If you grew in a certain tradition of belief that uses the notion of heaven in order to gain security of our future after death, then the question is not where, but does it exist? Does heaven exist? There are some possible answers: Yes, no, irrelevant, or perhaps.

Let’s go with perhaps…

People who live and are raised within a set of traditions and beliefs that claim heaven does exist must ask themselves, where is heaven? If you just answer, heaven is the sky or heaven a special place after death…

Please, ask: Why do you believe in heaven if you have no idea of where it is? How can you believe in something that is impossible to define in a spectrum of locality or space?

You might answer: Well, that is what faith is all about…

I will ask again: Is your reality based on pure belief? Why? Is this a choice you made? Did you family brain wash you with the idea, and now it gives you so much security that you cannot live without such faith? How painful is it to read this? Are you willing to rationalize what is deeply ingrained within your mindset?

If you can’t rationalize, stop reading because I will challenge you. I will make you ask questions you might not want to know about, so please. Stop.

If you are willing to risk your mindset and hard core beliefs in order to know where is heaven, then keep reading.

Let’s define the other case: What happens if you are one of those who believe that heaven does not exist?

In such case, I ask: What is heaven? Should we define heaven as a place where mythological figures sleep and live in pleasure? Could heaven be something abstract, but we tend to create a tangible concept out of it because that is all we know?

Perhaps, but where is it?

If it is an abstraction, then there is no actual locality. If one choose to search for such a place, then one might want to possess the concept in order to believe. In the process of possession, one might lose the reality of the concept in order to feel secure with such concept. What do this mean?

If the concept of heaven, is not a real place but an abstraction, then where is it? Of course, in the mind! Is this true?

All abstractions are in the mind of the one understand such concept. Now if heaven is in the mind because it is an abstraction, can we actually convert an abstraction into something concrete?

Of course, how? Imagine an idea… I have an abstract idea, the idea of happiness. In the back of my mind, there is this concept called happiness. However, it is an abstract idea unless I am experiencing happiness in the actual moment I bring to reality my abstraction.

Therefore, in the same manner, could we create from the concept of heaven, a reality, one that is not in a strange place, but here in the present moment?

If we ask this, then we have another question: Well, what if my abstract concept of heaven is not the same as yours? Does that invalidate my concept of heaven? Is a consensus needed in order to achieve a concept of heaven?

In order to answer, I ask: Does the fact that you feel happiness erase its reality if the person beside you is angry and can’t feel your happiness? Of course not or does it? Take a deep breath, and test this out.

Be yourself heaven! Find heaven as an actuality within yourself as a reflection of your inner haven. The way to achieve this is to realize within yourself that heaven is not a place, but an actual reality expressed and felt within.

The paradigm shift in this idea is to ask: Is heaven inside of yourself? Could it be that heaven is not a place one will find after death, but a reality inside of me? Could I realize through experience that heaven is me? Could it be possible to live a heaven within this reality (i.e. this objective place conceptualized as Earth) through my own experiences of fulfillment and love?

Could heaven be here already, but we are so stubborn with those traditional beliefs that we lose sight of what is actually in front of us always?

Think it out! Observe yourself! Find out through your own experience, and defy my thought after understanding what I mean.

If you simply reject this because you are attached your traditional beliefs, then ask: What will happen if heaven does not exist? What will happen if heaven does exist?

What would change if we were able to live heaven here and now, instead of waiting for a non-reality (i.e. not in the present moment) to occur?

Photo credits: First image By Luz A. Villa
Second by ✿ nicolas_gent ✿
Third By h.koppdelaney

This goes way into the way we process information through a possible prediction system (Hawkins, Blakeslee) or an interpreter (Gazzaniga) in the brain that creates justifications to sustain beliefs.

The studies about how the brain works are in process, but in between…

We have an urgent thing to answer: What is violence? Where does violence come from? Where does violence lie within us?

There are people who talk about freedom of the mind, and its emptiness. It is my concern that their beliefs and their concepts about all these theories fill the same void religion fills. The only difference is that their ideology changes to their new adopted behaviors of meditation or whatever ‘fashion’ is available to them that makes them feel good or safe.

The problem of ideology and belief is the lack of questioning the fundamental reasons: Who are we? What is a concept? What is to think? How do we think? What is love? What is to observe? Etc. These questions may seem obvious, but it is in that trap that we have been living, a trap that can no longer be contained. It is ready to explode.

There are philosophers, religious figures, and others who have attempted to give answers to these questions. However, it can no longer be a state of complete denial where deep thought is left for some, it is our responsibility to ask questions, and try to answer them, not for the sake of knowledge, but your own fulfillment.

Now, it seems easier and more tempting to just read a ‘guru’, and believe everything he says, instead of challenging him and giving him your own level, you as ‘he’ as the same capacities, the only difference is that he made a living by being ‘a guru’. You haven’t chosen that path.

