What Bears Heaven To Earth

When I awoke I awoke to a world I had always known but had expanded to include an awareness of the inside of things....a secret world that I had known about for a very long time and yet, for specific reasons, its full volume had not been raised in my awareness.

Before I begin let me say that I think that as humans we think we know much yet if we knew the vast store yet to be known I think it would absolutely humble us....for as we consider that lifeforms that have no nervous system, like plants, do not nor cannot feel, I find this so amazing now to consider that it seems almost silly to consider.  We assume that higher life must be ordered a certain way and only those who change their environment the most are somehow the superior ones.  If you could step for five minutes into the worlds I have seen, you would know just how silly all of this is....that consciousness does not come about from the vehicle it rises out of or because of, but rather because OF consciousness and that this same consciousness makes a very willful choice to BECOME what it must in order to experience the vastness that consciousness has lain before it.....and this includes stars, atoms, planets, rocks and dew drops as well as bacteria, flies, fir trees and grasses and flowers and orangutans, ancient flighted birds, races of humanoids now long gone from the face of the earth and our own species.  Fish and birds, mammals, insects, plants, spores, molds, lichen.  All of it is experiencing a vital form of fulfillment here and who are we to say what is better or somehow superior?  There is so much you could learn from the dance of subatomic particles....perhaps the entire secret wrapped in reality!  And certainly there is far more to mere physical observation, but an energetic form of observation that can lead you beyond your own locality and merge you into vast swarms of experience and knowing.  All of this sounds kooky and crazy perhaps to some, and yet those who have awakened all speak of similar things.  It is so because they are tapping an inner sensory world that most who are so focused on the sensory world (through the gross five senses) entirely miss.  But I assure you that there is another dimension of sensory experience every bit as rich and alive as the one that bring you the dew upon a leaf or a rainbow in the sky.  Because it is energetically based, it touched upon nonlocallity, and it is this nonlocal nature of energy that is huge.

For our fleet-footed kind, the way of bringing this rich energetic world into the earth is through a field of energy that surrounds all living things.  For us, humans, this energy field is much the same as the field that surround the earth.  For the earth, it is being generated by iron rich magma that sets up a strong electromagnetic field.  This protects the earth, thankfully, from the scouring effect of cosmic rays.  Humans have something very similar, a field that is generated from the circulation of iron rich blood in the body.  Perhaps weaker in some respects, but it is out of this field that the human aura can be glimpsed as information that is connected in the neurocircuitry is radiated outward and can be read or picked up on.  This is the domain of the nonphysical senses since the eyes cannot see into this vibration of "light" or energy radiation, but the brain is dutiful in putting it into a "slot" within itself as a way to translate very real and vivid information flowing in.  The difference for some is being able to still the mind enough to no longer filter out the information.  once you do or can, this world can unfold before you and the interesting thing is just how simple the process is.  Perhaps too simple for the rational mind to take hold of and grasp.  Like two wires sitting side by side that leak some radiant energy around itself and is picked up as a bleed through, so too does the nerves in the body and the cells pick up on the energy around it.  We swim in it.  It is part of our own circuitry and what we are.  There is ample evidence for this world if you just know how to look.  It is what you are.

The awareness of energy brings a dizzying sense of pleasure, joy, and bliss.  This is what happens when the soul awakens to itself, when the mind is less cluttered and less divided within itself.  But when awakening does happen, a new world bursts forth, seemingly new, onto the stage of awareness.  It has been there all along and now it is dawning on you, in you, for you.  The aspects within that caused this awareness to be divided now fall away as the engine of stronger energetic awareness now moves in you.  You see things you never saw before.  You feel things you never felt before.  The lights are brighter, the tastes seem more vivid, and life takes on a look that it didn't seem to have before.  This is "heaven" being born to earth.  This is the subtle world now no longer subtle.

There are endless methods and techniques for how to get to this place, but everything I have seen is erasing what divides you is the singular key to awakening, no matter what it is that has happened. As a result of this, you can awaken without having had NAY practice.  Currently there is a yoga craze, and I think this is good.  Yoga is very good for you, but if yoga worked to awaken people, there would be millions more who would be awakened.  No, it is far simpler than this, so simple in fact that it is so easily overlooked.  It isn't outside you.  It isn't a thing that you find. It is simply what you are.  And what we are is heavenly.

