Bringing Heaven Down to Earth. A famous statement.

From the perspective of duality, they are seen to be two different places, two different locations.

If we begin exploring metaphysics, we may learn about vibration and learn that what we call heaven may simply be a different vibrational frequency, perhaps a different state of consciousness. Thus the goal is to raise our vibrations or raise our level of consciousness. Perhaps we channel down higher vibrational energy, we do what we can to raise our own individual frequencies, or we raise the earth’s energy getting it higher and higher, closer to that which we envision to be heaven. Lots of different ways to play and love.

Yet there comes a time when, perhaps when the vibration gets high enough, I dunno.. not to sure about the metaphysical explanation here, but it is seen so clearly that there is no difference between heaven and earth, not even a vibrational difference. NONE. The two are one.

Heaven and earth. Not two, not two. As Jesus said, The Kingdom of God is at hand. It’s here! It’s here! (Turns out the guy was onto something…)

Byron Katie once brought up an amazing point. She asked what it would be like if you actually went “from earth to heaven” and took all your suffering ego-based thoughts with you. Would you even experience heaven at all or would you continue to experience only the product of your unquestioned thoughts?

The veil of separation makes it seem like heaven is somewhere else, somewhere other than LITERALLY RIGHT HERE AND NOW and so we go out seeking something, somewhere, wherever it is. Clearly if I’m not experiencing it then it must mean that it’s not here…

Instead of seeking something else somewhere, we can question our thoughts, explore our perceptions, look within. Do the spiritual work as suggested. As the distorting glasses are recognized and taken off, we see THIS MOMENT clearly as it IS, not as we *think* it is, but as it ACTUALLY is. BIG difference…

It’s not a mental seeing.

Clear Seeing

There is purity and there is distortion. The task is not to find something which is not here, but to clear ourselves of distortion, misunderstanding, false notions, and limited ideas.

Strip away and let go of all that leads to suffering, separation, and misunderstanding, and see what remains.

Pure. Natural. Radiant. Exquisite. Beyond All Words. Living as every word. Giving birth to all thought. The mother of all creation. The scent of a flower. The coo of a baby. The fart of that same baby. Everything. All of it.

The very light that spins all of existence into manifestation. Right here. Right here.

Our true home we never left, except for in our imaginations.

Is it a lucid dream? A dream without a dreamer. An experience without an experiencer.

An understanding of the great Unknown. The clear recognition that there’s nothing to know, only a pure being of that which you innately are.

The poetry of creation, the sounds of silence, the writings of no one, the laughter of the one.

Om.

Union by Mario Duguay

There’s an old saying that the only thing permanent is impermanence. Our life experience is one of learning better ways to interact with this changing flow.

And yet simultaneously there is this eternal unchanging presence. It seems to be part of neither existence nor nonexistence… It is a manifestation of nothing. It is unmanifest. It is. All that can really be said is that it is. We can go within and tap into this and find that when resting in this place, it’s as if we are home, and I mean really home. In this place there is no longing for anything more, no need to get anything, and truly no sense of lack. There is no separation for there is nothing else to be separate from. All else is just appearance, and yet the appearance is not other than this. In this pure being, all is divinely perfect just as it is, including the appearance of problems and pain, and yet it doesn’t invalidate the negative aspects of Allness. To simply be is itself already completely sufficient. Nothing more is needed.

In this space there is no anxious need for a particular outcome, as if one outcome would somehow lead to more fulfillment than another. It’s interesting… when we release our attachment to the outcome, we find this place of perfect peace that is what it is, independent of outcome. It is a space beyond the mind, transcendent and yet completely grounded, particularly when the lower chakras are open and balanced. It’s as if the physical body is being used as a vessel to bring the peace of heaven down to earth. This peace is expressed through a mind/body organism.

The Experiences

No experience is permanent, nor need it be. There is a place for peace, a place for passion, and even a place for war. Granted the energy of war doesn’t exist in this spaceless space, but that energy does have a place in lower realms of time and space. In this peace there is an openness to all experience, a spaciousness that welcomes every event untouched and undistorted. There is no fear of “losing this experience” because it’s not about the clinging to any one particular experience, but the seeing of what lies beyond all experience and supports every experience, noticing every experience and allowing it all to flow.

