This article, by John C. Robinson, Ph.D., D.Min., MAY NOT BE REPRODUCED without the permission of the author.

On the Taboo Against Knowing Where You Are – And Its Costs

by John C. Robinson, Ph.D., D.Min.

The presence and experience of Heaven on Earth is the greatest secret on the spiritual path. I have searched bookstores, libraries, and the web for years and have yet to find a serious discussion on the topic. Only the mystics (the true seers in every religion) talk about the divine world, but they do so mostly in passing – to them, it’s simply obvious, but to the ordinary mind, it’s simply unbelievable. Heaven on Earth – the ordinary world transfigured in enlightened consciousness – represents the ultimate destination of humanity’s great journey. Why then is our collective consciousness so barricaded against this profound and infinitely important reality?

One answer is that traditional religion got hijacked by the idea of the “fall” - the belief that humans were expelled from the Garden of Eden for disobeying God and punished to live mortal lives of toil and suffering. Redemption from this sentence can only come in the next world, if we have been good enough to deserve it. This idea became so entrenched and politicized that even mentioning the word pantheism became heresy! Historically, western religion, with its patriarchal, power-oriented organizational structure, wanted to keep it this way – if people knew this was already paradise, the justification for hierarchal male control of the religious enterprise would vanish.

Another reason for the “taboo against knowing where you are” is ever more basic: as humans developed the incredible gift conceptual thought, they created a secondary thought world and fantasy, and simply stopped seeing Heaven on Earth. This virtual inner world, like an exciting video game (witness Second Life) simply became more dramatic and addictive than what they saw all around them. We name, explain, and tell stories about everything – especially scary, sexy, painful, fascinating, or ego-inflating stories – and this dualistic process consumes the mind. Seeing only we think, we lose touch with the holiness of Heaven on Earth all around us.

If we stepped back into the Garden, how would life change?

The dramas of conceptual duality would dissolve (good-bad, right-wrong, superior-inferior, rich-poor) and all would be equal, welcome and divine.
Consciousness would shift from doing to being, ego to soul, competition to cooperation, submission to freedom, hatred to harmony, problems to creativity, ideology and polarization to inclusion and social justice, conquest and entitlement to service and love, environmental exploitation to a loving ecology, and self-created suffering to the simple joy of living.
Life would be so much slower, calmer, interesting, and intrinsically valuable.
With nothing to hoard or control (for everything is sacred), conflict, war and ownership would be obsolete.

I could go on listing such changes indefinitely (and they are described more completely in Finding Heaven Here), far more important is this simple realization: All these changes come not from a new ideology or even our own effort, but from Heaven on Earth itself. Experiencing the divine world so completely changes human consciousness that old way of living simply fall away. This is the great turning the human experiment has been awaiting! This is it.

Why are we still so invested in the dualistic world of thought and fantasy? The reasons include the following:

It’s painful to give up any addiction, and our attachment to dramatic, ego-driven stories is very strong.
Naming, explaining, and knowing things give the illusion of control, power, and superiority – more addictive beliefs.
Scientism – the commitment to scientific concepts as ultimate truth – further prevents us from trusting our own direct seeing.
The possibility of being wrong is scary, so we keep trying to make the old model work (“I’ll be happy only when I have enough money, power, fame, attractiveness, or …”).
Addicted to scary stories about recessions, criminals, and terrorists, we automatically deny or discount the possibility of Heaven on Earth and keep the fearful worldview going.

One more thing. My goal in this discussion is not to disparage thought and imagination. A precious part of our divine inheritance, these gifts are responsible for so much that is good (helping us understand and organize the world, fostering creativity and self-expression, envisioning new ways of living, even teaching people how to experience Heaven on Earth) and I would never want to lose them. But when we believe thoughts and fantasies represent the only correct way to know reality, we risk ever-new sources of hardship and suffering and hide the personal and global possibilities of peace, joy, wonder, and love that dwell in Heaven on Earth. The consequences of this myopia may in fact destroy us and our divine world if we let them.

What can we do about this taboo and its costs?

Be willing to release this taboo. The old model will never bring real peace or happiness, so let it go (and the exercises in Finding Heaven Here will help you do this).
Don’t try to figure all this out. More thinking will only keep you imprisoned in the thought world and out of Heaven on Earth!
Learn how to see Heaven on Earth. Use the exercises in Finding Heaven Here to move from a problem-centered consciousness to the direct experience of Heaven on Earth.
Be affected by this new consciousness. See how you change. You will be surprised by what how you feel and how you see the world.

Let change come by itself. You don’t have to make anything happen or convince others anything, your experience of Heaven on Earth will reveal a new world and unfold a new way of living.

Biography: John Robinson holds doctorates in clinical psychology and ministry and is an ordained interfaith minister, author, and mystic. He has taught extensively at men’s gatherings, professional conferences, hospitals, churches and retreat centers and is the author of three previous books on the interface of psychology and spirituality. His new book, Finding Heaven Here (O-Books), endorsed by Mathew Fox, Andrew Harvey, Malidoma Some, John Mabry and Jeremy Taylor, will be published early in January 2009. Dr. Robinson lives on an island in the Puget Sound of Washington State.

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