Looking for Heaven
"For the life of grace on Earth, is the beginning of the life of glory. Although he is a traveler in time, he has opened his eyes for a moment in eternity." ~Thomas Merton
LISTEN HERE:
https://soundcloud.com/annette-diamantopoulos/looking-for-heaven
... so many tender moments calling upon our deepest wound, the one that we protect and the one we want to forget.
We were witness to its unfolding this past weekend at the Academy Awards: we saw it with our eyes that measured - good, bad, right, wrong; we felt it with our bodies - the resonance of a punch thrown through words and returned through the hand; it all came together as some certainty that arises in what we believe and in the expectations that we put on ourselves and those around us.
And so, it strikes a cord because never before have we, as humankind, held more power over our collective story - more power to support the wellbeing of the world - than at this very moment that is erupting over there in the chaos of war, and over here in the disorder of fear and anxiety.
Never before have we been able to come together so spontaneously and instantly, so ready to inhabit our potential and embody our legacy!
So, why, then, are we feeling so f_ing powerless and why does life feel the same?
Living in Hell and Being in Heaven: "What on earth - and in heaven - do I mean by Integral?" ~Ken Wilbur
Human experience colors our world. Without awareness, we begin to believe what our colors mean, use them as a template to sort out other colors, and limit the potential of our shared pigment - I'm Blue and you're Red with no possibility of Purple.
Using the same filter/template - how life looks through me (my personal, unchallenged memories and beliefs) demands duality - time and space, reason and fear - returns the same experience: limited and conditional happiness that cuts us off from living spirit. Life feels heavy!
Realizing that we're living simultaneously on many planes through the impersonal (through the unedited confluence of all views) that’s what makes life feel light, returns us to grace.
On a psychic plane, it's called Hell because we're waiting for the lies we tell about ourselves and the world to come true. This conditions us to be cruel and unkind.
On a physical plane, it’s called Universal Law and certainty confirms that all will be returned. This conditions us to take responsibility for our energy.
On an intellectual plane, it's called Science where observation and experimentation seek to pre-determine all future truths. This conditions us to defend our body of ideas.
On a spiritual plane, it's called Heaven - the pathway of healing - where all planes merge in confluence, in Truth and Love. It conditions us to atone for all misunderstandings and to consciously align with our higher potential.
With any filter, we can look at a pen, a light, a car, a tree, a nation, the earth - any object really – and come instantly in-relationship with life -- though we relate through form, we're not separate: there's something outside ourselves that we animate with attention, navigate with practice, and negotiate with equanimity; it's one swift, integral movement of beingness.
Like walking and talking:
though we need to learn how to navigate through its textured terrain, build the muscles and resilience to negotiate it, the ground is not separate from the experience that propels our bodies forward; and though we need to learn the root of their meaning to be fully expressed, our words are not separate from the emotions and desires that fuel our passion.
If I believe, however, that fundamentally all these objects are separate from me, I disconnect mySelf from the heart of the matter. Yes! ... all appears outside my Self – I can point to it, measure it, and it is absolutely limited and conditioned – the very core of its beingness is integral to the experience called mySelf.
I exist because of this object, this singular co-creative experience, and I need this experience in order to transcend it - what Thoreau was pointing toward when he said, "Heaven is under our feet as well as over our heads.”
Falling Out of Grace. "Are you really here or are you just waiting for the next thing?" ~Ram Dass
When we forget where we are, we fall out of Grace.
In this integral moment, we're offered the potential to expand beyond the boundaries of identity -- the way a nail and hammer and wood expand into a house or the way memory, emotion, and thought contract into a home: vision and intention come together with wisdom to build a merciful future!
All are dependent and affect the other in creative ways - ways that cultivate empathy and intimacy and ways that stoke compassion and conscious living.
However, if we go about believing that everything and everyone outside ourselves is a tool to be used to get what we want - if we start measuring ourselves against others or if we worship what we build - then we won't be available to offer any part of ourselves respect and reverence and a sense of safety.
We'll take ourSelves for granted, feel jealous of others and invest and devote ourselves to the inevitability of unfulfilled personal desire; we will behave in ways that are separate - inflict harm on others in ways that we ourselves would or could never tolerate; we trap ourselves in the battles between Heaven and Hell - holding on tight to heaven and with fury, pushing away hell!
We don't need to travel to Ukraine to feel the wounds of war.
The real battle is inside ourselves - between what we know and what we believe, between what we want and what we have!
Just think about all the ways we fight and the weapons we use: the way we harm ourselves and others with our speech – the way we make the suffering of others the object of our happiness or the way suffering obscures our own; the way we color code to explain away the reasons for our behavior and the way we use color to predict the behavior of others; the way we sabotage, degrade and denigrate our own feelings and needs and the way it's confirmed in how we experience the world.
But, “I can see that I am separate,” you might say.
No doubt! Seen through the mind at a distance - through time and space - all appear separate. However, claimed up close, through the heart and the instant of awareness - this holy instant - we find something that can't be described nor denied:
That from which we come into being has no color and yet is all color - is limited and yet boundless - is no plane and illuminates on all planes.
We are! And, what we are precedes belief, and precedes experience.
Heaven is the truth we share: "I conceal myself from myself and reveal myself to myself," Rupert Spira
We exist, and we exist because of each other not in spite of each other!
The absolute capacity of the universe called by many names expands through this reality (this mind prism) and allows us to e-merge, to e-xist – to step out beyond the spark of thought and intention and to be returned to the Source of our own strength and vitality!
Everything that we see and feel and touch shares this existence - it's infinite!
