Heaven is an Opportunity

Many religions and cultures believe in some kind of afterlife or cycle of birth and death. In the Christian and Islamic religions, there are very strong elements of what heaven and hell might look like. But I feel that heaven is already here. It is the opportunity that currently presents itself.

If you are a believe that a deity of some sort created the earth, then how could such a place be anything less then perfect? If you are believe in only science, then you must notice that the configurations of energy that make it possible for matter to assemble in its current form, is a kind of harmonious and beautiful symbol of great potential.

If you want to find heaven, look to the natural world. The harmony that nature presents is nothing short of a kind of heavenly perfection. Nothing in the universe is wasted, and everything has a kind of renewable cycle of cooperation and interdependence.

The universe is constantly ending the old, and giving birth to the new. There is no place you can look in the entire universe that constant evolution is not taking place. Of coarse on such a large scale that kind of change is very slow going, but it is happening nonetheless.

If we look inside the very structure of our bodies we will find an uncountable number of atoms working together to create the very structure of our body. The atoms create the DNA, the DNA creates cells, the cells create the organs, and the organs together create our ability to be alive. If even a single atom were out of place, our bodies would not exist in the same way.

Part of the problem we have on this planet is that we feel that we have dominion over the earth. In actuality it is the other way around. We could not live without the earth, the earth as it turns out could live without us. If we had dominion over the earth, we could easily leave our atmosphere without any trouble. Of coarse we cannot leave, and we very much depend on everything that our planet provides in order to live.

The concept of Heaven is also a concept of creation. In many aspects we have created a living hell for many people around the world in the name of colonialism and progress. Our own short-sited inability to respect other people has created many terrible situations around the world. There are plenty of examples out there. I would like to highly recommend the book “Victims of Progress” by John H. Bodley. This book demonstrates very clearly that progress does not always equal happiness and cites many examples of exploitation in both the past and the present.

We as human beings are capable of amazing things. Heaven as a concept of creation, is the creation of positive change. We can begin to shift the world towards the positive, or we can continue down a path of exploitation and destruction.

When people think of heaven, they usually think of peace, harmony, and bliss. In this way we must understand that before we can create heaven on an external level, we must begin to cultivate it on an internal level. I cannot stress enough that this requires a critical analysis of everything we think, feel, and believe. If we are to have heaven as an internal representation of our conscious mind, then we must find the roots or our individual experiences in the first place.

As we begin to examine ourselves, there is a natural tendency to examine our social structures that we exist in. Once we have become critical about ourselves, it is often easier to be critical of the flaws in the surrounding social structures. So often we do not want to address major social issues or change, because it would require us to be critical of ourselves. It would require us to challenge the very belief structures (and I am not talking about religion but beliefs in general) that we build our lives on.

We as a species have come to a point where heaven is possible on earth, as well as within ourselves. Our technology and ingenuity gives us the ability to do amazing things. If we can focus on positive change on both an internal and external level, then Heaven is an opportunity that human beings should begin to utilize.

Michael Kilman