Something is clearly happening on the earth.  Awakenings are coming now at rapid fire pace.  There is a network of energy that is rising and is self supporting and reinforcing.  Is it the dawn of a new era?  I think it could be, but this will be up to us to determine what it is going to look like.  Awakening just does not make you enlightened.  Such a weird word....because it suggests some destination.  There isn't any.  Once you awaken, that is JUST the beginning.  There is, for those who awaken without having had ANY practice, so much to do, to clean up, to set right, to heal within in order that the flow of heaven can shine as clearly as it can. But one thing is for certain I think; being there in such a place is huge.  So let's not squander this; build the field.  Build your field.  Make it a fortress of peace, a fountainhead of inspiration.  Sure we aren't perfect, but let's at least try something better.  It is within reach.  Finally.  The change of the world could be tied up within this, each person doing their part instead of going on crusades or wars or revolutions.  When there is no more need to change others, the change comes upon us that we sought.  When we let go heaven comes flooding in.

IT is so simple.  It bears us to heaven.  It is what we are.  And THAT is what self realization is all about!

Here & There

Our lives are so often focused on the pursuit of things that we can miss something important that has to do with a very simple way of understanding that governs perception and thinking, and then, by extension, belief.  It is the idea that we are after something.  What are we going to do today?  What will we focus on?  Certainly, life is made of that.  You go to the store, you run errands, you pick up the children, you pay bills.  You DO things.  Life is more than just these things, and much of the discontent that we feel is bound up in this feeling of "Is this all there is?"  We have fallen for the idea or perception that we are out to GET something.  Now bear with me....

When you apply this to spiritual work, you create a false dichotomy when you think that spiritual work is in acquisition.  You go to a teacher, you read a book, you do a practice, a method, a technique.  The only problem is in how you have situated your awareness.  It is outside of you.  It is "out there" to get.  This feeds into your spiritual work.  The realm of spirit and energy is in some other realm, some otherworldly place that you will work to find yourself in.  Heaven is in the afterlife.  be a good obedient person and follow the rules, do the things that will make life here good for you and others, run your errands and turn the other cheek and seek grace, love, and you will do fine.  In a limited sense, there is value to this, importance.....but it also misses the point.  So focused we have become on object-based relating to the world that we miss that the deeper spiritual work is not a movement outward, but a movement inward.  That might seem so obvious, so simple, and yet, even in moving inward we wind up moving outward by seeking to reach something, which is itself a misperception of how to get to the meat or marrow of what you are.  It is so simple, deceptively simple sometimes.  It means being able to be full of grace and the willingness within to be led to this beautiful place within.  It may be the case that many of us just don't know the path to this place within.  See?  I said path. I made it a going, a journey.  Language is hard, for it has arisen out of object-based relationships.  This is not something that is outside of you, not a something....it is all that you are, including your conditioned awareness that seeks.  Be still.  Become quiet. Be ready for a mystery to bloom within you.  You don't need to know how it works.  It could be said that no one knows because it is what we are.  It is our most fundamental nature.  Not a thing but what we have always been. The trick is in knowing how to feel, at least for me.  Once you get the feeling right, which is opening up and surrendering, it becomes much easier.  Effortless as long as the mental and egoic part of you remains inactive long enough.  The cork in the bottle of your cosmic genie self is the mind and ego.  When you lay them aside, the universe of this genie rushes out with great force, wonder, power, and beauty. 

All of this is a creation, a great boundless creation that has emerged out of primal consciousness.  When I say primal, I do not mean primitive.  Primal as in prime. The origin.  When you realize that you are a part of this prime consciousness, that the act of creation that brought all of this about is tied directly into your very being, everything stops being the way it was a moment before.  There is nowhere to go, nothing to do, only something very simple to realize; who you are beyond all the rush and tumble of the day to day.  As all of that moves around you, stop and imagine that you are not moving but that the world moves around you.  I know this may sound somehow ego-centric, but it might help you to glimpse something important.  Everyone is going at the same thing you are; realizing who they are.  When you do this you can bump up against this rather interesting awareness of how wherever you go, there is a central point that does not move.  This is your soul, your higher self which is both in and out of time, in many realities all at once.  For it, it is IN things, in this creation, this drama unfolding (and countless others too) and yet, it has its own central point which is not space-based but is consciousness based.  Time and space fall away in a certain sense as the self resolves into a point of pure awareness.  All lifetimes are tuned in, experienced, and yet the soul is aware of being in a central "space" which is its own awareness.

