April 01, 2019
Heaven On Earth
Most of us were raised by being rewarded for good behavior, and punished for bad. This is how we learned right from wrong. As children there were usually adults to steer us, someone who executed a parental interest in our outcome. Through their guidance we internalized a sense of morality. And then we became adults.
In most cultures religion becomes the guiding hand once we leave the nest. We are taught early that our deeds will be judged and recorded by some unseen force. In the traditional Judaeo-Christian perspective we go to “heaven,” or “hell,” depending upon how we behaved. Are you a sheep or a goat? In more eastern traditions the law of karma keeps us in line: bad deeds in this lifetime are paid for in the next. What is interesting in both perspectives is there is a reward system for behaving properly, but it is based on the judgments of an external source, and only pays off once we die.
The Andean prophesies say there will be a day when the Upper World and the Lower World will meet, in the Middle World. This will be Heaven on Earth. While the different worlds are “places” in their system of belief, much as in ours, they also represent our personal psyches. Thus the prophesies speak of a time when the unconscious of the Lower World, and the higher conscious of the Upper World, are both collectively owned, and integrated. Our everyday Middle World will then have reached its highest state of human potential! When we can own both the motivations of our darkness, and the light of our divinity, we will be able to walk our talk and speak our truths, effectively. We will then have refined ourselves enough from the inside, to be congruent with what created us. We won’t have to go to a higher dimension for this, nor an external authority. We create it here, and are rewarded while still in form.
By contrast, our current culture’s focus on being rewarded in the afterlife, or lives to come, by an external God, is a more parental approach that pushes us into paradigms of judgemental and separation instead of integration. The fear of judgemental has the unfortunate consequence of spiraling us into self loathing and encouraging us to hide what we are ashamed of, rather than inspiring us to dig inside and look. When we must appear “good” we put things in shadow instead of working through ownership of them. This creates a deep shame that grinds away at our sense of self, accentuating a state of perfection we can never truly posses, and defining divinity as something outside ourselves. But as Lao-Tzu notes in the Tao Te Ching “True perfection seems imperfect.”
What if we choose, instead, to reckon with our darknesses and become congruent with the God within us? We are taught to override our emotions and intuition, disregard the signals of the body, and to choose rationality instead. If you tell a lie, you feel your throat clench up, your eyes twitch, you may feel edgy, or heavy. This is direct feedback that an inconsistency lives within you. In closing down these internal systems in favor of the mind, however, we give away our personal authority. The more we defer to the mind as master, the more we pave over our internal moral compasses, creating separation, confusion, and a shame that appeals to external sources for salvation. We are hard wired to know right from wrong. Instead of thinking of ourselves as children who need to be parented, or sheep who must be led, we can tune inward, claim our own authority, and behave from a place motivated by personal integrity. Why wait for Judgment Day when we, as a collective, can bring Heaven to Earth, now?
Christina Allen, Shamanic Healer, Teacher, and Founder and Director of the Austin Shamanic Center, combines a strong science (BA Physics, MS Neuroscience) background with decades of applied ancient spiritual wisdom (Master Yogi, Reiki Master, Shamanic Healer based, in part, on Q’ero Indian traditions of Peru). ASC offers profound Shamanic Self Development Workshops, professional trainings, and personal healings. Learn more at www.AustinShamanicCenter.com.
© Austin All Natural, April 2019