There Is No Religion In Heaven
Confessions of a spiritual “misfit”.
I offer these words with sincere love in my heart for all who read them. I pray that these words will find the eyes, hearts and minds for which they were written.
I have a confession to make…. no one wants me; no “religion” that is. I fit in nowhere. There are numerous “-isms” which tell me I am blasphemous, heretical, damned or just plain wrong. Their rejection used to hurt me but now I am immune. Here, I wish to share my journey in the hope of encouraging, motivating and empowering others.
There is no religion in Heaven.
Heaven is Heaven.
It just is.
Spirituality is not religion. And religion is not spirituality.
Spirituality can know Heaven because Heaven is Spiritual. Religion can only know earth because it is an invention of earth.
When I say “religion” I am talking about: rigid structure, rules, “either-you- are-in-or-out” status and titles. Oh my goodness how people can get attached to their titles.
Many people don’t know themselves. So they may grab at a title to obtain an identity. Wrapped in their invisible security blanket of a title these individuals feel safe, secure and accepted. Finally, they belong to something. “I am a Christian, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Hindu, a Catholic, a Taoist, a Muslim, a Jain, a Shintoist, an atheist”……the list goes on and on.
Maybe people attach to a title because they have nothing else as an identity and want to belong. I can understand that. I’ve been there. And if the title makes you feel more safe or secure and that makes you more peaceful then I am all for it. But it won’t help you grow in spiritual depth to stay clinging to that title.
A title will never help someone grow. A title will box someone in. A title becomes your master. A title controls you with fear: fear of being kicked out of the “club” if you don’t think, act, say and believe what that title is supposed to believe. But if it makes you more peaceful in this life then OK. We need more peace.
My true heartache…
There is something that hurt my heart. I mean hurts as in a crushing death-grip type of hurt. It is when people have some sort of personal experience with the Universe, with a Heavenly being, with the Divine, with God, with Jesus, and then go latch themselves onto a specific religion in the hopes of further growth. They take on a “title” and mistakenly assume they have found a community who will understand them.
Spoiler alert: they won’t understand you. They will mold you, if you allow them, to think exactly as they think.
Before long, the spiritual seeker dies to that initial experience because the “title” has take them over. The “title”, no longer the personal experience, dictates what that person believes, what they feel and how they should act. The “title” dictates what is right and wrong.
In this manner the spiritual seeker closes themselves off to all the other ways in which the Divine has communicated to people through the centuries. In short, the spiritual seeker closes themselves off to future personal experiences. Again, I know because I have been there.
Why do we put the Divine in a box? Why do we say that God could only be speaking to one group of people, in one area of the world, in one specific moment in time? Why do we put our human limitations on a limitless Divinity? Why would we want to believe in Something that is as limited as us? Why are we unwilling to listen to what other cultures or traditions have to say about God? Why can’t we dialogue?
Why?
Because people feel threatened. When people feel threatened inside it is a sure sign that they are not truly rooted in their beliefs. It is a sure sign that they are terrified to be proven wrong. What would they do then? Their whole world, the world they built around their “title”, could collapse.
Where God truly exists fear cannot. People either have fear or they have God. They can’t have both.
Dear friends, God has been speaking to all people since the beginning and He still speaks today!
Read ancient mystics from different cultures. Read sacred scriptures from other cultures. You will begin to see striking similarities.
Read the Bhagavad Gita
Read the teachings of Buddha
Read the Torah
Read the Bible
But read it with a patient, poised, still mind. Read with a meditative mind. Read open to receiving truth. And you know what you will find?
God….in all of it
As you do this you will begin to distill out the Divine in all of these “religious” traditions…and you can throw away what has been interjected by man’s ego.
Then you will know Truth.
I am not saying that all “religions” are valid. I am saying no “religion” is valid. Many “religions” contain kernels of truth; aspects of God. Many “religions” lay claim to certain mystics who were undoubtedly Divinely inspired and knew God. But no “religion” has a monopoly on God precisely because once something becomes “religion” man has added earthly things to it. Earth is not Heaven. As we said when we started this chat, there is no religion in Heaven.
