We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Discuss the November 2022 Philosophy Book of the Month, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes.

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We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

This is a discussion forum topic for the November 2022 Philosophy Book of the Month, In It Together: The Beautiful Struggle Uniting Us All.


This won't come as a shock to those who already read my book, but I believe...

Heaven isn't some lifeless goalless future where all goals have been completed and no desire is left. It's isn't some lifeless future world so terribly and awfully perfect that there is nothing worth doing; No challenges, no stumbles, no failure-ridden paths to triumphs, followed by yet more of the same. Some awful state where one has no unfilled desire to achieve more, to climb higher, to fight and hopefully defeat another worthy tough opponent, no unfilled desire motivating one to fight another deliciously grueling fight to overcome a worthy tough challenge.

It's not that. It isn't that because that doesn't exist. That imagined future state does not and cannot exist. And it would be unimaginably terrible if anything remotely like it could and did exist. It would be a state so incredibly lifeless and unmoving that it is worse than any death one can imagine. For it is a death without rebirth. It would be a lifeless nothingness so extreme that nothing could come out of it. And that awful absurd lifelessness is what some people desperately do their best to imagine when they imagine a heaven.

Heaven is not that.

Heaven is a dreamy playground in which you get to endlessly chase goals. It's the engrossing beautiful challenge of endlessly climbing topless mountains. It's the transcendental fun in the rollercoaster of triumphs and failures, a dramatic story of equal ups and equal downs. A rollercoaster always ends at the same height it begins, with its ups and downs inherently perfectly balanced in a yin-yang way. Even if you ride the rollercoaster around and around, over and over again, infinite times, the net height is still zero. The transcendental fun of the ups and downs is not balanced as such. That transcendental fun transcends the yin-yang balance because it applies to the yin-yang itself as a whole; It applies to the holistic reality as a singular whole. That transcendental unbalanced fun of the proverbial rollercoaster is the analogue of the infinite beauty found in the eternal present, a non-thing that does exist but lacks an opposite. It is the endless journey, the infinite ever-increasing fun of the revolving of the rollercoaster. It has no opposite, and thereby transcends logic and words, since logic and literal words are bound by the binary, and cannot describe the beauty of the singular whole, of that which is so transcendental it even transcends thinghood.

That is heaven. And we are living in it now, and always have been and always will be.

To steadily know it is to have inner peace.

To wake up every day, look around at your world, and honestly say, "When I think about heaven, I imagine this," that is inner peace. That is true happiness. That is nirvana. That is heaven. It is to be in heaven and know it's heaven.

To suddenly become aware of it is what many people call spiritual awakening. Although, we don't so much awaken from the playful dramatic dream as we do become lucid within it and aware of its beautiful dreaminess and the infinite depths of the deeper reality which transcends it and makes it possible.

It's the lucidity a boxer or MMA fight has when he appreciates having a worthy opponent to fight. What is an enemy in the world of the play, or dream, or sport, or game, is a transcendentally appreciated friend in the deeper reality that transcends the game.

If you love to play a game or sport, a good true friend will play the role of opponent or enemy so that you may compete, or battle, fight your best and hardest to win as they do their best to the opposite end.

What is competition in the level of the dream, sport, or play, is cooperation at the deeper level of the deeper reality that transcends the world of the game or sport or play or dream.

A good friend will play against you and do their best to defeat you. With a worthy opponent rightfully treating you as their enemy, you aren't sure and cannot know if you will win or not. That is what makes it worth doing. That makes a worthy opponent or a worthy challenge. An easy challenge is not a worthy challenge.

An actor on stage while deeply in character may hate and battle an enemy, but in the deeper sense of the reality that transcends the world of those characters, the two real actors who play the fictional characters are partners working together to compete with each other. And sometimes it's one actor using camera tricks to play both roles, much like Austin Powers and Dr. Evil.

It's the same pattern as falling asleep at night, dreaming a dream, and watching two people in the dream have a conversation, a disagreement, perhaps even an argument. Perhaps, you don't just watch but join in. You argue with them too, and perhaps do so lucidly. But perhaps they make good points, perhaps they change your mind about something. Or perhaps you just have fun arguing with them, with yourselves really. In the deeper realer reality, we are not three people having an argument but one big transcendental brain having a dream. It is one playing as many. You will not find the singular brain in the dream where you find the many different people with many different thoughts having an argument. You can look to the left or right, or look up or down, but you will never see it with your dream eyes from your dream body. And yet you can become lucid and easily see that the singular unified dreamer dreaming the dream is undeniably much realer than anything in the dream. It's even realer than whatever ever-changing thing you see when looking into a mirror in the dream at any given moment.