You are a chip off the old block.  You are your soul and it is you.  Through it, you are connected to still "higher" or more expansive realms of awareness.  All of these resolve back into pure awareness.  Each one has its central point and out of it flows its many selves.  You are like this, are learning to be this.  You will grow into your own awareness of yourself in still broader terms.  The world wraps itself around you.  You are in many places all at once, as in truth you are multidimensional.  You need only step along the path that is no path that leads to awareness.  You do not have to go anywhere to find this.  It is not in a book or even in my words; it is in you to know.  The gateway to understanding what this awareness is is actually unlocked by your imagination.  I will tell you uncatagorically that imagination IS the gateway to realization.  We use imagination as if it is an unreal thing....as though it is something that is of little consequence, and yet it is the soul's creative ability that creates your life in a moment by moment basis.  You are the director of this play.  The scenes move and dissolve all around you.  You certainly walk and talk and do things, and yet all realms are available to you.  You are not a prisoner here.  You are a genie in a bottle.  You can dare to let that part of you out.

Yes you participate in the creation here, what some label illusion.  But it is for now real and serves an important purpose.  It is here to aid you in knowing who you are.  It is, however neutral.  It is not out to get you.  It merely follows what you think and feel.  Take responsibility for yourself and you will find the old dependant life you may have lived begin to dissolve.  New events spring up around you as if by magic.  This IS the magic for which many were not understood. Change the story inside and the story outside also changes to reflect a different vibration of awareness.  Heave is not a place to go to, but is current in your feeling, your imagination, and your thoughts.  To consider that you must DO something to get there is itself a kind of trap.  You might get there by taking that route, for your intent may be strong enough that you create that eventuality.  However, it is available to you right here and right now because you ARE heaven if you are willing to mirror it in your awareness.  To do this requires shedding old notions or beliefs.

Letting go of what you thought was important will naturally tend to free up that genie in you that will come forward in direct proportion to how you let go.  It is IN you.  Realize who you are.  When you do this, what you thought was important gets reframed by what is.  I learned this during my time in the wilderness as I call it.  I was getting my life back together after a series of seemingly unfortunate events.  I found myself one day lying on a cold slab of concrete with a house all around me and I was in utter bliss.  I needed so little in this place.  I really became very simple.  With such simplicity, I was not constantly going for this or that.  I was content, happy, content with a current moving through me that was purely divine. Heaven was there on that cold slab.  Heaven, I knew could be in every moment no matter how seemingly difficult it might be.  Over and over I had come here and had become enmeshed in the creation as if it was the whole story.  Over and over I had glimpses beyond the wall, and I kept coming back, searching, digging deep, over and over.

All of this now is an accumulation of something.  A yearning,  a desire to know.  I sought far and wide. Some in meditation, some in crying for a vision, some through ritual and magik.  Sometimes it was simple and unencumbered by belief or dogma. Now the wheel has made full turn in my life and a spark is kindled into a flame.  All of this is turning around me, so busy and seemingly important. And yet, the purpose is in helping me to realize who and what I am.  I am this central point of awareness that is in and out of time.  I am learning to tap this higher self and as I do, it helpes me to release material that is no longer necessary that was a condition of belief or of maya as some would say.  This is the illusion, which I call creation.  The purpose of the creation is like Picasso's saying that the purpose of art is to lie to help you to see the truth.  And so it is with our lives here.  I am a central point always. When I slow down and realize this, the awareness enlarges and I am suddenly feeling something again that is so certain and so strong.

