Category: heaven is here

Today I have been rudderless, unable to stick myself to a project. Disinterested in sticking to any project except perhaps reading a very enticing book that I am in the middle of. I have felt myself spiral into a kind of apathy and for some reason I find that state very distressing. I always have. All day I have been thinking, “Write the blog” but I feel I kind of have to be in the heavenly mood or something. But if this exercise in recognizing heaven is not going to work for me and I choose to avoid it if I’m feeling a bit lost then what’s the point. So here we are.

A beautiful teacher, perhaps my favorite teacher used to say that good company is essential for spiritual progress. It seems to me today that the idea of good company extends far beyond the idea of who you hang out with but into the realm of what we feed our minds. I mentioned the engrossing book, it’s great but macabre and depressing – not good company. Since I was a kid I have been keenly aware of what the consumption of entertainments does to my system. There are many movies that made me feel like I want to take a bath after I have seen them, there were books that thoroughly depressed me. I find myself wondering if I really need to read this stuff, do I need to go into those distressing places.  I want to know what’s going on in the world, I want to know what other people are finding engrossing and what’s on the New York Times best seller list but I am determined to watch my state while I do and not to slide into even a tiny abyss.

I was about to pick up the book again, I will finish it. But right now I am taking a mood lifting break. I remembered that often when I feel a bit down I can put the qawwali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan on and instantly my heart soars. I feel blessed to have found a sure shot mood lifting fix for myself. Music is an easy reminder that heaven is here.

I think we all recognize today that a rising commodity is simplicity. Once on a job we were trying to solve a complex prop/costume trick, I can’t even remember the trick but the prop/special effects guy kept saying to his team “KISS” “KISS”. Finally I asked him – “What are you saying?” – “Keep it simple, stupid”, was his reponse. Well, of course, I don’t love being called stupid, especially if it’s true and I am being stupid, but I love the idea of keeping it simple. I had a great artist friend many years ago who lived by that mantra and regularly simplified his life by purging all unnecessary elements. I respected him for it but I didn’t understand it back then. Now I do. However, I understand it on a much more profound level than by the face value of keeping things simple.

It is a far greater challenge to keep the mind simple, to keep the inner dialogue simple, to keep the connection to the heart simple than it is to clean up our outer world. Interestingly in the process of my own spiritual practice I have learned that the two, the inner and outer are magically interlaced. One time I was weeding my garden and I had a visceral experience of weeding my inner being. Each weed plucked from the garden felt like a cleansing of old nonsensical concepts or ideas or judgments. Who knows what it all was exactly but clearly something was going on. It was as if the outer moved inside me. Simplicity has an alluring quality of ease about it. It is a welcome into a natural state of comfort, understanding and authenticity. Heaven is not complex, it’s answers come easily and naturally, you know it already.

It’s odd that in a world of so many advantages, conveniences, connections, entertainments, and diversities that the stress level of complexity would become so heightened. Yet, with all our multiple choices we forget how to connect to the simplest delights. The mind becomes infatuated by the dizzying array of challenges and leaps into the fray. I am very practiced at stilling my mind and still I get caught up, it’s the greatest challenge of city life. But really it is not at all about cleaning up the outside, the world can and will get crazier, busier, more demanding, more exciting and our job is to meet it with increasing stillness and simplicity. The simple understanding of the heart is profound. Yes, that is oxymoronic isn’t it? But the heart understands this, the mind will never.

The easiest way to keep it simple is to go for the delightful, the elegant solution. Working with what presents on the outside helps, afterall we have inherited heaven, it is our birthright so why not manifest it around us? In my old apartment I hired a Feng Shui master to sort us out. We discovered that the “money” corner was a disaster. It was a complete mess of stacks of incomplete art projects. It was crowded, unattended and inaccessible. Our finances were in similar shape. We immediately went to work to clean up the physical space of that area and after time our relationship to the financial has shifted remarkably. Meanwhile in the marriage corner which was quite a cramped part of the apartment everything was beautiful. The Feng Shui master approached that corner with a look of great concern on his face then he stood for a long time looking at it. When he was done he pointed out how we had naturally mitigated the effects of the tight space with all the appropriate items; plants, natural objects of stone, pictures of our ourselves and even all in the appropriate numbers and colors of items. He was impressed. I have since learned a tiny bit about Feng Shui and make sure to pay attention to the effects of the objects in my space. It is a powerful practice of awareness that beautifully serves to uplift our experience of our spaces. I recommend it.

Without ordering a Feng Shui master though we can in very simple ways begin to align with heaven, to call it into our sphere in a more pronounced and recognized way. You have heard it said, “Cleanliness is next to Godliness”. Notice that in yourself. I know I feel so much better when my apartment is clean, my clothes and self are clean. My mother’s dog used to run around in a maniacal delight after her bath, even she loved being clean. Flowers lift my spirits, especially in winter. We are so blessed that we can get such a thing in winter. Even princes were hard pressed to come up with fresh flowers in the Middle Ages. Inspiring art is another simple delight, a great piece of art brightens a room, usually requires no fossil fuel power and can provide many hours of joy. I love looking at my new wall of art.  A candle can provide warmth and comfort and a guide into meditation. These are some of the ways I create heaven in my own space.

