What is the Kingdom of Heaven?
At the risk of being burned at the stake, I continue undaunted to share my understanding of the Mystery we live inside.
Many imagine the Kingdom of Heaven as a place.
A distant, luminous realm beyond death, where the righteous finally find peace, and the soul can rest after life's toil.
A place with light and song and peace, where God dwells - far away from this world.
Perhaps it is so? Who knows where the soul wanders after this life and why - that is a question each must wait to have answered, until the final day.
Regardless, that is not how Jesus speaks of it.
He does not say - "Up there, far away, sometime in the future."
He says -
"The Kingdom of Heaven has come near."
"The Kingdom of Heaven is within you."
It is a radical turn - an actual overthrow of everything man thinks it knows.
For what now, if the Kingdom of Heaven is not a place… but a state? A reality that is always here, but which we have lost the ability to see?
In the Bible's first lines it says -
"In the beginning God created heaven and earth."
These two - heaven and earth - are not just geographical separations, but symbols. Earth represents the material, the transient, the limited. Heaven represents the spiritual, the eternal, the ordered - God's kingdom.
And throughout all human history we have - across all geographic areas, traditions and cultures - tried to reunite the two.
To build bridges between heaven and earth, between God and man, between spirit and matter.
In our part of the world, the Temple, the Cross, the Altar - all images of this union.
When Jesus speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven, he speaks of the state where this separation ceases. Where the inner man again stands in harmony with the divine order. Where spirit governs over matter, and man lives in accordance with Logos - the Word, the Truth, the Light.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not a place of reward - it is a reality one steps into when the soul awakens. It is when the soul finds its way back to the Order it came from. When thought becomes pure, heart true, and will clear.
When everything in man begins to vibrate in the same rhythm as the Creator.
That is why Jesus says -
"Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God."
Difficult sentence.
But let me try to break it down.
To 'see God' is not to look upward.
It is 'to awaken inward' - in the recognition that the light one meets in there does not originate from oneself, but from Him who lit it.
To open the inner eye through which one sees the world as it truly is - illuminated by the same Light that shone in the beginning.
When the darkness in the mind lifts, and man sees with this eye, it discovers that all creation has always been bathed in the Divinity's presence.
Not understood as man becomes God. No, it is man who finally begins to SEE God - in everything, in itself, and everywhere.
It is a movement both inward and upward -
inward toward Truth, and upward in surrender to the greater.
For to awaken in Truth is to step forth before God with open eyes and open heart - not as creator, but as created.
In the esoteric tradition this is the very goal -
To find the key to the Kingdom of Heaven, the lost knowledge of how to connect the heavenly and the earthly within oneself.
To restore the inner man's order and inner light.
To raise what had fallen and heal what was broken.
To transform the hardened into living spirit, so it again flows through what had stiffened.
When this work succeeds, Man becomes a bridge - between heaven and earth. And the Kingdom of Heaven no longer becomes a distant dream, but a reality that flows through one.
For there, where man and God are reunited, there the Kingdom of Heaven begins to take form.
The Kingdom of Heaven is not after death - it is BEHIND death.
Not BEYOND the world, but THROUGH it.
It is when the veil lifts, and we see that all we thought was separate - light and darkness, heaven and earth, life and death - in reality are merely different expressions of the same divine movement.
It is not ESCAPE, but FULL PRESENCE. Not a heaven one must go TO, but a heaven one must OPEN.
When man lives in TRUTH, the veil grows thinner. When it LOVES, it becomes transparent. And finally - when the heart is CLEANSED, the mind STILL, and the will in accordance with the GOOD - the separation dissolves entirely.
Then the Kingdom of Heaven no longer becomes a promise - but an experience. A luminous reality where everything connects, and everything breathes in God.
Therefore Christ said -
"Repent - for the Kingdom of Heaven has come near."
Repentance does not mean to be ashamed.
It means 'to turn around' - to return to the true, to the light, to God.
When man does this, the Kingdom of Heaven begins to grow forth like a seed in its interior. Like a mustard seed, he said - small in the beginning, but grows into a tree where birds find rest.
So where is the Kingdom of Heaven?
It is there where Love reigns over Fear.
Where Truth reigns over Lies.
Where Spirit reigns over Matter.
It is there where man lives in accordance with God, where the Heart is at Peace, and where everything done is done in Love and Truth - and Freedom is no longer something one demands, but something one is.
The Kingdom of Heaven is here - but only for those who have eyes to see.
❤️🔥🪽
Good Sunday, friends.
