Heaven on Earth

By Anna Brzeski 
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Anna's Blog

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​As I wrote in my Intention for this blog, my desire is to create heaven on earth. I have always yearned for harmony and peace, a world free from aggression and violence. I had an “aha!” moment while listening to spiritual teacher Matt Kahn, realizing that we already have heaven here on earth; whether we experience it or not is a matter of perception. My head felt as if it turned around 360 degrees. I released my erroneous belief that everything I experience is either good or bad and for just one split second, I saw it all as being exactly what it was….. neither good nor bad, neither heaven nor hell…..  just….. there. In relative terms, this concept is difficult to understand, let alone to explain. But somehow, inside my body, I felt a letting go of this need to “create heaven on earth,” because it has already been created. Now all I have to do is to allow myself to experience it, open my eyes to a new world where all is exactly as it should be, empty of my judgement.
My living question is: I wonder how I can experience heaven on earth?
I am exploring my world with a new vision, as if it were already the heaven I have yearned for all my life. I practice by taking my glasses off and allowing everything to be out of focus, vague, unclear, new. I also ask myself every day what I could do that I’ve never done before, and throughout the day I wait for guidance. Sometimes ideas come to me to try a new food for instance, and other days, I spontaneously do something like take a detour and I realize later that it was my “new thing.” It doesn’t take much to experience life in a new way, and it makes living interesting and fresh. I am the kind of person who loves routine because it feels safe, but adventure is also very important to me and in the limited world of chronic illness, easy little adventures are the way to go.
Happiness means feeling you are on the right path every moment. You don’t need to arrive at the end of the path in order to be happy.
—Thich Nhat Hanh, “The Heart of the Matter“