And Oh! I almost forgot, I am sitting next to a beautiful fishtank with a world of lively fish in it. Living beings, plants, fish, cats and dogs provide the simplest loving interactions that point us toward understanding heaven.

How do we create a vision for a new future for humanity? We are going through massive changes right now; cosmic energies are shifting the fiber of our reality and we are in a unique space of opportunity. The opportunity to reframe our relationship with our reality is at our doorstep. Every step of our lives is an opportunity to embrace heaven, to create a life of abundance, joy, celebration, respect and love. I say choose that.

Many of my friends know that I created with the generous help of many good friends a short film, “New York City Spirit” that celebrates the diverse ways in which New Yorkers connect to the divine. I still hope to make the feature length version at some point. The reason that I did this is because I have experienced the overwhelming grace of connecting with the divine. Should I say connecting? It’s really wrong because how do you connect with that which you already are? We are that divine, the divine is what pulsed this reality that we share into being, it is what maintains the reality we perceive, it is what maintains our image of our selves and all interactions we participate in as we play from day to day. Why is it that we do not know this every moment of life?  – We forget.

At one point in my studies I uncovered a unique explanation of  the creation of man. I must digress for just a moment to put this into context, I am not writing any scholarly works here, my goal is to celebrate the pure, raw energy of the divine – to taste it as much as possible so I do not want to be constrained by pedantic requirements of referrals to source or whatever. Suffice it to say that I share my experiences, recollections, personal discoveries and hope that this perspective is useful. Part of the cosmic shift that we go through here includes a personal shift to the self-empowerment of trusting our own body, emotions, intuition and mind as our information source. Statistics are irrelevant to the individual when the magic of the divine is recognized.

So back to the unique creation of man; God extruded man from the blissful core of Herself and placed man on the Earth for the purpose of exploring the state of separation. Man remembered his former state of being utterly merged into all-being, all-knowing, blissful everything and said to God, “I don’t like this separation, I am cold, lonely, and I feel rejected. Therefore, I’ve decided that I will just merge back into YOU.” And he did. God was within the context of Her perfection and bliss a bit disappointed, Her experiment in exploring the nature of Her expanded and diversified being was abruptly ended.  So She started again, this time She created a foil, a veil and made it so that man could not remember his former nature as being merged within Herself.  Thus began the glorious adventures of man.

The mystical experience that I had that made this story of man abundantly clear happened one day in Central Park. I was sitting with a great mystic, Pamela Wilson, and we were talking about the nature of forgetfulness. I was watching a swan gliding about on the pond, leaves were gracefully fluttering above my head, my hair caught the slight breeze and suddenly everything changed. My inner being cracked and shifted with the profundity of a massive earthquake without any rumbles or shatters. It was a change of momentous proportion that had nothing to show for itself except this: It occurred to me that my dismay at my repeated and sometimes prolonged forgetfulness of the divine was irrelevant because even if I forget; my divine creator never forgets me. Therefore if I am THAT creator as well as being that which is created then technically I never forget too. The wave of relief that swept over me was powerful and lasting. Now I have no stress if I forget and some days when in old habitual ways I slip into self-recrimination and perhaps begin to whine, “O, where is God?” I smile and chuckle because I know that is just a game, a game of hide and go seek played with the self. It makes me laugh out loud. I can trace the path of choices that led me to this revelation and every one was a conscious decision to choose enlightenment.

Much help is available these days to further the conscious embrace of heaven here on Earth now. On Tuesday, I saw a fabulous film entitled, ‘With One Voice’.  The website for the documentary is: http://www.withonevoicedocumentary.org/. Various mystics speak on the nature of spirituality, life and religion. Each brings understanding within the context of their traditions yet the voices are beautifully harmonious. All of the great religions are represented and these wise mystic teachers generously point out the richness of the path that led them to knowing the divine while also acknowledging the value of other paths. One said that as long as there are many different religions there will be that many ways to know God. I say as long as there are individuals there will be as many ways to know God, and this is the key, it is not about following doctrine but about experiencing our true nature. I highly recommend this film and you can order it here: http://www.alivemindmedia.com/films/with-one-voice/

We  have arrived we are already in Heaven, this is it. So if it does not feel like heaven does that prove that this is not heaven? What are the qualities of heaven? Let’s take a stab at it: perfection, freedom, bliss, joy, communion with the divine and with each other, all needs met on physical and spiritual planes, opportunity to flourish and be fantastic, appreciation of what we are and what others are, and probably much more that I am not thinking of. I would love to hear your qualities of heaven.

Where exactly are we on this path of reaching heaven? It’s a bit like what, I think, Tom Sawyer once said to Huck Finn, though I can’t find the exact quote: something about if his great Aunt was there in heaven he surely wouldn’t want to be there. The idea supposes restrictions on heaven, it supposes that heaven doesn’t have room for differences and for appreciation of those differences. Much the same as here. I guess it shows that our idea of heaven is a function of where our mind set is right now. We live with an overwhelming awareness of the limited, we perceive that if it’s not this it’s that, there is very little room for qualities of difference or for gradations toward the exquisite. I guess I’m talking about the glass being half empty versus half full.