We are one playing as many in the playground of heaven.

What I will say now is true whether we speak of literal human opponents in some game, sport, or literal war, or other inhuman personified challenges and obstacles that even I would encourage you to earnestly fight your hardest and best to overcome and defeat or even utterly destroy:

Inner peace is to realize that even your worst enemies are merely your beloved friends--you yourself in fact---in playful dreamy disguise.

The heavenliness of the heaven in which we live is revealed when we become lucid of the deeper unifying reality that transcends it and makes it possible, in which we are not humans but spirits, and in which we are not many but one.




---
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My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.

"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."

I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
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Surabhi Rani
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Surabhi Rani »

Thinking about heaven is a good point for reflection. This is an experience of the culmination of positivity. You may call it extremely optimistic. This is thought to be a good quality in a person as far as his or her spiritual progress is concerned. I like the ending of your writing!
kayla1080
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by kayla1080 »

Rather than the idea of "heaven", I like believing in a universal connnectedness that allows all of us in this world to operate as one. I did like the part in In It Together about space and time and how it relates to our true conscious self (around page 70). I've read studies about how when people practice a religion they have more hope, which tends to make them more optimistic and happier, and so maybe those that believe in heaven tend to have an overall better quality of life. I do not agree with how we will "always be living in heaven" though, because if you look at the human race over the period of a million years in past, present, and future- the future could go either way. We are living in a golden era right now, in my opinion ;)
Aditi Mehta 1
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Aditi Mehta 1 »

I think this statement depicts the optimism you have for life. It's a good thing to think that we are living in Heaven.
book+lover-people
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by book+lover-people »

Heaven and Hell are states of being that we create. When you look at your life and think about how miserable and depressed you are, you have created a personal hell for yourself, and you may be the one creating Hell for others. However, if you look around and feel like your life is blessed with or without challenges, you create Heaven for yourself. You create your own reality through your thoughts and actions. So, be aware of the ideas you allow into your mind.
Owuamanam Eberechukwu
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Owuamanam Eberechukwu »

Heaven, from the Old English "heofon," meaning "home of God," is characterized by freedom from death, thirst, anger, and total enlightenment. As we wrestle not only against life circumstances but also against natural disasters and powers that seem to taunt us, we can't be in heaven. We might be lucky to be located in a haven, but we are not living in heaven because worries and fears still exist. There is no genuine heartfelt, and profound freedom and happiness. In the context of linguistic flexibility and based on the conception and definition of heaven contained in this discussion and book, I can only agree. Outside of this book and discussion, I still think we need to create a divide between "heaven" and "haven."
Hellen Muriithi
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Hellen Muriithi »

I find this as a statement that asserts that we can know what it means to live in heaven without actually being there. This is because it states that our conception of heaven comes from our understanding of the world around us, which means that we are not literally there when we think about heaven. This statement is important because it demonstrates how we can use ideas like religion or philosophy to create our own explanations for things that may not have an obvious explanation. When we think about life on Earth, for example, we often focus on events such as wars and natural disasters—but these things do not necessarily demonstrate any sort of divine intervention. Instead, they may just be naturally occurring phenomena. In other words, if you look closely enough at any given situation in life, you may find yourself able to come up with an explanation for why things happen as they do—and if this happens frequently enough with enough different situations (like wars), then it becomes easier for people to accept these explanations as truth without questioning them further.
Hellen Muriithi
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Hellen Muriithi »

book+lover-people wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 2:20 am Heaven and Hell are states of being that we create. When you look at your life and think about how miserable and depressed you are, you have created a personal hell for yourself, and you may be the one creating Hell for others. However, if you look around and feel like your life is blessed with or without challenges, you create Heaven for yourself. You create your own reality through your thoughts and actions. So, be aware of the ideas you allow into your mind.
Hi, I agree with you that you create your own reality through your thoughts and actions. I would also wish to add that this is one of the most basic laws of the universe, and yet it’s so often overlooked. The Law of Attraction states that like attracts like—in other words, whatever you focus on with your attention will eventually show up in your experience.
Alice Fu
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Alice Fu »

Whether one finds themselves living in the depths of heaven or hell truly depends on the mentality that they have set in their minds. This statement of topic that you are mentioning sounds a lot like a topic this philisophical social media person discusses when talking about what happens to us after death and how it all ultimately is dependent on where your soul lies when you pass away.
beckybelvin
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by beckybelvin »

If this is heaven, we have no hope for eternity. I believe in God and Heaven (with capital G and H) and I am so thankful for my beliefs. If I thought this was as good as it was going to get, I would be most miserable.
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Eckhart Aurelius Hughes »

beckybelvin wrote: February 4th, 2023, 8:43 am If I thought this was as good as it was going to get, I would be most miserable.
I am so sorry you feel that way.

