If There Is A Place Called Heaven.

I think I pointed out shortly after I got online twenty years ago, that if there is a place called heaven, the people who went there would be the pure of heart, the kind and generous. God wouldn't just reward them for following some long rule book. Especially one that said oppress women and own slaves. Or punish them for joining the wrong religion, or sect even.

 

Which constellation is the one where heaven is located, I keep forgetting.

 

I can never work that one out, so it must be somewhere beyond infinity.

 

The only "heavens" and hells" which I am aware of are those which we confabulate between our own two ears, convince ourselves to be true, and then proceed to inflict upon ourselves and each other.

 

My favorite description of "heaven" & "hell" goes like this:

In hell, everyone is seated around a huge banquet piled high with the most delicious delicacies...and they're equipped with 4' chopsticks.
Unable to feed themselves, they are perpetually starving to death before a mountain of food in the most shocking suffering imaginable.

In heaven, everyone is seated around a huge banquet piled high with the most delicious delicacies...and they're equipped with 4' chopsticks.
Taking turns feeding one another across the table, they are perpetually celebratory and joyous.

The only Zen you'll find on the mountaintop (or banquet table) is that which you've brought with you.

 

“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
Marcus Aurelius

 

There are the Heavens which consists of all the galaxies and Solar systems visible in the night sky. The Heaven proposed by most Earthly Religions as a spiritual place where the souls go to for final judgement and enjoining with "God" or "Gods" for eternity. Some Religions believe that the Spirit and Body travel to heaven together. If Heaven exists I suspect that the spirit travels alone and the body stays behind.

 

For some this may sound a little way out, but hey, here goes.
We are physical beings with a spirit within. It is the spirit which goes through the learning curve of life, and some suffer the consequences of previous lives in present or future existences. However the spiritual form is our natural form and it is to this we will one day return to upon a spiritual plane.
Upon the end of time when the world ends, if we have learned to live lives with peace, love and respect we will be guided to a new perfect planet as spirit beings - our true form. Call it Planet Heaven if you like. Those who do not fulfil this will not got to hell but simply no longer exist.

Another view of life after death is one an ex-partner of mine has. She was a tarot reader and medium and said when we die we go to a spiritual plane where we can relive the happiest moments of our life.

 

I think of "heaven" and "Hell" as metaphors. Heaven is what would result if everyone followed the basic principles preached by Jesus and other great moral teachers: love of God and neighbor. Hell is what would result if everyone did the opposite: a "war of all against all", in which, as Hobbes put it, "life would be "nasty, brutish and short." I doubt there are any constellations that can point us to Heaven. In the Gospel of Thomas, Saying 13, Jesus tells tells us: "the Kingdom of the Father is spread out everywhere upon the Earth, and people do not see it." In Luke's gospel (17:21), Jesus says::"God’s kingdom is within you.” I like to think that when the End Times arrive, and the elect are raptured, they'll go to the Great Gathering in the Sky (Metaphorically, of course!) , similar to the Rainbow gatherings I and many hippies have experienced here on earth. There they'll partake (metaphorically) of the bounties of the Heavenly Dumpster, in the company of naked, bathless hippies, prostitutes, drug addicts, and dilapidated hebephrenics. And it will be Heaven, (but some may think they've taken a wrong turn). Heaven may lie in the eye of the beholder.

"Metaphysically, the kingdom of heaven is understood not as a physical location, but as a state of consciousness in which the soul and body are in perfect harmony with Divine Mind...By shifting our search from an external place to an internal state, we begin to cultivate the mind of Christ and experience the righteousness, peace, and joy that define our true, heavenly nature. The Kingdom of Heaven: Not a Place, But a State of Mind – MindStateMatters
Is Heaven a State of Mind? Heaven Is Not Just A Place, But Also A State