I understand that one may think that the experience of openness to all experience is just another experience, and yes this is a valid perspective, but that to which I am pointing is a non-experience that can be experienced. It’s hard to put into words exactly. Rather than try to explain it, I’d rather just point to this previous posting about traps that can lead back to separation. Rather than saying “avoid this trap,” I am simply saying that it is helpful to be aware of it. One way or another, when the time is right it will come into awareness. Life experience is a wonderful teacher and I think it’s something that people need to experience for themselves. Falling for the trap is totally fine. It’s happened here several times. That contrast and repeated opportunity to fall for the trap yet again or see beyond it really helps with our conscious evolution. Learning by trial and error.

There is an opening and closing that is possible. When the fear arises, “I hope I don’t lose this experience,” that feeling when followed by focused attention and then concern immediately begins a closing experience, but when both the fear and the experience of opening/closing are seen to be happening within this non-thing, it’s as if the spaciousness becomes seen to an even greater extent. The attempt to force this opening also begins the closing, but the recognition of the forcing as again an experience arising within this automatically creates the experience of reopening. It’s like one must allow the experience to be present exactly as it is without getting sucked into the experience or trying to manipulate it any way in order for the experience to continue. It’s an interesting paradox. You can have it so long as you don’t grasp at it. Simply observe and enjoy, but don’t get caught up in it. In a sense, it’s almost like it has its own wisdom and for it to open, it requires us to let go of trying to control it so that it can take over on its own.

Some say that wise people learn from the mistakes of others, and this is valid to a certain extent. Taken to an extreme, however, one would simply study all day without actually experiencing life for themselves. No judgement as this is one of the infinite number of ways that All That Is has of experiencing itself, and all ways are equally valid, yet life is here to be experienced to whatever degree that we so choose. As with many things in life, to really *get it*, theory just ain’t enough.

The Doer

Surrendering happens, but there is no one to surrender. The dissolution of the surrenderer happens and it seems that only in retrospect was the surrenderer dissolved. No one did it. It just kinda dissolved on its own, but there wasn’t actually a surrenderer here in the first place, only the appearance of one and the experience in one. The nonexistence of the surrenderer, however, does not invalidate surrendering itself. Surrender continues to be, regardless of whether or not there is someone here to do the surrendering.

There is the surrenderer, the thinker, the breather, the creator, the doer, and so on and so forth… all identities that dualisically set themselves apart from the action they perform. The seeing beyond duality requires not the cessation of certain actions, but the seeing beyond the one who would do the actions. Hence the relevance of Self-inquiry.

OM

OM makes sense suddenly. I’ve seen people use this word before and wondered why. Now it feels like it is the primordial voice of God, like the first physicalized manifestation of Silence. OM is powerful and very enjoyable. Aum is fine too, but it doesn’t seem to have the same depth of being as OM, as if Aum is the feminine counterpart to OM. I am now spontaneously OM’ing, just for the sheer joy of it. I’ve never been into mantras before, but now OM is almost orgasmic to the soul. It’s like singing the name of God. The point of chanting OM isn’t to accomplish something in this case or arrive at some destination. It itself is its own reward, the way singing is about the song itself, not about getting to some destination at the end of the song. OM itself is the point. It is a sort of divine kiss. The mind is somewhat fascinated by this, but not too terribly so. There’s an overwhelming presence that far outshines any experience.

And so now I let go of this experience, enjoying it as it is, and allowing the flow of experience to continue. The allowing of the flow of experience is wonderful too, far more enjoyable than resistance to experience.

OM

Conscious.TV did an interview with Catherine Noyce about what it’s like when the identity of the separate self is lost.

I absolutely LOVE this ~40 min. interview because Catherine is such an ordinary person describing the ordinary experience of the awakened state of being everything and nothing, the state that so many people desire to experience. What Catherine has to share is so authentic and so on the mark, again pointing out that it’s not about the fireworks and the spiritual experiences. It’s about THIS aliveness that’s right here right now. She’s not a spiritual teacher. She’s just another regular person who’s woken up and realized who she is.