When you can feel this cnetral point of awareness, it feels as though the world is turning around it.  It is the same effect that you get when someone films a movie by holding a camera and points it at themselves as they walk around in the world.  The one constant is the person being filmed and the world looks like it is moving around them as they remain almost stationary.  Try to feel into this from time to time and if you feel a curious sense of energy moving through you, an excitement, a flow, it could be a sign that you are on to something.  it is easy to lose because the world demands so much attention through the five senses, but as you keep at it, you will be able to feel it more and more.  This is not a race, darlings, this is your "journey" as you watch the world move around you.  But this is not as passive an exercise as you might think.  Let that notion go for a time so you can feel into it.  It is another station of awareness that can help you a lot in relating to your surroundings in a new and very useful way.  As you feel into this you connect with this higher self awareness.  You might even bump u against other versions of yourself, or find yourself learning things about yourself that you had not known about previously.  It can be a simple and very private experiment that you can do that can lead to a more expanded form of awareness.

There is no world for you to go to ; you already are there.  It is IN you.  Nothing "out there" has first existed as some condition of your being.  Heaven is not out there, the spirit world is not out there.  It is all inside of you.  "Seek ye the kingdom within" was his admonition, and he knew of which he spoke.  You might have visions of burning bushes but they all emerge from within you.  Reality here is a group creation that is sustained by all of us, and yet while some have certain notions of how it works, you can find it behaving in very different ways.  You can ask and you will receive.  Sometimes, often for me, it comes right to my door.  Much I have bidden comes to me because I now know that I do not have to do in order to be.  If something is needed, it can often come through means other than my own doing.  How it works is simple.  It is in you.

The joy is in you, the wonder and love and creative fire and fulfillment.  The quality of all of it is up to you.  How you color it, how you choose to gloss it, is all your own making.  Heaven is a moment by moment choice and the realm of spirit is all around you.  You do not need to go anywhere, simply realize who you are.  This also has the curious effect of helping to eliminate suffering, too.  Our purpose her is to simply realize who we are.  And when we do that, the scene changes and we are on to the next round of lessons.  Some are unable to remain in their bodies.  the vibration is simply different.  They match something else.  And it is okay.  It is as it should be.  We overcome the world when we overcome the glitches in ourselves that have kept the truth from us.  None of this is some rule-based world but a very simple realization of what is.  And what is is what you are.

All points are accessible from where you are.  All space warps around you as can time and other things.  What will you see, what will you experience with such knowing in you, now bursting out all around you with a joy born of the great eternal child in you?  Until then, I offer my blessings to you for a rich and fulfilling experience.

I Know What Heaven Is Like

I remember some renowned scientist recently proclaiming that the idea of heaven is a fairy tale.  I thought to myself, "he thinks its a fairy tale because he doesn't really know what its about!" I mean, for those who cannot see, they cannot be moved, and I suppose, in a way, its understandable for how our world has placed such a premium on the mind end ego over spirit. There was no heaven in his life, unfortunately, and its okay, because he will get a great roller coaster ride once he leaves his body and it will be great for how he had been disabled most of his life.  He will be the one kid rushing to the front of the cosmic line for another ride on that roller coaster!   Its understandable, though. He lived in his rational mind and that mind can be trained to only pay attention to what is measurable, observable.  My grandmother was a little bit this way, too.  She lived an insular life in many ways and as she grew old her own physiology was less a blessing as it was a burden.  Then, in the last few years, she had a series of surgeries and her life was good, then it got worse.....Short of knowing another Way, we begin to feel like all we have is what is in front of us.  I will tell you a little secret, though; heaven can be glimpsed, yes, for it is not a place but a state of being.  Simple. Deceptively so.  I can understand why some would want to call it a fairy tale....they never saw it, but its nothing you see.  Its something you feel! Because its not a place, its something that is unlimited in the possibilities.  I know someone in my life who got to touch upon the boundless possibilities that face us after we leave the earth and become unhitched from what seems to be the limits of our focus and awareness here....

In 1993 my grandmother lay slipping away from terminal cancer.  I was called by my brother who promised to make a call when she was the most lucid.  She hadn't been doing well. I talked to her and it was like she was lying under a pile of hay or heavy weights.  I told her I wanted to come see her, but she woke up and spoke loudly that I was to stay out there in Illinois and finish that first semester of graduate school.  Not having the funds to get in that first semester (as a full time out of state student), she had put up the extra money needed for me to establish my residency there.  Honoring her wishes, I did as she asked.  That was the last time I spoke to her in this world.  A few weeks after she died, I would speak to her again.  When I spoke of coming to Virginia to attend her funeral my brother explained that she didn't want me coming, that the best way to honor her passing was to just stay in school and get that first semester there right.  That was her wish. I again honored her wish.