For us today we have the most amazing opportunities, we can try on someone elses viewpoint on a daily basis. With the prevalence of media we can live the stories of others with vastly divergent views from us without committing. We can taste another’s dreams, trials, striving, failure and successes. Is that why we are so enraptured by the lifestyles of the stars? Don’t their lives look like heaven from the outside? Yet too many times the curtain is pulled away and we become aware of a despair that leads to tragic consequences. So can we definitively say that fame, wealth and success are heaven? We spend so much of our time scrambling to make a “perfect” life but what defines a perfect life? We as humans have the amazing ability to live in astonishingly different circumstances, from igloos in the North to grassy huts all the way on the Equator. Much of our ideas of perfection are not even ours, we find ourselves being sold on all kinds of things, or activities that will produce qualities of enjoyment, success, delight, perfection or whatever. It all comes at us from the outside in a torrent of choices.  Our perceptions of what is delicious for a life or a heaven are uncountable. What would we find in THE heaven?

I would like to share what I think we would find: Our consciousness would dissolve out of phenomenon into the noumenon, first we might be blissfully blinded by the brilliant light of our own primordial Self. That Self that is the essential core of us that was the initial separation from the ALL CONSCIOUS. Then we may blend into the chaos of the emptiness, which is really all things in potential and all things that will never be and all things that will be. There we rest in perfect equilibrium for eternity, needing no thing, being no thing, thinking no thing. It is our natural state and is inexpressibly delicious. This state is ours to have even while we are separated into form, for this is the state that nourishes the form and propels it into being. This state is available at all times in all places and the doorway is meditation. I invite you to meditate on your heaven, taste the deliciousness of your breath that reveals the pathway inside to that sacred space. This is how you will know that heaven is here.

Do you think it’s because I introduced my new peace symbol this week that I suddenly greet the challenge in the proverbial you?

On the ground is where ‘Heaven’ meets the road or in my case, the tracks. Today in the fabulous New York subway system I got crowded between two guys arguing over space. A guy in the station was yelling at the guy behind me to make space for him on the train where there there was none. By the time the one who was on the train right behind me got off the train to let the other guy on I felt very defensive of the poor guy left behind and mad at the “idiot” standing over me with his arm leaning on my shoulder. He was grumbling that the other guy was an “idiot”. That’s why I referred  to him that way. I felt like I was in the middle of it all; I swallowed the drama into my being, took it on, kind of revelled in it. Not because I wanted to, or because it was mine but probably because I am a creature of habit like all of us; eager to salivate over that sour deliciousness of drama, conflict, and self-righteousness. It is dangerous territory that we all know so well and that we fail to navigate with grace too many times, witness the conflict world wide that escalates to global scale. Will we ever tire of it?

When we know how these encounters affect us why is it that we still trample through our heaven kicking up dust and insulting each other? I was so riled up I was ready to defend the abandoned commuter but the “i…”, excuse me, I am sorry but I don’t know his name, was just too close to me; it was a bad idea.  Suddenly I thought, “wait this has nothing to do with me” even if it did I don’t need to relish the ugliness of it all. So I breathed, I relaxed, I offered all the fury back to the man standing next to me who perpetrated the flurry to begin with and basically washed my hands of the whole thing. Afterall the abandoned commuter chose to step out of the train rather than continue to engage with mister “I”.

Then I remembered a story about the Buddha who was asked by a woman what to do about a conflict that troubled her. I may not have the story exact but this is what I took from it. He asked her what would happen if she made a feast and asked her opponent over to eat but he refused to eat, she said I would have to eat the food myself. The Buddha said exactly so don’t engage with him and he will have to consume the trouble he makes himself. Or something like that. When I relaxed and breathed I disengaged from the drama, what a delicious relief that was. It was not my misadventure, so why get involved. Ordinarily, I would have carried that energetic shift through my whole system for hours after the encounter but the exercise of conscious relief restored my equanimity instantly. This is Heaven – awareness, choosing and practicing. It worked so well that a very short time later when another guy got really irritated with me because I happened to be walking in his way, that kind of thing happens in New York, I didn’t even get phazed by it. Let him have his annoyance, it has nothing to do with me.

I had a sense when I released that tension in the subway that some profound shift had happened that energy was returned to it’s rightful place.  I think that’s why I remembered the Buddha’s story. We are beings of vast complexity, intricately connected. We are capable of infecting each other with delight through a song, or fury through a harsh word. I would have to say that knowing this I admit that my interactions in this world with most people are clumsy. Do I listened enough? I wish. Do I appreciate enough? Probably not. Do I get annoyed too many times? Definitely. I suspect that in order for us all to become fully aware of the Heaven we cohabitate a far greater awareness of our affect on each other must be cultivated. So that’s what that peace symbol is about. It represents a contract to practice this kind of interaction.  To walk the talk. Are you with me?