(This is Part 1 of a continuing series.)
To put it simply, this series of articles is about creating heaven on earth. But that's not quite right, because heaven doesn't need to be created. It's already here, right here. It has only to be discovered. Moreover, heaven is the real reality; everything else is actually a fiction, though of course appearances can look very different at times.
You might think that I'm talking about heaven because I've lived a charmed life. But no, at various times in my life I've experienced tremendous anxiety, depression, fear, resentment, etc. Indeed, I felt suicidal during more or less my entire childhood and into my 20's.
I know what it feels like to feel pain and suffering for extended periods and to feel completely hopeless and helpless. So I can tell you that discovering heaven does not depend upon "how we're doing" in life. Though it will have a profound effect on that over time.
On this journey, it's helpful to keep in mind two basic principles. And don't be concerned if you don't agree with them; just consider them as interesting companions that you're going to observe for awhile—as any good scientist or cosmic explorer would do—and see what happens. The first one is:
1) The inner is senior to the outer.
Most of us, most of our lives, have lived as if the truth were the other way around. We've lived with the idea that in order to be happy we must manipulate reality around in some way or another until we've got it to our liking. And then we'll be happy.
But as far as I can tell, it's the other way around: The inner is senior to the outer. The inner is senior to the outer in two ways:
First, what's going on internally basically determines how happy and fulfilled we are.
We can be living in a palace and with a negative frame of mind we won't be happy. Conversely, we can be cold, homeless and hungry and be in heaven. Many famous mystics, including St. Francis and Bayazid, experienced this. In Zen they have a saying about it: "If you send a Zen master to hell, it'll be heaven to him."
The second way in which the inner creates the outer is that the vibration that we put out tends to attract similar vibrations to us. This is not voodoo. It simply means that we're more aware of similar vibrations and they're more aware of us. When a pickpocket walks down the street he's aware of pockets and other pickpockets.
Thus the reality that we experience every day is very much our own personal one, and depends entirely on where we're habitually putting our attention. The second principle to keep in mind is:
2) The inner—our state of consciousness—can be chosen.
Viktor Frankl discovered this under the most extreme conditions. He was in a Nazi concentration camp—brutalized, hungry, cold, exhausted.
And he made a discovery made in other times and circumstances by others: Frankl discovered that he still had control over his thoughts and feelings, his state of mind. He discovered that the Nazis had no power to remove love from his heart.
This choice of consciousness, however, is not a one-time thing. It's something that we cultivate over time, like watering a growing plant. We water the seed of our divine consciousness with each passing day, and over time a transformation occurs.
There can come a moment when everything suddenly shifts. And yet that moment is preceded by watering our plant each day, that is, gradually tuning in to and nurturing the seed of heaven that already exists within us.
When that moment happens it becomes clear that, even though our effort was "necessary" in some sense, still, the opening happened by itself...through grace.
(This is the end of Part 1. Go to Part 2.)
—jim sloman, 12.8.03 for January 11.
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