By way of following the advice I've compiled in In It Together (e.g. fully and unconditionally accepting that which I cannot control), I have this wonderful inner peace. I look at these proverbial cards I've been dealt, and I fully and totally accept them, love them even. I look around at this world (i.e. reality as a whole or what you might call the whole of all Creation, capital C), and I see beauty everywhere in each and every direction.

If there is an all-knowing all-powerful Creator God, then I think he did a great amazing job creating his wonderful world in which I get to live. As I see it, not one little speck is out of place. It's perfect! And that's why I have this wonderful consistent invincible inner peace: because I look around, and all I see is infinite beauty worthy of infinite love in every direction. From this perspective, nothing real and true is wrong. From my perspective, reality is a perfect beautiful harmony. I have invincible consistent inner peace because, from my perspective, reality isn't wrong, ever at all.

Living without any hate or resentment at all for anything is so heavenly for me. I look around and see a lovable world, every little creature, thing, and event totally love-worthy and deserving of infinite love.

It is so wonderful to think--and know--that this infinite universe is heavenly, and I get to live in this wonderful perfect heavenly eternity.

It's wonderful to have the inner peace that comes from looking around at reality as a whole each day and honestly thinking, "it's perfect! It's beautifully harmoniously perfect!"

I am sorry if you do not feel that way. I am sorry if you do not share this inner peace (a.k.a. 'true happiness') that I get to enjoy.

If you are not happy, meaning truly happy (i.e. getting to enjoy the kind of consistent wonderful inner peace day in and day out that I have described above), then I am sorry about that, meaning I lovingly sympathize deeply with you about that. I do hope you find that true happiness one day, one way or another, assuming that's what you want, at least at that point.

There is an sense in which we each see what we want to see, meaning what we choose to see. So even though others might not look around and see heavenly world worthy of infinite love and see nothing at all worth resenting or hating or wanting to not be the way it is, that I think is okay too, just as everything is.

Together it's all like a perfect beautiful harmonious divine plan or song. Nothing is out of place.
My entire political philosophy summed up in one tweet.

"The mind is a wonderful servant but a terrible master."

I believe spiritual freedom (a.k.a. self-discipline) manifests as bravery, confidence, grace, honesty, love, and inner peace.
OTrain M
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by OTrain M »

Wow! I felt like I was reading something that was written by John Lennon. Laughs. It is certainly something he would have said if he were still here with us. But yeah, I also don't see heaven as an eternal happiness where we do not want to strive for more and don't want to push to our limits. That idea of utopia would be destructive and would lead to chaos eventually.
Donna Walker 1
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Donna Walker 1 »

Heaven and hell are not places one goes to when they die. We live in them every day, here on Earth. I have always said that every day we have a choice between living in heaven or hell. Where you want to be today is your choice. I've tried hell. It's not a fun place to be. I choose to be happy and live in heaven today. 
Donna Walker 1
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Donna Walker 1 »

book+lover-people wrote: February 3rd, 2023, 2:20 am Heaven and Hell are states of being that we create. When you look at your life and think about how miserable and depressed you are, you have created a personal hell for yourself, and you may be the one creating Hell for others. However, if you look around and feel like your life is blessed with or without challenges, you create Heaven for yourself. You create your own reality through your thoughts and actions. So, be aware of the ideas you allow into your mind.
This is exactly my thoughts. It's a daily choice. Have a wonderful day in heaven today! :D
Donna Walker 1
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Re: We are living in heaven, and always have been, and always will be.

Post by Donna Walker 1 »

Alice Fu wrote: February 4th, 2023, 5:35 am Whether one finds themselves living in the depths of heaven or hell truly depends on the mentality that they have set in their minds. This statement of topic that you are mentioning sounds a lot like a topic this philisophical social media person discusses when talking about what happens to us after death and how it all ultimately is dependent on where your soul lies when you pass away.
Interesting perspective. Do you believe in reincarnation? I do. In the sense that energy cannot be created or destroyed, it must therefore transform. I think it depends on our frequency when we pass away as to where our energy (soul or consciousness) goes. 
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