Heaven and hell

We speak often of creating heaven on earth by December 21, 2012 on this website. Before we go any further, we should describe what heaven is.  For us, heaven is living in the love, light, vibration, and spirit in the moment.  Throughout this website, we speak of raising our consciousness to achieve this heavenly experience.  What does that mean? 

To help us understand the concept of raising our consciousness, let’s start with the simple concepts of self-conscious thoughts & ideas.

I’m not good enough.  I’m not skinny enough.  I’m not clever enough.  I’m not lovable.  They’re out to get me.  No one likes me.  They talk about me behind my back.  They hate me.  I hate them.

Do any of these ring a bell?  These are the obsessive thoughts that we cling to, that create the darkness in our lives.   These are the thoughts that create our living hell.   These are the self-inflicting thoughts that close off the pearly gates and our ability to experience heaven.

Original Sin

If we look at the story of Adam and Eve, it was a change in consciousness that changed the Garden of Eden from heaven to a living hell.   In Genesis, Adam and Eve ran around naked and experienced heaven until they ate an apple from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and as a result became self-conscious of being naked.  Perhaps being self-conscious was our original sin; perhaps this story is a metaphor for the evolution of our species to being self-aware and, as a result, self-critical. Eating that apple is a metaphor for the moment humanity evolved to the point of self-actualization, creating a living hell where once only heaven existed.

Seven Deadly Sins

When we think of hell, we tend to think of “sin”.  The word “sin” is actually an archery term for “off the mark”.  “Sin” means our thinking is off the mark.   And if we look at the “seven deadly sins” of the Christian faith, they aren’t actually actions but are emotional prisms through which we choose to view the world and live our lives.   

Wrath – anger or rage

Greed – excessive thoughts of or desires for wealth

Sloth – laziness or indifference

Pride – a desire to be more important than others

Lust – excessive thoughts or desires of a sexual nature

Envy – desires for other’s belongings

Gluttony – excessive thoughts or desires for food.

If we choose to observe the world through angry, lustful, or prideful eyes, we won’t see the light of heaven.  If we choose to see the world through greed or envy, we won’t experience the love of heaven.  And if we choose a life laziness and gluttony, we won’t feel the spirit of heaven.  For this website, earth is already heaven – but to experience it, we, the human race, must evolve our emotional prism from fear-based emotions and “sin” to love-based emotions.     

Raising our consciousness

Ultimately, the only way to raise your consciousness and is first, love yourself (with compassion, not arrogance)  and second, love others.  The second becomes much easier once we’ve mastered the first. No matter what the perceived worldly human experience appears to be through your self-critical ego-mind, if you can quiet the-self conscious critics and see your experiences  through the prism of love, your reality will be love.  You’ll experience heaven on earth.  Although this website looks at spirituality through everything from neurology to quantum mechanics, raising consciousness and experiencing heaven is not rocket science.  It’s just learning how to turn your fear-based emotions into love.

Creating heaven on earth

Creating heaven on earth is our planetary goal.  Obviously, that’s more difficult  than a single person experiencing the light, love, and vibration of heaven at a single moment.   But if we can get enough individuals to experience heaven on earth through a prism of love, and share this experience through social networks, this will ripple out.  It ripples through simple cause and effect, through mirroring neurons, through changing our noosphere. And through enough rippling changes to love-based thoughts, the human race can reach critical mass and experience a quantum leap in evolution to experience heaven on earth as a species. 

We’re already been seeing the power of online social networks to change consciousness, with twitter campaigns and Facebook groups stirring up genuine political movement, changes in policies, and shared awareness.  We believe it can be used the same way to change our planetary consciousness toward spiritual evolution – by creating a belief that love on a planetary scale is possible, even inevitable.

Evolutionary Mapquest

The evolutionary mapquest of the human race might be as simple as going from an evolving body to an evolving mind to an evolving spirit.  From a one-cell amoeba, to survival of the fittest & king of the jungle, to the Age of Reason, to the Information Age, to the Age of Love, Light, and Spirit – our new age of enlightenment.    And we believe we can accomplish this, by December 21st, 2012.

But the greatest of these is Love

How can religion, a touchstone of morality and compassion, seem to create hatred? Perhaps it’s not religion that’s at fault, but how we attach ourselves to religion. If we detach our egos from our beliefs, we can follow our beliefs more truly – and learn to love.

How can religon invoke hatred? Some argue that the problem is believing in one true God. If you believe that, you have to be partisan and believe the other religions just have it completely wrong. But let’s look more carefully at the monotheist religions. Christianity, Judaism, and Islam are all Abrahamic religions, named after Abraham, the father of Israel. Abraham had two sons: Isaac, through whom the Christian and Jewish lines descend; and Ishmael, the ancestor of Muhammad, the Muslim prophet of God. That first divide sowed the seeds of the Crusades: almost two hundred years of bloodthirsty war. Christianity and Judaism separated with the birth of Jesus. Years of anti-Semitism and persecution followed, while Judaism and Islam still fight a horrific battle over their shared Holy Land. Did religion cause this violence?

Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all preach love – above all. In the New Testament of the Bible, Jesus says, “The greatest of these is Love.” Judaism says that God chose the Jewish people to set an example of holiness and ethical behavior, through what they do. In Islam, one of the five pillars of faith is charity, or zakāt. This is literal charity, giving 2.5% of their wealth to the poor, but it’s also more: it’s sharing happiness among God’s creation, be it through kindness, smiles, or taking good care of the environment and animals. Sikhism, another major monotheist religion, declares that everyone is equal and should be treated equally, and that a good life involves meditating on God and good deeds to others.

Other religions also put love and compassion at the center. For example, the Hindu ethical code, Dharma, asks its followers to act in service to God and to humanity. Shinto, a Japanese faith, promotes harmony and purity in everything – not just in actions, but in a pure, sincere heart. Paganism says, “An’ it harm none, do as you will.” Buddhism has five precepts that all its believers should follow, and the most important is "Avoid killing or harming any living thing."

So what’s going wrong? The hatred and violence didn’t end with the crusades. It’s not restricted to the war in the Middle East, or to terrorists. It breathes every time we look at hate and suspicion at those who don’t follow our beliefs. It breathes when we condemn people who don’t do what we think is right. It breathes when we think like the Pharisees. It breathes in every angry hate-filled campaign. But however strongly we feel about something, hate, anger, and violence can never be right. You can’t defend your religion by breaking its most important rule – love. So what do we do?

The religions aren’t wrong – they preach love. We’re wrong. It’s not religion that’s at fault, it’s how we relate to our religions. The problem is the ego-mind, which says “my beliefs”. The important word must never be “my” – it must be “beliefs”. The belief must always matter more than ourselves. We have to let go of our egos and our need to be right, so we can put the true message first. And the true message doesn’t say hate the unbeliever, scourge them into obedience, harangue them into belief – it says LOVE. Love everyone. Help everyone. Hurt no-one. And as that little voice rises up saying, “Yes, but…” – let go of it. That’s not the religious creed speaking: that’s the ego, needing to be right. Let go.

The key is detachment. The ego will always exist and want to be right, but we don’t have to obey it. We can put our beliefs above our egos. And until we do, we’re like hungry people holding a recipe for cake, saying “Isn’t this great?” But the recipe isn’t the cake – it’s how to make cake. Having the recipe is not eating the cake. We have to follow the recipe. The recipe says, in every different language, love one another. This has to be more important than being “right” and not following the recipe can never be right.

In the end, no matter what religion you practice, spirituality is not an intellectual exercise that is either right or wrong. It's a state of being, where you experience light, love and a feeling of connection. The need to be right only puts up a wall to this state of being. Detachment from our ego-mind’s need to be right tears down this wall and opening our hearts magnifies the experience of this state. And for the human race to learn how to detach ourselves, while practicing our most fundamental beliefs, will be the corner stone of our spiritual growth and evolution.

How can we detach? The ego says, “But they’re wrong!” – let go. We mustn’t attach to religion, pinning our egos to it – we must follow the beliefs. And the same is true of this blog: this is not The Way, this is a way. And here are some of the ways to detach. Feel free to add your own in the comments.

• • Christianity: "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven" (New Testament)
• • Christianity: “Now these three remain – faith, hope, and love. But the greatest of these is love.” (New Testament)
• • Islam: “Yet of mankind are some who take unto themselves (objects of worship which they set as) rivals to Allah, loving them with a love like (that which is the due) of Allah (only) - those who believe are stauncher in their love for Allah.” (Al-Baqara)
• • Hinduism: “One who performs his duty without attachment, surrendering the results unto the Supreme Lord, is unaffected by sinful action, as the lotus is untouched by water.” Bhagavad-Gita
• • Buddhism: "Whenever thinking imbued with sensuality [or ill will or harmfulness] had arisen, I simply abandoned it, destroyed it, dispelled it, wiped it out of existence." (Thanissaro)
• • Buddhism: “When his mind is rightly-gone, rightly developed, has rightly risen above, gained release, and become disjoined from sensual pleasures, then whatever fermentations, torments, & fevers there are that arise in dependence on sensuality, he is released from them. He does not experience that feeling.” (Thanissaro)
• • Sikhism: “The answer is simple: without this absolute surrender of the last vestiges of ego and selfhood and without such complete absorption in the object of one's love, one cannot attain that unwavering concentration of all one's faculties which is the prerequisite of all inner progress. Absolute love and self-surrender are only other aspects of complete and flawless concentration.” (Adi Granth)
• • Judaism: "You shall not covet...anything that is your neighbor's... You shall not desire your neighbor's house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, or his ox, or anything that is your neighbor's. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also". (Old Testament)
• • Baha'i: “by detachment is intended the detachment of the soul from all else but God.” …and… "The essence of detachment is for man to turn his face towards the courts of the Lord, to enter His Presence, behold His Countenance, and stand as witness before Him." (Tablets of Baha'u'llah)
• • Taoism: “Fame or Self: Which matters more? Self or Wealth: Which is more precious? Gain or Loss: Which is more painful? He who is attached to things will suffer much. He who saves will suffer heavy loss. A contented man is rarely disappointed. He who knows when to stop does not find himself in trouble. He will stay forever safe.” (Tao Te Ching)