A few of the topics discussed in this interview include:

• What changes upon awakening
• How life is experienced once there’s no longer a separate self present
• The loss of the seeker
• If the negative emotions are still experienced or if there’s just permanent joy
• If one liberated person can tell if another person is liberated
• The supposedly enlightened people who have problems with sex, money, and power
• If fleeting glimpses into one’s true nature even matter
• If she still has dreams and goals in life that she projects out into the future
• Connecting to universal wisdom
• What (if anything) someone can do to wake up

www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbM2EiOc49U

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXzkVUh3DJA

www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZOcZ8MfTfU

www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8J5d2FHVxI

www.youtube.com/watch?v=82Re_X3Mvnk

If this interview resonates with you, the book mentioned at the end is Everyday Enlightenment: Seven Stories of Awakening, of which Catherine’s story is one of the the seven shared, I presume. Also included in the book is Jeff Foster, an awakened author and spiritual teacher who has also been featured here before.

Reader Question:

Hey Ariel, how’s everything?

For a long time I pondered the meaning of the phrase “Jesus died for our sins”. In the past you made some very good interpretations of bible quotes, but if I remember correctly, you never talked about the christian concept of Jesus dying for our sins.

Do you have any explanation of this phrase?

Thanks a lot, and have a nice weekend,

F.

My Response:

Good question. You’re right that it’s not something I’ve ever talked about here.

So what’s the story taught in Christianity? Someone please correct me if I’m wrong because I really haven’t studied the Bible much, but from what I understand it seems that the idea was that basically the God of the Bible wanted to wipe out all of humanity as a result of them being such sinners. I’m not sure who thought up this plan, but Jesus came down to take the karmic burden upon himself. Instead of humans rising up beyond their egos to get into heaven (become enlightened/reach nirvana), humans now only have to believe in Jesus as being their lord and savior and they’re magically free of all that they have created, karmically speaking… It’s a much easier task, but people should still strive to be good people and live like Jesus did. They’ll never be able to fully do it though. After all, Jesus is more holy than they are. Jesus is perfect. Humans are mere mortals. They are “just human.” The Divine and the human are separate in this respect. We can only be one and not the other. (Oooh, separation.) Jesus must have been Divine. Afterall, he wasn’t born like a regular human. His mom was a virgin. The Divine doesn’t typically take the form of a human.

I dunno about you, but a bunch of pieces to this story feel way off. Let’s explore…

Karmic Debt

With respect to Jesus dying for our sins, maybe there was some agreement made for Jesus to take upon himself the karmic burden of humanity for a while, either temporarily or permanently, as a way to make it easier for people to go through their spiritual process. I honestly don’t know what agreements were made on that level. Either way, people are eventually going to have to take responsibility for the energy they created and rise above it. Since there is ultimately only One of us here, whatever YOU create and cause another to experience, YOU will experience yourself, even if it happens after the death of this particular incarnation.

There’s a wonderful metaphor about karmic debt I once heard. How does repaying financial debt work? Let’s say you borrow $100. Well then someday you’ll have to repay that $100. (Let’s assume there’s no interest.) If you have only $100, then paying back that $100 now is going to significantly affect your net worth. Now let’s say that the debtor allows you to repay that $100 5 years from now. In the meantime you take that $100, invest it, and turn it into $1,000,000. 5 years later when it’s time to repay that loan, paying back the $100 will be a snap. No problem at all. Your bank account will hardly notice the difference.

So perhaps Jesus dying for our sins was a way for us to delay the karmic effects of our actions so that we have a chance to raise our level of consciousness to a point where the results of our actions don’t impact us as deeply as they once would have, allowing us to consciously grow without getting overwhelmed with too much too soon.

To give a silly and overly-simplistic example, let’s say you insult someone by calling them a dummy. Such an action arises out of a particular level of consciousness that has a judgment around the word dummy. If someone was to call you a dummy back, you’d probably get really pissed off about it and fume about it for who knows how long. If, on the other hand, the return of your action is delayed so that you have the chance to heal your energies surrounding the word dummy, then when you get insulted back, it won’t be an issue for you any longer and you’ll just shrug it off. You will have demonstrated to yourself that you have grown. If Jesus really helped us out in this way, what a tremendous gift this was, and if so, thank you man!

