you and, if you persist, you will rediscover the world’s spell-binding beauty and perfection just as it is. Now you are looking directly into Heaven on Earth.
• In this consciousness, a quality of holiness naturally emerges. The world seems filled with a Presence that is aware, awake, patient and loving, and noticing this Presence awakens further wonder and amazement. Learning to experience God’s Presence further changes perception, revealing holiness to all of Creation.
• A deep and wonderful joy arises in this experience of Presence and you realize that happiness is most deeply related to closeness with God rather than apparent circumstances or events.
• With the mind at peace and joy in the heart, activities now flow effortlessly and you are one with the tide of being. This is the beginning of living in Heaven on Earth.

The Invitation

The experience of Heaven on Earth here and now has been described in every time and religion  – indeed the accumulated mystical testimony about this omnipresent reality is truly amazing (though equally amazing is how few people know about it!).  But I experience Heaven on Earth everyday: an incredibly beautiful, peaceful and holy place all around me where problems dissolve into joy, people appear resplendent, and the everyday world is transfigured into a timeless and enchanted wonderland. I know I’m not crazy because I’m a clinical psychologist. And, as an ordained interfaith minister with a doctorate in ministry, I know what the mystics from every tradition have been telling us for centuries: Heaven on Earth is already here and anyone can find it in the awakened experience of God’s Presence. This is the great invitation the world has been waiting for, and all are welcome here.

John Robinson holds doctorates in clinical psychology and ministry and is an ordained interfaith minister, author, and mystic. He has taught extensively at men’s gatherings, professional conferences, churches, hospitals, and retreat centers and is the author of three previous books on the interface of psychology and spirituality. His new book, Finding Heaven Here (O-Books, Jan, 2009), documents an interfaith chorus of mystics from across eras and traditions who tell us that Heaven on Earth is already here when you learn how to see. Dr. Robinson lives on an island in the Puget Sound of Washington State.

John Robinson, Ph.D., D.Min.