As I have experienced it, there exists a sort of spiritual continuum.
As you grow in spirituality you do not leave behind what you knew, you simply grow into new levels of understanding. It’s not “one day I was a Buddhist and now I disavow all of that and am a Christian”. No.
Do not deceive yourself by trading one “title” for another and think you have grown.
And do not deny what you know to be true.
An example: A man has a personal experience of healing karma from a past life and then some years later meets Jesus as he progresses on his spiritual continuum journey. This man cannot deny his past life healing work as a fiction or a myth. No, he cannot.
But watch this man try to join a church and talk to the pastor about his past lives. The pastor will tell him he is “wrong”, “blasphemous”or “heretical” because that is “not what we believe, son”. This will make the mind of the person very divided. This way of thinking will bring confusion and war within himself….not the peace he is seeking.
Heaven has levels and layers; you grow up through them.
Heaven is so vast. There are all sorts of heavenly beings and creatures. Heaven is light and beauty and creativity. Heaven is spiritual because God is Spirit.
When I walked away from the organized religion I was raised in I felt free and empty. It was fabulous and terrifying at the same time.
But as I pursued my own personal search for Truth I kept seeing these layers.
Meditation brings peace and quiet. It settles the dust of the mind so you can begin to hear the Universe.
At one point all I knew were the angels I could see in the room.
NOTE: I had seen and heard the angels since I was a very little girl but no one else in my family did. It was also not something that was accepted in the “religion” I was raised in so I was told I was wrong, silly, imagining things and just plain weird. I had no one to help me understand what I was experiencing as a child. I pushed my experiences down and away as I grew, in an effort to be more acceptable in the “title”.
Then I started to learn about Ascended Masters and how they communicate with us.
Soon… a great blessing! Beloved mother of mercy and compassion, the goddess Kuan Yin blessed me by allowing me to communicate with her.
Then, one day, out of nowhere, God appeared and I knew that I knew that I knew God from that moment on.
And then, one day, Jesus showed up and things were never the same. His voice is the most beautiful and peaceful sound I have ever heard. His light is beyond description.
These beliefs are rooted in my own personal experience.
Your personal experiences are the one thing no one can ever take from you.
I can’t wrap myself in any one “title” because I have had too many personal experiences.
Personal experiences are the unique imprint God places on our individual relationship with Him. They are beautiful and sacred.
How can I call myself a Christian? Sure, I know Jesus and He is my Savior. But Christians tell me I can’t believe in Kuan Yin. How can I disavow our beloved goddess after she has been so good to me? It is not a sin to love the highest goddess in Heaven. How could it be? Believing that goddesses exist does not make you a pagan. A true Heavenly goddess is not “worshiped”. Heavenly goddesses are completely different from “religious” goddesses that are worshipped on earth. A Heavenly goddess is a beautiful, feminine Heavenly being created by God (hence the term “goddess”).
Christians tell me I can’t believe in past lives. But how can I deny my past lives? I remember them so clearly. No where in the Bible does it say it is a sin to believe in past lives; or that past lives do not exist.
Ironically, the concept of past lives actually serves to make Jesus’ sacrifice more amazing. It magnifies God’s loving, compassionate, patient heart for us. What a loving, patient God to give us lifetimes upon lifetimes to get things right and fix karmas. Multiple do-overs, if you will. He doesn’t just give us one shot and condemn us to hell.
What about people that lived before Jesus’ time? Thousands of years of humans never even had the chance to believe in Jesus. That would just be cruel.
Past lives show God’s tremendous patience and compassion and love. It also enriches the significance of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for us. He was saving us from lifetimes of re-birth.
Re-birth and multiple chances are better than a “one and done” shot at getting into Heaven. But dear friends, how many times would someone want to try again? Just being born is enough of a trauma. To have to live lifetime after lifetime on earth with all the suffering, disease, poverty, cruelty, betrayal and pain is just too much! Who among us wants to keep suffering?
It is impossible to ever get “life” down perfectly. So Jesus comes down and says “enough” and puts an end to your karmic cycle of suffering if people choose to believe in Him — because He was the exact representation of God on earth. Therefore, by transitive property, believing in Jesus means believing in God. See?
Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross breaks us out of the karmic cycle! Dear friends, that is huge! That is truly the “good news”.
But Christians won’t let anyone in church talk about that because it “is not what they believe”. Trust me, I’ve tried. It wasn’t pretty. I still have the scars to prove it.
So I can’t be a Christian. But I love to read the Bible. Christians don’t own the Bible. It was written for everyone.
I can’t be a Jew because they won’t even let me say the name Jesus. How can I deny my Savior who died to set me free from the karmic cycle of re-birth and suffering? I once made the mistake of saying the name Jesus in the home of a rabbi and his wife became furious. She was so offended and threatened. She almost threw me out of the house. All I was doing was telling an innocent story. So I can’t be a Jew. But I love the Torah. I have enjoyed studying with very brilliant rabbis — including this woman’s husband.
I can’t be a Buddhist because Buddha didn’t even want to be worshipped. The term buddha only means “enlightened one”. There were many buddhas before him and many after him. He specifically told his disciples NOT to worship him after he was gone. He specifically told his disciples NOT to make statues to him because he was just a man trying to help others find truth. Guess a bunch of people missed that memo, huh?! So I can’t be a Buddhist. But I love to read the sutras of Gautama the Buddha.
I can’t be a Hindu because now that I know the one true God I can’t worship multiple gods. But they sure did get the concept of past lives correct. Good job on that one! But I can’t worship other gods because I know the one God. I know that I know that I know Him and no one can rattle me from that position. So I can’t be a Hindu. But I love to read the Bhagavad Gita and the Upanishads. I love to read Eknath Easwaran’s commentaries on sacred Hindu writing.
Yet, we cannot discount the deeply spiritual insights of ancient Indian mystics, Gautama the Buddha, or Sufi mystics and poets simply because they don’t mention Jesus, as many Christians like to argue. How could they have mentioned Jesus when He was not born yet?
I guess what I am saying is this….
Along my journey God always met me where I was. And He will do the same for you.
When I could not accept God as God He showed up as The Universe. A kind force that held everything together through dharma and kept the wheel of lives turning through karma.
Then He allowed me to see the angels and archangels again that are all around us.
Then goddess Kuan Yin came and other Heavenly goddesses with her. The Divine was patient with me when I prayed to Kuan Yin, talked to her and meditated with her.
My heart was still too wounded by childhood abuse from human male authority figures to accept God or Jesus. So my interaction with Kuan Yin was not a sin. It did not anger God. He welcomed my time with her because that was the next step on my personal spiritual continuum. My heart was pure. My intentions were pure. My seeking was genuine. God knew all this and gently guided me as only He knew I personally needed to be guided. He did not care to conform to a “title” some humans had made for Him!
If one wishes to be open minded and truly desires truth one will see that there is a larger overarching Spiritual Continuum which God has been navigating humanity through for millennia.
And there is also a personal spiritual continuum that He has each one of us traveling along.
Where ever you are on the spiritual continuum is great…because you are ON IT!! You are growing, learning, exploring, experiencing. I will go one step further. If you have not had any personal spiritual experiences it is better to be an atheist than to claim a “title” and a belief system of which you have no real root, foundation or personal experience.
A genuine heart is pleasing to Heaven.
The Growth Mind Set
“The [person] with the trained mind automatically knows God” ~ Eknath Easwaran
I want to share with you now the mindset that has helped me most along my journey. Once I set my perspective this way I began to see major growth.
We all started out in Heaven because God created each one of our souls. The Divine truly is in each and every one of us. If I started in Heaven then I must have memories of Heaven. So I am not struggling in the dark to discover something new and foreign. I am simply working to remove the layers of dust from the earthly mentality that has covered up my spirit. I am perfectly able to re-access my Heavenly core. There is no need to struggle. I am not DIS-cover anything new. I am simply UN-covering what has always been.
Dear fellow spirits, just relax, quiet the mind and let Heaven do the rest. They want you back even more than you want to be back.
As long as your heart desires to return you will not fail to reach your destination.