Two weeks after her passing, I was researching a history paper I was working on.  I was in the library and it was about an hour before closing time.  I was in a giant room that was full of stacks and stacks of books.  As I stood there I heard someone whisper my name loudly and clearly from what sounded to come from right behind me.  It was a woman's voice, this I could tell, and it caused me to spin on my heel to see who had been so close to me to do that, and so quiet too!  As I turned I realized the voice had come from the next aisle over from me, so I took four steps to the end of the aisle and then looked down long row of shelves only to find no one there.  I then quickly scampered down the rows of shelves to try and find the trickster who had managed to escape so quietly. It turned out, I was the only person in the entire room.  The library was nearly empty on this night.  Riding my bike on the long ride home to my apartment I thought about the voice and wondered what on earth that was all about.  the whisper was so loud, so undeniable for being what it was.  "Parker!" it rang in my ears, sending a shiver up my spine.  Thing though, I never made a connection with my grandmother because it just didn't SOUND like her voice.

At about four in the morning I found myself suddenly awake.  This kind of behavior is unsual for me. I am a deep sleeper, so waking up like this is by no means the norm. I found myself in a state that was awake, lucid, but at a place where I could have easily drifted back into sleep.  I could have, had I  chosen to,  gotten up and gone to the bathroom.  As I lay there, I asked "I wonder how she is" and I heard or felt a voice from within me say "There you go, you have gone and done it now!  Here she comes!"  After that I began to become aware the sense that something was moving my way.  Its the same feeling you have when you stand near the railroad tracks and can feel a train approaching.  It was very much like this. And it had all the energy of a train.

I felt my being suddenly inflate like a balloon.  I could feel my consciousness expand, lighten, and stream with eddies and currents of energy. This was very similar to some episodes I knew were connected with the out of body state, having had some experiences with this when I was younger. This was what I thought of a the threshold state where I would move into this larger sensing where I could see the room all around me even if my eyes were closed.  I felt her slam into me like some crazy bull in a china shop!  It was more like having a kid slam into you before trying to wrestle you to the ground.....which was all in fun, of course.  While it was playful, it was also incredibly intense.  It was like a train slamming into me at full force with an explosion of sparkling of energy flying all over the place.  As all of this happened, as I suddenly felt her all through my awareness, I became aware of a rapid series of images or impressions.  I knew she had taken a tour of the physical universe, all at lightening speed.  I saw as Jupiter loomed large as she zipped past Saturn and other still darker planets.  I could feel she had been all over the place, and a feeling of awe and excitement pervaded her presence.  One of the most distinct feelings I got from her was her utter surprise, joy, and amazement that she had survived physical death.  Before she died, she showed signs of being afraid of letting go, to simply slip away and die instead of struggling to stay alive.  This was a woman who was a staunch Baptist her whole life, but she held a hidden fear or uncertainty, which is perfectly understandable.  Two weeks after her physical death, she had come back to pay me a visit. 

As I took this all in, I called out her name and said that she was alive!  "Yes!" she called back, her voice very clear in the center of my head.  I said how good she seemed, that she seemed to feel a lot better, and she agreed wholeheartedly.  Then I thought, its time to find out about what heaven is like.  This is my opportunity!  So I asked her.  I asked her if she got the angels on clouds with harps or did she get something else?  She didn't say a word, but since so much of what was "said" was through thought, I could feel her utter sense of amazement and inability to put it to any kind of word. She was utterly speechless.  How could anyone describe any of this? Given how she had been rendered into a glowing presence with trails of star fire flowing out from all around her, indeed how does one even put a word to this? There ARE no words.  We then just hung out quietly for a time and as I felt myself drift slightly, she said that she had to leave, that she loved me and to take care.  I bid her farewell and she shot off the same way she had come in.

