Heaven: Getting There

So let’s consider the range of possibilities here for getting our tickets stamped for this eternally fun party we call heaven.

Staying with reincarnation for this issue, I suspect that our lives from one to the next actually have something to do with evolving spiritually. Otherwise, it would all be hopelessly redundant, an inexorable revisiting of futile existences. We have to assume there is a purpose and in that purpose I propose that joy is connected. And the concept of heaven is intended obviously to facilitate that joy. So: life after life, adopting form after form, we may evolve into a greater spiritual being, until perhaps it is clear that any further rebirth in this form is not necessary. But as to what triggers the spiritual evolution we need to contemplate most thoughtfully.

Allow me to expand: By permitting godliness in every human interaction are we not associating ourselves with something divine and by such familiarity are we not preparing ourselves for an esteemed relationship with a constantly divine eminence? By acting charitably with all God’s children are we not perhaps pleasing the creator?

And I slipped in there an assumption by using the word children, I assumed that yes, we are children of the creator, thoughts given into light of the personality of the infinite. So if we are children then we have to consider that God, this sublime personality, is parental. The earth and all of its complex ecosystems and spectacular vistas and myriad scents and mysterious sounds is a kind of House of God, a continuum which permits us steadfast enjoyment were we to permit it, and allow ourselves to be facilitated in it. But for that we would need to be alive.

We are not alive. We pretend existence. That’s why we’re so enamoured of professional pretenders. They make it all look so real, so dramatic. And so we emulate the actors and in our own minds we are stars. But this is folly and pretense. Our spiritual growth is stunted by these illusions of living. Living is what God is doing. And while feeling neglected (I would imagine), nonetheless that source of the eternal streams of life has all the intentions in the world to continue giving life and making the way passable for us, each of us to live.

You can tell you’re not alive by your attention span of life. You can detect that you are checking out while life is proceeding. In this culture, an abbreviated attention span is what is precisely being cultivated. To wit, the flashing commercials. The fast-paced episodic nature of most everything on TV, especially the sitcoms. So when you turn off your awareness, your capacity to absorb reality, where do you imagine the palpable joy is going to be experienced, vicariously through the television actors, or that story they’re telling you is life? No luck there, pal.

When you are unaware not only are you not enjoying, you are not even living. Your spirit has closed down, your eyes glaze over and a sign out front reads, “Nobody home.” Something akin to all those ipod people.

Now what good host would include such a dolt on his invitation list to heaven?