Most of us have to work or do things to survive and being a guru is not an option, unless you are one of those writers who say to know everything about the world, but in fact are a bunch of copy pasters from different traditions of thought.

Therefore, this post today will be to challenge you…

I dare you to think! To ask questions. To forget about the ‘guru’, to face life with all you’ve got, painful or not, it is all we actually have, our experience, and if we continue to rely on those ‘mythical figures’ (academic, political, or religious) we will fail to see our mistakes, and will be keep doing them for centuries to come.

So, how to ask questions? With more questions, without “definite answers”, however you will gain new perspectives about life. You will be able to see how there is no actual “true” or “false” (in a deep sense), but perspectives that have different ways of seeing and experiencing life. As I said before, these questions are not about finding perfect answers or new beliefs… It is about experiencing life in a new way… BEWARE the guru, the knower, the whatever… better know thyself!

Let’s confront the gurus, prophets, philosophers, etc, and realize in yourself the correct perspective of what they are saying. Got a belief? Challenge it. Challenge your own belief. Don’t fall into the your own guru bias. You have to be very careful, very aware of your thoughts, and how they arise, and how they dissolve. Why? You use your thoughts to understand life. It is a source of your ‘experience’, you cannot simply trust your senses because it is ‘obvious’ to do so, you need not only to challenge others, but to challenge yourself to the extreme. This might sound difficult or extraordinary, and it might be… Until you realize how relevant, and transcendent for your experience it is to see beyond concepts, to observe beyond beliefs, to actually LIVE, and instead of being in a ‘virtual reality’ of yourself.

Ask questions: Use one question, and answer it with another until you have a bag of questions you are constantly trying to answer day and night. You will reach answers, doubt those, and start again. Why do we want to feel security of knowing? Is there something else beside knowledge? What about experience? Is experience knowledge? How can live an experience if I am always thinking about nonsense? Or is the experience a thought? If experience is a thought, then… Is all reality a product of thought? Is there something beyond thoughts?

How can you assure that the mind is never empty? How can you assure everybody lives a mind without emptiness? Why is emptiness so important if you have never had your mind empty? Isn’t that same “idea” of emptiness the same thing that “prevents” you from being empty? And if you reach emptiness how can you be sure that there is this divine? And if it is divine, how can you be sure that divine is not obtained through untraditional non explored ways that only you can reach through self-contemplation with or without thoughts? Why do mediators want to empty the mind? Isn’t the mind already empty, but we strive to “live” the illusions due to the security felt by what we know? Why would you want to achieve one-mindedness if one-mindedness already is? Why try to achieve something that is not achievable because it already has been achieved?

Why is there a classical sense of traditional meditation? Is meditation total awareness (Including your thoughts whenever they arise and non-thoughts)? What happens when there are no thoughts? Is this possible? How can you assure that there is no possible existence without thoughts just because you haven’t experienced a life without ‘constant thoughts’?

For example, I am observing the conflict inside my head without judging, but just listening to it and trying to understand it. Could this be meditation? Why should you follow a tradition about what is a ‘meditative state’? What is justice? What is freedom? Do you really have free will? If so, could the idea of having free will a belief that you want to nurture to feel security and feel you have control over something?

Ask about contemplation, how does contemplation relate with thought? How could awareness of these conflicts change things? What is contemplation? Could there be a state of constant awareness?

These questions are not easy, some may find them too difficult to answer because that means to change your entire way to observe and experience the world. You will change, and in this change if there is no peace, but more conflict, your answers are creating more and more beliefs that do not have a foundation of truth.

Keep asking! How? Why? Yes… Keep going!

What is truth? What is peace? What is violence? How does violence work within the mind? Is our nature violent? Why? Why could you accept a concept like that seeing the implication of such violence in the world? Could concepts and beliefs be the source of violence? Could our identification of ourselves with these beliefs create violence to defend these beliefs that create us security? Where does true security lie? Could security be related with violence? What would happen if we understood security? Would fear disappear? What is fear? How is fear felt? What are the consequences of fear? How does frustration relate with fear and anger? Can you live without anger? How is fear helpful? What are the limits of fear? Are we really free? What is freedom?

Grab a book if you need inspiration. Yes, keep reading until you are tired to death, but do not fall into the trap of the tradition you are reading. Build a safe zone if necessary in order to rest, but then… Keep going!

Changing the way you experience life, love!

• assumptions assured by confirmed predictions
• belief systems sustained by thoughts
• projections maintained by memories through experiences

Concepts are rarely questioned because we even believe others have the same definition because “they are in the dictionary”. However, these dictionaries lack insight because they are used to create a common ground. They do not express the real “use” of the word or words because language is a constantly changing mix.

This is important to establish because the main reason of conflict in between humans beings are: “Misunderstandings”

The number one cause of dissolution in unions is: Lack of communication.