A few days after this, I was on a conference call to my siblings to discuss issues related to my grandmother's estate. As we talked business I remembered the experience and gathered the courage to quickly relay some of what had happened to me.  My brother was all a chatter about how he had always felt that those who died had an interval where they were more available to us before going elsewhere.  My sister spoke up and explained that on the same night she had had a dream about our grandmother in which she was coming to say goodbye. It was an emotional moment for my sister and she said it was so vivid, she woke up crying.  For a moment I felt how this little realization circulated amongst us, sharing in its mystery, wonder, and the only kind of proof any of us needed that there was something more. But I can forgive someone thinking it doesn't exist, most certainly, because heaven isn't a place like earth is a place.  We are so used to being oriented to how things feel here that we cant conceive that "heaven" or the afterlife is not a "place" in the same way that your living room is a place.  Wherever you go, heaven is within.  I suppose if you are guilt-laden and fearful, hell could be some kind of reality, too.  Since so many people I have met who have had out of body experiences have explained that whatever you think in this state becomes reality, I tend to think that our beliefs most certainly form our experience not just here, but in the next experiences we have beyond our own physical "death."

Heaven is a transcendent state of being, yes.  It makes it hard for us to imagine what it could be like....and yet its not like its some realm that we do not come and go freely in dream or in altered or higher states of being. Heaven is not a place, it is a state of being. Surely. So maybe any story or fairy tale we try to tell or weave will be just like that.  Maybe in a way Stephen Hawking was right.  Maybe anything that we try to create is merely that; a creation.  How do we put to word the most amazing of our experiences?  We can't.  They are meant to be experienced.  In the end, though, all of this is like trying to prove the existence of love.  We can't.  But we know what we have experienced, right?

I wish we could reach a place where death isn't feared, but looked forward to with a sense of anticipation at a time when a body has reached its limit, or just feels yucky and is ready to go, to leap off that precipice to find itself soaring.

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I bring this up because it was the work of Raymond Moody Jr., a physician who noted how patients who were pronounced dead clinically often came back to consciousness with stories to tell of a place they had been. At a tender of age of eleven or twelve, I had read his ground-breaking book "Life After Life" and the way it had been written, which was free from any dogma or religious undertones, hooked me.  Here we had eyewitness accounts of people's OBSERVATIONS of what happened to them after death.  Some have argued that this is merely something that happens when the nerve cord begins to die, and thus the experiences are very similar....but is nothing but the result of how our system shuts down.  The problem with this theory is that there is a place where many who have died have been dead long enough to where there is not longer any electrical activity in the brain, where people reach a place where the brain can no longer record any more images or throw of material in some kind of feedback loop as the system shuts down.  For those who are genuinely curious, there would be a more open approach to this end of our experience, rather than dismissing it out of hand in this way.

Like kundalini, those who have survived clinical death often come back in such a way that they are changed.  Many exhibit abilities, much as those who have been awakened do.  I think that it strikes me as though somehow the change in physiology as a result of death, as well as a change in electrical or electromagnetic current has a way of resetting some part of the field of the person carrying the issues and other things that serve to hand them up.  In a sense, its as though some part of their stuff has been erased, quite literally, as they are given a blank slate in some ways.  When I say this, I don't mean that memory is lost, but perhaps in the process all of the things that were once problems simply evaporate into the ether.  Perhaps physical death can serve as the release that many who are going through an awakening work for years to release from their awareness and body field?

I think that when we make observations in science, saying one form of observation is better than another strikes me as a bit strange.  An animal behavioralist will watch animals and observe, taking notes, and then build a body of knowledge from that.  In just the same way, we have hundreds, if not thousands of people all going to this far country, this other world, and coming back to report their observations.  Some follow certain patterns, while others sound different.  In the same way that a dozen people could all go to India, they could all see very different things.  Some might see ramshackles homes of the poorest of the poor while others might see those same things as well as some of the temples.  One person might go and see a tiger, whereas another person might only see a monkey, another might see a strange bird.  Do we question the validity of the person in their observations, even though no one from the group of a dozen never saw a tiger, save for one?

Since this other realm of experience is not physical, it might be hard to pin it down in the traditional way.  But what about people who do projections of consciousness and meet up with long dead relatives?  And what do they see while in those places?  Perhaps while our world is more practical and permanent in the sense that it does not shift and change before us, suspending its own laws as we stand and watch, perhaps that we are prejudiced to those things which are different, and since its different, we do not have a good way of developing ways to approach it in a manner that makes sense.  Might be that we have to expand our scientific paradigm to allow for more room for considering that we know less than what we don't know, and that just because its not a part of our experience, that does not mean that it does not exist.