Things may have been set up that way, but if so it would only be a temporary thing. What you put out is what you get back. Everything is here and now. There is nowhere else for what you create to go! There is no escaping your karma. There is only the rising above it (or not).

Getting In To Heaven

The idea is that Jesus died for our sins to help us get into heaven. Well what is heaven anyways? I basically define it as living in unity with God, in a state of oneness. It is living in a state of wholeness, living in a state of non-separation with the Divine. Heaven is not so much a literal location but more a level of consciousness. People talk about going “up to heaven” as if heaven was literally “up” in the clouds somewhere. The word “up” is a pointer more towards vibrational frequency and level of consciousness. You raise your vibration and raise your level of consciousness. It’s an internal transformation, not a trip that’s literally taken through space, as if we literally travel from earth to heaven. From this perspective, the concept of “bringing heaven down to earth” makes a lot more sense, doesn’t it?

To do this we have to die to our limited moral identities (egoic separate self) and wake up to our true selves (which is already one), but the thing is that our physical bodies don’t have to actually die to go through this process! In the east this process is referred to as enlightenment. In Christianity it is taught that you can only get to heaven after you die, and while this is true, this mistakenly assumes that the “you” that dies must be the physical incarnate you. This is a mistake in understanding.

“The Kingdom of God is at hand.” You don’t have to physically die to wake up. Who you think you are does, yes, but who you really are wakes up from who you think you are. Every person who has ever become enlightened has demonstrated this. Jesus was simply one man of many to live this and teach this.

This moment already is the promised land. We only see it otherwise when we believe in thought as if it was literally “the truth” (the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon), when we fill our consciousness with the energy of fear and separation and thus misperceive reality.

No One Can Do It For You

One thing I’ve learned about spiritual teachers is that they can’t do it for you. You have to do the work, whatever that entails. You have to raise your consciousness. You need to stop resisting what is. You need to start loving what is. You have to wake up. Ultimately the point is about who YOU really are, not about the guru who gets you there. Respect and appreciation for the teacher, but it’s about realizing YOURSELF to be the One and the All. YOU are the greatest gift you could give yourself.

To say that someone else can do it for you is fantasy. It’s delusional. Can an enlightened teacher help you out? YES. Can meditating on their energy or being in their presence or following their advice benefit you? Certainly. Can they do the work of surrendering your ego for you or receiving the grace of God? NOPE.

To suggest otherwise is a copout, IMHO. That’s choosing to not take responsibility for your own life which is incredibly disempowering. There is tremendous value and wisdom in surrendering to a higher power, yes, but this is not that.

The ego would love if it you could just accept someone as your lord and savior and have that be enough. Man that’d make enlightenment, awakening to infinite love, getting into heaven, and all the other spiritual prizes so easy, wouldn’t it? Sure, just adopt this belief system, do these particular actions, pay enough money, apply this strategy, or whatever else and you’ll get what you want, but in my experience, it just doesn’t work that way. It just really doesn’t.

It’s basically about surrendering the ego, not accomplishing something with it. You can’t force yourself there.

So is the story about Jesus dying for our sins true? Perhaps there’s something to it. I don’t know. Someone build a time machine and let’s go back in time and ask him. Either way, whatever happened, what’s done is done. It’s history. Here we are in this day and age. Now what?

If we assume there is something to the story, does that absolve us of karmic responsibility to rise above the egoic level of consciousness and give us a sort of get out of jail free card with respect to retuning back home to a state of oneness and getting into heaven?

Nope. Not so much.

Surrender and Letting Go

Edit: This last part here has been added after the original posting of this post. It is a story about Ramana pulling a Jesus and having someone who came to him feeling really guilty about being a sinner give all his sins to Ramana. It’s a cool story on surrender and letting go. Click here to read. Reading this, it shines a whole new light on being released from sin.

So Patrick Swayze just croaked. It’s like Ghost 2.0.

Actors on a movie screen and most people in real life… what’s the difference? Actors in the movies know they’re acting and that the roles they play aren’t who and what they really are.

“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances”
-Shakespeare

What’s so bad about death? Death is only seen to be worse/different than chewing bubble gum when labeled and judged by the mind. Everything just is. Death just is.

