The Lord has seen fit to show me my heaven, which is here and now. By definition, it’s ALWAYS here and now.
This is the most amazing thing I’ve ever experienced. I’m still living below poverty level in a messed up house on disability, but now (compared even to a few weeks ago) it’s glorious and getting better. I have these insanely intense sensations (I can’t even call them “feelings” because they are so subtle it’s hard to describe) of peace, joy, serenity, hope, and all the good stuff.
Since I lost my lucrative career 11 years ago, I have done due diligence to learn to fight off my supposedly “total and permanent” condition of severe psychosis. For the last few months, my psychiatrist doesn’t even ask how I’m doing. We shoot the breeze over comedy, religion, family life, politics, and music, and even exchange music and comedy CD’s, and from our discussion it is blatantly obvious that I’m not psychotic anymore. Note that I’ve been going to him for 11 years now, at times daily, weekly, or monthly, and never before did he not ask how I was doing and talk about how I was doing.
The saying is true that happiness is not getting what you want, but liking what you get.
I am at peace with everything at this moment. Nothing really scares me except for the most basic of mortal fears, such as accidentally messing something up or ny loved ones and I becoming physically injured or something. Everyday it gets more serene than the last, and it’s weird because it is even retroactive. Not only am I not anxious about the past, every day the Lord reveals to me why things happened. Why did this and that terrible thing happen? It was all part of the plan and even those things that don’t make sense, also I’m at peace with because by now I know that God will reveal it to me when it’s time, seemingly on a need-to-know basis.
When I talk to people, I don’t plan what I’m going to say, usually even a few seconds in advance. My mouth moves, sounds come out, and THEN I realize what I am saying. That’s because the words are coming from my heart and my mind has finally been cleared by the Holy Spirit (the psychiatrist calls it “calm and clear mind” while I call it “paradise” or “inner room”) to the point where it puts words to my heart’s intentions to communicate in ways that are more adaptable to my audience than I could have made if I have planned it in advance.
My body language has become so non-threatening that people stand closer to me, allowing me into what a few months ago would have been “their space.” They tell me things they can’t even tell their closest friends. My kids’ friends are confiding in me and I’m even counseling a few of them and even some of their friends, anonymously, over the Internet. Monday a woman I’d never seen and maybe about my age (53), named Nichole, came up to me while I was pumping gas and talked for a minute and asked if she could buy me breakfast. I wasn’t hungry, but I let her buy me a drink and she did, with FOOD STAMPS. Then she gave me a quick hug and we parted ways. Now that was totally bizarre, but after these last few weeks, I took it in stride.
I still have some shreds of “bad” ego left, and it manifests in my writing and is obvious once I reread it. But every day that gets better, too, and I have to retract fewer things I said than the day before.
Gosh.
Wow.
Like I said, my heaven is here and now, and I believe others can be too if you believe and stand firmly on the word. Try ignoring the “standard” exegesis of scripture and let it sink in, such as by praying with Lectio Divina. If you truly believe, it shall be yours.
Mark 11:23-25
Amen, I say to you, whoever says to this mountain, ‘Be lifted up and thrown into the sea,’ and does not doubt in his heart but believes that what he says will happen, it shall be done for him. Therefore I tell you, all that you ask for in prayer, believe that you will receive it and it shall be yours. When you stand to pray, forgive anyone against whom you have a grievance, so that your heavenly Father may in turn forgive you your transgressions.”
Alan
