Day Seven, the Kingdom of Heaven

DAY SEVEN
The Kingdom of Heaven

Is within. The Kingdom of Heaven is within, saya Jesus in the Bible. Within. Not up in the sky. Not some high grade Santa Claus’s reward for being good little boys and girls in our life.
Within ourselves.

Within our own bodies, these temporary shells, in there, right Now, is the Kingdom of Heaven.

Maybe now IS the Kingdom of Heaven. To be explored later. For today, let’s look within our bodies.


Arise to standing. Sense your feet pushing down and your skeleton pushing up. Feel the fullness of being a human being with two arms and two legs and a spine on this planet Earth.

There are a lot of humans, but not many creatures that can stand on two legs, even less that can live and walk this way.

This is your life, right now.

Sense your arms and legs now and stretch your arms out to the side , making yourself into a human cross. Sense your spine in the middle of all this, carrying your arms, carrying your head.

Good.

This is you, a human being in the shape of the cross. Sense the five lines of being human: two legs, one spine (with head on top, pelvis at the base), and two arms. Be in this cross and sense where the horizontal line of your arms, would cross the vertical line of your spine.


Somewhere in the heart region.

Sense the heart region today. See if you can detect something like the “Kingdom of Heaven” in there, especially in times of less talk and inner chatter. See if it’s even more in times of no inner words, though those time are hard to find. (And all the more precious for it.)

Other People

even though
they preach the gospel
of love

some people

just don't have
time
or the bigness
in their heart
to be kind
to other people

especially
anyone who has
ever "rubbed them the wrong way"

oh, well:
that's their issue,
isn't it?

Jesus said it kind of like this:
"Anyone can love someone
who is kissing their you know what,

but when the other person
starts to be a jerk
then you get to learn whether
you can really love or not."


So, then the turn around gets really
fun:

can
we
love the people who
aren't big enough
(and that could be a fine
and
false
story, couldn't it?)
to love us

when we are jerks


and then again:
the real
super duper
inside out
and sweetening
into truth
turn around:

can we love ourselves
when we are jerks

and forgive

and come into the present enough
to "do better"
next time


not so shabby,
this learning ground of a life,
eh?