Beyond Death

In awareness there is freedom, freedom that transcends even birth and death, for it is not subject to these superficial changes in form any more than a camera is affected by what shapes and colors appear before it.

In awareness, everything is, and yet even saying that is too much.

What is the human body? It’s like a space suit used by consciousness as a sort of vehicle to enter the world of time and space. When we exit the body, we’re no longer in the domain of time and space. This exit can actually be made while in the body, despite the fact that time and space keep seemingly happening. They are then seen to be totally, completely, and utterly illusory, a fabrication of mind that creates for us this dream world we call physical reality. We often call this awakening.

Heaven and Hell, imaginary constructs of the mind. What lies beyond is truly beyond the mind, beyond anything imaginable. What lies beyond is truly One, for there is no other possibility. What lies beyond we call Heaven, we call Nirvana, but what they truly are can not be named. Heaven and Hell are actually One. Nirvana and Samsara are actually one. This recognition we call Heaven or Nirvana, ironically enough. This unnameable isness we call Heaven, but do not confuse the name with the isness. That’s like thinking someone’s nametag actually is who they are. No no, the finger pointing to the moon is not the moon, silly.

I feel like I can literally extend my consciousness into a higher dimension.. consciously and deliberately. It’s a cool feeling, like stepping into more of myself without really going anywhere.

Moving in a Higher Dimension

Imagine you were a 2-dimensional flat person for a moment, spending your whole life moving forwards and backwards and side to side in a totally flat world. Suddenly one day you discovered this ability to turn your arm “upwards” and reach up and out into the third dimension. Reaching up into the 3rd dimension would feel very much like reaching into one of the 2 dimensions you’re familiar with, wouldn’t it? It’s not really a wildly new technique to develop, just a new direction to reach into.

An interesting point to note is that you don’t have to move in 2D space at all when reaching farther out into 3D space. You could be bouncing up and down in the 3rd dimension and as long as you didn’t move front to back or side to side, you’d look perfectly still in the 2nd dimension. Movement in each dimension is independent, though not separate.

Reaching out into 4D is a lot like this. This 3D physical being doesn’t actually move when accessing the 4th dimension. It is consciousness itself that accesses higher dimensions, not the physicalized being.

Bollocks?

Is the 4th dimension real or am I totally making all this up? Well what I can tell you is that, with respect to imagination, the 4th dimension is just as real or unreal as the basic 3 dimensions.

Is the 3D world of form an illusion? Yes? No? Well so is this just as much.

Is the 3D world of form a valid experience within consciousness? Well so is this.

It’s like there’s this depth, this presence, that’s literally all right here. It doesn’t exist anywhere in time and space. I can’t explain this, but it feels just like reaching out with a non-physical hand, for lack of a better word, the hand of consciousness.

Simultaneously Physical and Non-physical

It’s actually a lot like living in two worlds at once. You can consciously experience yourself simultaneously playing with the 3D world of form, as well as resting in the 4D world of formlessness. Which one is more real? I have no idea. The intensity of presence in either world fluctuates, but they both feel equally real. You can experience yourself somewhere or nowhere, or both, or everywhere. It’s all just a shift in consciousness, not unlike how awareness can concentrate on one object or expand to encompass many objects.. all without actually going anywhere at all.

This opens up an entirely new depth to infinity. In 3D, you know how space extends in an infinite direction up and down, left to right, and front to back? Well there’s also a 4th dimension of infinity that can be accessed that is literally just as real as the 3 physical dimensions.

The 4th dimension doesn’t exist in time and space. It exists entirely within consciousness.

…So What?

What practical value does this have? Though I’ve previous touched on how to take advantage of higher dimensions, I honestly am not entirely sure yet the full extent to which this shift makes.

That said, there do seem to be some notable differences that now arise.

All Is Well

First of all, there is a sense of deep safety in this.

You know how if a bullet is flying straight towards you, you could simply step to the side and dodge it? Effectively what you’re doing here is moving from one parallel universe to another. One “universe” contains you standing directly in the path of the bullet. There is another “universe” basically standing “right next to you.” You can step to the side, moving from one experiential universe to another, and seemingly “dodge” the bullet. Being able to move in this direction gives you a greater degree of safety, you see?

