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Essays on Discover the Power Within You
What is Heaven and Hell?
[<- Go back to What About Evil?]
[Essays on Discover the Power Within You] [Unity
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"Hunger in the Kingdom"
Many of us hunger after a truer understanding of the meaning of heaven
and hell. Even the metaphysical interpretations we have taken in, are less
than fully satisfying.
It is a good idea to turn to our source of spiritual sustenance in the
outer world, the Bible. Surely heaven, and how to enter its kingdom, must
be the most important topic covered in its pages.
It would make sense in writing any literary work to put the most important
idea at the very beginning, and then develop and expand on that idea in
the following chapters.
This is how the Bible is organized also. The most important idea in
the Bible is contained at the beginning, in Genesis. The rest of the Bible,
through all of the prophets and to the last word of Revelation, is a continuation
of the same divine idea.
Many of us have come from a religious tradition that sees the Bible
in a certain way, and we are used to having blinders on so tightly that
we carry thru these assumptions even as we attempt to interpret the Bible
metaphysically.
For example, it is easy to think of Genesis as an explanation of something
that happened long ago and perhaps far away. The literalist thinks of the
world being created physically in seven days. (Can you see God sitting
down after six days and saying, "Thank Me It's Friday!")
Even as we rethink the seven days of creation as the develop- ment of
the structure of Mind, we may still think of it as a process that is now
more or less complete. "God created these seven layers of Mind, and now
we are here, and it's over."
But the true metaphysician sees the Bible in a greater Light. He or
she understands that the Bible is a description of each individual, and
that the Bible describes that individual now.
If the Bible is a spiritual work, then it is so because it describes
our spiritual existence. As spirit, we exist before the foundation of the
world and even to the end of the age. This means we are more than Mind,
more than even spirit describes.
The Bible, in describing us as existing in spirit, soul, and body, is
a timeless work. It is helpful in thinking of and using the Bible to consider
it to be describing your current state of being, how your mind exists,
now, in this moment.
The seven days of creation are the seven layers of your mind, the light,
and the I Am. They exist and operate in this moment and in every moment
of your being.
This Genesis picture is of what is occurring now, inside this moment,
from this beginning of a quantum of time, to its completion in your understanding.
Now God is saying, let there be light. Now he is dividing the day from
the night. Now he is separating the waters by a firmament. Now he is creating
the plants and animals. Now he is creating man, and giving him all fruit-bearing
plants to eat, and every animal to name. Now he is pronouncing it all good
- that is - his domain.
In each moment, you are created anew.
There are philosophies today that take the new wine of metaphysical
thinking, and attempt to place it in the old bottles of original sin and
dualistic thinking. To the thirsty man, even muddy water tastes sweet.
To think that there is a spiritual world, which is real and good, and
a physical world, which is illusion and somehow lesser, is to falsely enthrone
self-pity and self-delusion as spiritual law.
To think we have somehow offended God, and therefore are sentenced to
live on Earth until we learn to submit to his will, is to fatally confuse
guilt and grace.
We are here on Earth, in the kingdom of the heavens, because we have
worked hard for the right to be here. It is in this place that God rests,
not because he is tired, but because he wants us to grow up and make choices
ourselves.
Hell is the desire to escape from this responsibility. It feels so bad
because it is unnatural. Anything that goes against the Tao, the way the
spiritual laws work, cannot persist.
This explains why so many spiritual seekers are still unhappy. They
seek to have God be responsible for their decisions. They do not realize
that you "Let go and let God" AFTER you make the value judgement of what
you want.
The gates of hell cannot prevail against the Christ awareness, the understanding
that you are responsible for every part of your mind. It is the willingness
to take on this responsibility that is the kingdom of the heavens.
Although they should know better, many metaphysicians take the phrase
"the kingdom of God is within you" to refer to a place, even if it is a
place within mind. They then unconsciously or even consciously desire to
go there, and preferably stay there.
But Jesus was saying that the "control of mind is within you", in the
sense that the innermost parts of your mind are already functioning in
this state of consciousness, and you can take your conscious attention
there to learn how to bring this state of being outward.
The mustard seed mind picture is designed to show us that the kingdom
of God is not meant to be either hidden or analyzed into a tasty paste,
but to be planted in our outward awareness and allowed to grow and develop
until it becomes our greatest growth.
If you leave the kingdom of God within you, you are missing the message
of Christ. Bring it out and share it with every part of your being. Break
the bread and feed the five thousand.
Then no part of you will go hungry.
[Go forward to What is Non-Resistance ->]
[Essays on Discover the Power Within You] [Unity
on the Web Home Page]
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