For example:
My concept about love is not the same one you had, so I file for a divorce because you lacked the ability to love me as I wished, and we did not learn to how communicate properly to each other what does love mean. We can talk for hours, but a deep communication is lacking because of the misconceptions of the main words being used.

How many words have you asked yourself what do they mean to you? Have you asked to those who you constantly relate to… What does it mean to them a friendship, love, honesty, companionship, loyalty, etc.?

What you see is not what actually is; it is the image you have created of it the one being understood. However, it kind of works this way… We can communicate, but we also live so much division when we don’t know how to explain what we wish to express.

We may see and live the same truth, but each one of us uses a lens on a different focus that is seems we are seeing different things. So much anger, aggression, and separation created by these wrongly understood concepts, and by the interpretation of these when applied into a certain environment.

How can you commit to a relationship when you cannot even listen to the other’s expectations when using the word “love”?

It is a spiral that goes somehow like this:

• Lack of communication eventually results in broken expectations.
• Broken expectations leave you lost in translation, then communication becomes even worse.
• It all ends up in sadness, and at the end; if not careful it turns out into anger and hate

Communication means: I listen to you fully. I close my thoughts for a moment. I open my heart to you. I care what you have to say, although I don’t agree with you. I may even grow and have better ideas with those remarks I don’t agree on.

It does not matter if he does not listen to you. It is YOU the one who should listen. Is is YOU the one who should become aware of the situation. It is YOU who can change the world, not others.

Remember, I may be wrong. Think things out. Ask yourself more questions. There is no one out there to say something enlightening. It is you the one who has all the questions; therefore all the answers.

If others see you want to listen, they may try to… but even if they don’t… move on. Learn from each experience and open those eyes to new understandings by simply listening.

Photo Credit: by Frederic della Faille

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Life is full of breaking points, instants creating the opportunity of change, your choice: Take them or leave them. You walk the way you believe makes you feel is great about yourself. Most of the time, our ideas depend, if they are not thought by yourself thoroughly, on the collective mind, they way society has elaborated rules and concepts.

As a consequence, many things that make you feel great or bad about yourself, may be not the facts. It could be those ideas you are lingering on, but those can change at any instant.

However, the instant you understand you have the ability inside yourself to really feel great, and it does not depend on your ideas or concepts about yourself:

You are really free. Not free in the sense of my country is free, but the freedom that even though you may be in a prison… You are really free of yourself, and you become the real you.

WHY?

A concept is a mental elaboration of the “object” thought. An idea represents the conjunction of those concepts into a bigger elaboration, and your inner relationship with those concepts.

Each idea can produce an action, an emotion, a desire, etc. It is the product of concepts, created since birth, by the people who surround you and your reaction to those interactions.

We have the ability to change your results, to change the reactions produced, if you take some of your time to think about:

Who is the real you beyond all those concepts and ideas?

Society states: These are the rules, enter the matrix, you cannot think for yourself once you are there.

You have a choice each instant: I want to take the responsibility of my ideas and their consequence; created or not by society through deranged concepts.

You can listen inside yourself; you know when something is going wrong, when there is something out there waiting to be understood, but you don’t have the time to find out why, you may be sad or angry at everything, you feel fear…

• When will enough be enough?
• Who are you?
• Why do we exist? What is the purpose of life and yours?
• Are you happy? Are you sad? Are you in fear?
• What is wrong and right? Does good and bad exist as I believe it does?
• Why do I judge others? Am I judging myself as I judge others with those same ideas?
• Why do you do what you do? Are you doing things because of you or because of what the collective mind tells you is right?

• Is love just a concept (an idea created by the mind producing a result as a feeling)?
• Is love just a feeling (a cascade of emotions bringing hormones into action)?
• Is love something more than just a concept and feeling?

How can we really express love? Where is love? How can love transform our lives? Does love bring us true happiness?

If so, why do we stop expressing love? Are there different levels of happiness? How does that relate with love? I ask you all of these questions with the intention of giving you a pathway of questions, and become aware of the dimensions of love.

If you can extrapolate love into different spheres of existence, could we relate love to energy, action, or as nature? Could it be that all beings have the nature to be love (lovable and loving)?

So… It is up to each one of us to discover love. However, if you have decided love is something more than just a subway passenger, love is the motor of the world, love is the true way peace can be achieved, love is the way the universe manifests us beauty, and love is it all: Welcome to my world!

What would happen if we could always remember others need our smiles and hugs? We would never miss a sweet caress of those who do. Would we?

There is a reason to exist. What is it? Question it all. Find it. Be happy, live without stress, and be more alive through awareness!

It doesn’t matter if there are dull, angry, or sad days… It is about trying your best, not into being a perfect robot, it about learning from those mistakes, and become aware of them.

It all comes in time when intention is on the way.

A perspective about what could be love: Find out what is your perspective deep inside “you”.

Photo Credit: By Leland Francisco