Well being able to move in the 4th dimension is a LOT like this. You can totally alter what arises in the world of 3D by simply “stepping to the side” in 4D. In this way it allows you an increased degree of safety. No matter what danger you seem to find yourself in in 3D, you can always just “step to the side” and experience a “parallel universe” where you are safe. The wonderful thing is that that parallel universe is right here.

Am I claiming to be Neo with the ability to stop bullets? No, not at all. What I am saying is that it feels like the possibility to do such a thing is starting to arise in consciousness. Exactly HOW to implement this I do not yet fully understand.

This ability is still very new to me and I’m very much still getting my bearings straight. You can liken this ability to “step into a parallel world” with the Law of Attraction, which in this case is basically the same idea.

Of course the true Self that you really are can never experience danger in the first place (really!) and so your true safety is not determinant upon whether or not you move out of the way of the bullet or not, but from the perspective of choosing what reality you wish to experience, there is a deeper sense of understanding of how to move between worlds.

But because consciousness can experience itself in this way, seeing why the Law of Attraction works the way it does suddenly becomes that much more intuitive, natural, and, well, downright obvious! It makes this all so much more grounded, real, and tangible.

Shifting Worlds

Ooh, just thought of a better analogy.. and I sure love my analogies!

Imagine a 20 story building where each floor was a totally unique world. Each floor had basically the same floorplan so it was structurally the same, but what was taking place content-wise on each floor was very different. Only one thing can happen per floor. In order to experience something else, you have to go to a new floor.

Now say that you were constantly switching from one floor to another, but you had no idea this was happening and so you’d say “My, all this stuff is happening in my world!” …as if there was a single thing called “my world” to experience. No no, there’s a bunch of individual worlds you keep jumping between, silly!

Only one thing is happening in the world you’re currently experiencing at a time. To experience something else, you have to go to another world entirely, another floor altogether.

When this recognition came, suddenly you’d find yourself without fear or worry about what’s happening “in the world,” aka. “on this floor.” If you don’t like what’s happening on this floor, you can simply go up or down a floor! Changing your physical reality is literally that simple! Reality doesn’t change. Your “location” changes, giving you the perception of a single changing world.

Moving in the 4th dimension is a lot like this. There’s an infinite number of 3D worlds, but you keep shifting in the 4th dimension, effectively changing what world is arising in the moment. This is us changing floors in every moment of Now.

There’s a real beauty in this dance. A great simplicity.

Being More of the Infinite

Another thing that I notice is that the human part of me feels expanded, fuller, and more complete, as if it’s coming more and more into alignment with the true Self that is already Infinite. As Abraham says, it’s the alignment between you and You, the physicalized leading edge of Source and Source itself.. which are actually One anyways.

You know that familiar battle between your mind and your heart/intuition? That battle seems like it continues to fall away.

It’s like I’m feeling more whole, as if I were returning to a seemingly long lost home that’s paradoxically been right here. There was previously the experience of being lost, an experience that arose when you couldn’t clearly see where you were.

We’ve been home this whole time. Call it Heaven or whatever, but it’s always been right here. We just couldn’t see it for what it really was.

Yeah, this is cool stuff.

So as more people begin to awaken and recognize that this life we’re living is very much like a dream, as people’s hearts continue to blossom open, as we become more playful and free (if we allow ourselves to experience life in this way) and willing to shine our light and follow our soul’s deepest desires, how do you imagine this world will change?

Will we be free to laugh, to not close down and hold back when our heart desires to open up, to be ourselves, to really loooooove one another, to delight in being de light that we are, and to really enjoy life without all the fears and worries that once weighed us down and held us back?

Do we HAVE to live this way? Of course not. Yet this seems to be a vibrant part of this great transformation we’re seeing in human society today as people connect to who they really are.

People are lightening up. Here’s a few examples of this happening:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYAUazLI9k

www.youtube.com/watch?v=vr3x_RRJdd4

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abt8aAB-Dr0

How would you naturally express yourself today if you had no fear of anything? What have you always wanted to do? What excites you? Your answer may change tomorrow, or even in the next second. What arises for you now, if you allow yourself to freely be yourself?