Remember pen? The identity of pen is limited (it's housing with spring and ink that needs replenishment), however the being of "pen" and all that you can express through it ... unlimited! All we need ‘do’ is pick up the pen and ensure that it has ink so as to express our thoughts, emotions, or ideas. Like the pen, the only thing we need ‘do’ is to connect with this body (housing) and mind (ink) and allow Self/Soul to express our Being.
When we connect to the Source of Being, we become the creative authors of our experience, not a victim of another's.
"How do I find this place that resides in all beings?" Find a place that you know and not just believe.
Heaven is this truth we share - that the way I respond to this experience is the way of remembering and a way of clearing the path ahead.
Still, many of us are conditioned to think of heaven as a place - Pearly Gates and harps and angels - without suffering, hunger, or violence - and believe that certain kinds of people have some sort of "FastPass" to the front of the line.
These individuals edit life in extreme ways - isolate themselves from the variables that will challenge their Science. They wield a sword of discrimination - bearing concealed weapons of self-righteousness action or inaction, which fuels suffering through thoughts of separation:
God loves everyone except _____.
Suffering is a reliable Source: "To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. " ~ Friedrich Nietzsche
In this way, suffering is a very reliable Source. We recognize the lies we tell ourselves by the suffering they return - by the many ways they keep us apart in defense and fear and in a sense of privilege. In an instant, we know, "Ah! I'm in hell again!" and Truth is restored.
Buddhists call this Vajra - when principle and intelligence spark to enlighten us. We know this from the roots of the sounds that come together to tell us so:
Hea-ven, "haelen", means "to restore to sound health"; and "ven" - Proto-Indo-European, *wenh₁- means “to seek, desire, love, win”; and in Latin Venus means “beauty”. When we weave them together, we understand that heaven is the knowing that stops us from seeking happiness outside ourselves, from desiring to change the past, or from seeking to make the future certain; it's the understanding that my happiness is in the hands of my response, not limited by any stimulus or action outside mySelf.
Ram Dass told a story of his days in the foothills of the Himalayas with his teacher Neem Karoli Baba, whom he called Maharajji (great king). There was horrible suffering - death and famine - happening in Bangladesh and Ram Dass was beside himself, overwhelmed with emotion and a need to take action. He wanted to "do something!" - take his van to use an ambulance - and he wanted his teacher's blessing. But when Ram Dass approached him, he was still, calm, and unaffected by the horror that was taking place. Ram Dass was agitated, "how can you be so calm?" to which Maharajji responded, "Ram Dass, don't you see it's all perfect."
To Ram Dass (and maybe most of us) this was an "obscenity." How could horror and perfection possibly co-exist?
"Part of the process," said Ram Dass, "is realizing that you and I exist on more than one plane of awareness simultaneously, and one plane of suffering stinks, and on another suffering is great. The question is, can you balance those two things in your consciousness?"
Can you balance that truth and that beauty?
"The art of life asks us to be wide open and vulnerable - to be able to sit in our sorrow and confusion and in our failures and in unbearable pain of being alive, without pushing any of it away. Like right now ... the way my heart is breaking for the suffering of those close to me and those beyond me; if I can be with the simultaneous joy of the beauty of my life, I can hold it all!
This is difficult to comprehend for the mind, it wants to conceptualize or to identify- to believe and to expect (wants us to take sides, to agree so it can go on projecting certainty into the future). But this is not about going on. This is about being in the power of this experience - taking the time to allow compassion to rise and lead us, rather than to allow anger and fear to reign absolutely and unjustly.
I get it! This is hard to 'do' because it's not a 'doing' thing, it is a non-doing practice (also called non-dual) because it does not separate any part of experience when it feels like separating is exactly what will keep us alive - we go against our instincts; and it doesn't pit us against an experience from the past (heaven and hell) when it feels like the past is the only thing we know for certain - that that happened - and so the ability to discriminate - to discern - offers us a baseline for resilience and response.
Like Heaven, it's not a place outside ourselves, not separate from where we are and from what's happening - it's here! ... in the very pathway (ven) of this shared well of experience: this wisdom - the recognition that I am You and you are me and if I harm you, I inevitably harm me and if I harm me, I inevitably harm you.
Embodying this understanding shifts you, me, and every one three degrees beyond us.
Let's be clear, there are times when action is absolutely necessary - to protect our body and home and our freedom to respond to life - but we must practice in ways that ensure that the action taken is not violence in disguise (against ourselves or others). And, though compassion may be our highest power, it's not always the action that's being called upon - it may need to be earned.
Wisdom shows us the way! And, discrimination is the practice that allows us to use wisdom as a sword, in Sanskrit called viveka - this ability to be still, quiet, not pulled and pushed by the confusion of our emotions. The non-doing action of presence allows us to strengthen our ability to discern - this way or that way.
Can you be still?
... listen deeply and widely and you will recognize the call:
Wisdom heralds, "Behold the Kingdom of God is within you." (Luke 17:21).The mind says, “I’ve been there!” the body responds, “I remember!” and, the Heart beats, “this way!”
Isn't "Discrimination" Bad?
**Discrimination/Viveka as it is used in this response is not a weapon that divides and separates.
It's an attentional muscle that helps us discern suffering: when two objects (beliefs and experiences) "are mixed up with each other in a way that is not easy to separate."
Without attention and awareness, it is used by the mind to quantify that which is of ourselves or outside ourselves - to defend. With attention, we notice the pull to do so and shift perception toward an inner intention of restored health, one that contributes to a wellspring of mutual growth - the power of our solidarity and inherent wholeness.
These words in Matthew:13 strike:
“For this people's heart is waxed gross and his ears are dull of hearing, and their eyes they have closed. But blessed are your eyes for they see, and your ears for they hear. For verily I say unto you, that many prophets and righteous men have desired to see those things you see...and have not seen them. And to hear those things which you hear...and have not heard them.”