Heaven is at Hand

Most of the religious conditioning of my youth created an image of a universe that was divided in two. Duality. Good and bad; heaven and hell. Heaven was a destination for the virtuous and few met it's requirements. Hell was for the rest that faced eternal damnation. The clouds were of heaven, earth and it's pleasures with were seethed in God's wrath.

Black and white thinking set up a self created hell. Torture

ensued as I undertook the task of material and emotional needs.

I hoped to find well being in a car, a relationship, and in children. Convinced by this world that things would bring happiness, yet knowing the price was my very soul. Covertly, watching those who focused exclusively on the spiritual loose themselves in dreams, out of touch with reality. Conversely watching those who pile possession needing ever more to file the hole in the core of their being.

In a brief moment of consciousness the master said that thoughts were things. "If your thought is a rose, you are a rose gardener; if it is a thorn, you are fuel for the bath stove." Rumi. However, heaven awaits for the impartial observer. What steals our attention will enslave our soul.

Real life is lived in the balance, in the in-between, in either...