Let’s explore the idea of being more or less loving. We could say that one of the common goals of the spiritual aspirant is to become a more loving person, correct?

For sure.

Let’s look at how this evolution works from both the relative and the absolute perspective, as well as how those two interact.

Love, from the Relative Perspective

On the relative level, the level of appearance, form, and humanness, we can and often do become more loving.

Along our journey, we may discover that there really is no such thing as an opposite to anything. This is an illusion in duality. Everything is Love.

Instead of the idea of opposites, we upgrade to the idea of gradations. For example, rather than looking at a spectrum of distinct polar opposites such as hot and cold, we simply notice that there’s a gradation of molecular movement from infinitely slow (without ever actually stopping) to infinitely fast (without ever reaching any maximum). Hot and cold are simply arbitrary relative markers we make up and place upon a linear scale. Instead of polar hot and cold, we simply have one term called temperature.

Bringing this idea back to Love, being less loving, to the point of resisting love, we call this fear. On the flip side, being more loving, in the form of allowing love to flow through us, we call this love. There is resistance to love and surrender to love, but not actually fear.

Okay cool, but there’s still a breaking up of the whole into many little pieces, which is what happens when the absolute moves into the relative.

Love, from the Absolute Perspective

The True Self, Source, whatever you want to call it, it is infinite unconditional Love. It is whole, complete, total, and beyond measure. It can not be diminished in any way whatsoever and is not subject to any scale.

While the subjective experience of the totality may be limited, the totality itself never is.

In this way, not only is there no opposite to Love, there is also nothing less than pure Love.

No gradations. No scales. No more or less. No measurement system whatsoever. Just pure Love completely as it is.

What is just is. That’s it.

(It’s incredibly simple when there’s no mind involved…)

Uniting the Relative and the Absolute

When we talk about raising our level of consciousness or raising our vibration, what we’re really doing is bringing the relative human aspect of ourselves into alignment with the core essence of our absolute Self.

In the state of surrender, your form identity softens and becomes somewhat “transparent,” as it were, so the Unmanifested can shine through you.

-Eckhart Tolle

You know Jesus Christ? What does his name mean?

(Hint: Christ is not Jesus’ last name!)

Jesus is the name of the very human man, the fleshy meat suit that walked the earth.

Christ is a universal name that points to the infinite consciousness that is everyone’s true nature. Christ Consciousness, Buddha Nature, Krishna Spirit… these terms all point to the one infinite true self.

Jesus Christ (Relative Absolute) united his relative and absolute selves and consciously brought them into vibrational harmony while living here on earth.

Gautama Buddha (Relative Absolute), same thing. Siddhārtha Gautama united his physical presence with the Buddha nature.

In this dream called physical reality, the characters such as Jesus and Gautama woke up within it, like lucid dreamers, and allowed their dream characters to be connected back to the Source/Christ/Buddha so that that light could shine through into the dream.

This experience they called Heaven or Nirvana.

Simultaneous Coexistence of the Relative and the Absolute

Remember, the idea is not to escape earthly existence and go to heaven (or some other enlightened state of consciousness) somewhere else. We could call this hiding in the absolute which arises from the idea that there’s something wrong with the relative or the illusion.

So rather than trying to flee the relative and abide in only the absolute, we can unite heaven and earth, by bringing heaven down to earth. (Vibrationally speaking though, perhaps a more accurate description would be “bringing earth up to heaven.” Source never comes down to match the relative.) Either way, this unification is just another way of pointing to the integration of the relative and the absolute.

From Connection to Integration

Again, there is only Here. There is ONLY Here. There is no escaping Here. On the level of form, there is only the transformation of what arises Here. That’s it. This is Creation.

While you are Here, you can awaken to the presence of the nameless, formless, silent presence that can be called Tao or Source. This Absolute being (being, not like a cat or a dog or a human being or a big bearded guy in the clouds, but just isness itself) is infinite Love. You can connect to this and feel it “flowing through you.”

“It is not I, but the Father within me who does these works.”

The relative you continues to raise in vibration as it progressively comes closer to matching the vibration of the absolute you, through this connection to Love.

Then from being “connected” to Love, unification with Love happens and the two become the One they always were.

“The Father and I are one.” (Father isn’t a male parent as some religions imagine, but rather the Source of Creation that gives rise to all form.)

So while there is always infinite Love on the level of formlessness, there is also the dance of infinite gradations of love and fear in the illusory dream world of duality.

You are BOTH… and neither.

Enlightenment

Enlightenment is about remembering who we really are and then allowing the story of you and me to fall away and come into full alignment with that which we truly are.

Full alignment in the physical plane is total enlightenment, the complete end of the idea of separation, the maximum vibrational limit of physicality before the physical vibrates its way into a higher plane of existence, beyond the perception of physicality. In the same way that sound can vibrate faster and faster to the point where our ears can no longer detect it due to their limited spectrum, the physical us can vibrate our way right out of physicality, into a higher non-physical realm… but we’ll explore that later.

Let’s just say that full enlightenment is not the end of our evolution by any means. It’s simply the end of forgetting who we really are which allows for the Oneness of the absolute and the relative to come together that much more.

An old monk sat by the side of the road. With his eyes closed, his legs crossed and his hands folded in his lap, he sat. In deep meditation, he sat.

Suddenly his Zazen was interrupted by the harsh and demanding voice of a samurai warrior. “Old man! Teach me about heaven and hell!”

At first, as though he had not heard, there was no perceptible response from the monk. But gradually he began to open his eyes, the faintest hint of a smile playing around the corners of his mouth as the samurai stood there, waiting impatiently, growing more and more agitated with each passing second.

“You wish to know the secrets of heaven and hell?” replied the monk at last. “You who are so unkempt. You whose hands and feet are covered with dirt. You whose hair is uncombed, whose breath is foul, whose sword is all rusty and neglected. You who are ugly and whose mother dresses you funny. You would ask me of heaven and hell?”

The samurai uttered a vile curse. He drew his sword and raised it high above his head. His face turned to crimson and the veins on his neck stood out in bold relief as he prepared to sever the monk’s head from its shoulders.

“That is hell,” said the old monk gently, just as the sword began its descent. In that fraction of a second, the samurai was overcome with amazement, awe, compassion and love for this gentle being who had dared to risk his very life to give him such a teaching. He stopped his sword in mid-flight and his eyes filled with grateful tears.

“And that,” said the monk, “is heaven.”

(Photo by Lars Johnsson)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwyeqVEe0vg

Heaven is not just some place that we go after we die, somehow separate from earth. Heaven is simply a particular level of consciousness. We can bring Heaven down to earth by raising our level of consciousness to the point where we realize that Heaven is already here in this moment.

“The Kingdom of God is at hand!”

Change Thine Frequency

The reason Heaven wasn’t being perceived or experienced before was that we were vibrating at a lower frequency. In the same way that we can change what channel a TV is set to by changing the frequency it’s tuned to, we can change what frequency we’re attuned to and shift to a different level of reality as well.

“My Father’s house has many mansions.”

When you die and you go “up to heaven,” it’s not that you literally go up vertically into space. (Afterall, everything is Here and Now.) You do go up, but you go up in your frequency, in your vibration, in your level of consciousness as you drop all that heavy earthly ego baggage.

You can do this very same thing while still alive here on earth. You just get enlightened. It’s just a matter of letting go of all the lower vibing stuff so that you naturally and automatically rise up higher and higher.

This is something you do within yourself. You raise your own personal level of consciousness. The external world is basically just a reflection of your own internal state of being. Thus you must go within to do the work in order to see it reflected back to you in the world.

“The Kingdom of God is within you.”

Walk the Walk

It’s not about changing the world itself directly, but changing yourself. Yet by changing yourself, you change the world. You bring Heaven down through you.

“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”

No one else can do this for you. It’s like when you are miserable even though everyone around you is happy: You’re still gonna experience miserableness. If everyone around you is manifesting heaven on earth, if you’re creating hell for yourself, you will only experience hell. Thus if you want to experience Heaven, YOU must manifest it for yourself.

For some examples of people actively bringing heaven down to earth, check out this forum post by CaterpillarWoman as well as this forum post by Katrina as they share their own personal experiences.

You could even say we’re creating Heaven in the forums, a vibrational heaven which we can model and take back out into the “real world.”