HEAVEN
Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the spirit of God dwelleth in you?
- 1 Corinthians 3:16
Actually, the kingdom of heaven begins as a state of mind here and now - a heavenly state of mind. When you save yourself from negative thinking you not only save your soul from disease but also your body which houses the soul.
- Catherine Ponder, from Dynamic Laws of Healing
This is the state of which it is said: Clouds fill the 1000 mountains. Gradually it goes to and fro quite softly; it rises and falls imperceptibly. The breath stands still and the breathing stops. The is the moment of true creative union, the state of which it is said: The moon gathers up the 10,000 waters. In the midst of this darkness, the heavenly heart suddenly begins a movement. This is the time of the one light, the time when the Child comes to life.
- Richard Wilhelm, from The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life
Sometimes I go about pitying myself
And all the while
I am being carried across the sky
By beautiful clouds.
- Ojibway Indian Poem
[that future] when through these states walk a hundred million of superb persons [that is, persons filled with Christ realization] I see, dance, laugh, sing. Wandering, amazed at my own lightness and glee, O, the joy of my spirit - it is uncaged...it darts like lightning...Joy, joy in freedom, worship, love! Joy in the ecstasy of life!
- Walt Whitman, from The Complete Poems (Penguin Classics)
We are on this earth for a definite purpose - to reclaim, as Christ taught, our lost divine heritage as children of God. - Sri Daya Mata, 5, Finding the Joy Within You: Personal Counsel for God-Centered Living
Once you perceive that you have choices, you don’t need to know too much about Jesus and Krishna, Buddha and Allah and Rama. You have the choice to live our own light. Dance with it. Listen to it and follow it.
- Carlos Santana
Households, cities, countries, and nations have enjoyed great happiness when a single individual has taken heed of the Good and Beautiful. . . . Such people not only liberate themselves; they fill those they meet with a free mind.
- Philo
I thank You God for most this amazing day;
for the leaping greenly spirits of trees
and a blue true dream of sky;
and for everything which is natural
which is infinite
which is yes.
- e.e. cummings
He is within everything in this universe, and everything is contained within Him.
- Sri Daya Mata, 19, Finding the Joy Within You: Personal Counsel for God-Centered Living
And he who beholds all beings in the Self and the Self in all beings, he never turns away from it. When to a man who understands, the Self has become all things, what sorrow, what trouble can there be to him who once beheld that unity?
- Khandogya Upanishad
Dazzling and tremendous...As in a swoon, one instant another sun, ineffable full dazzles me.
- Walt Whitman
On a sudden, day seemed to be added to day as if he who is able had adorned the heaven, with another sun.
- Dante, from Paradiso (Bantam Classics)
Lo!
All sorrow finished - the deep, deep ocean of joy
opening within - the surface sparkling.
The myriad-formed disclosed, each one and all, all things
that are, transfigured -
Being filled with joy, hardly touching the ground, reaching
cross-shaped with outstretched arms to the stars,
along the mountains and the forests, habitation of
innumerable creatures, singing joy unending -
As the sun on a dull morning breaking through the clouds -
so from behind the sun another sun, from within the
body another body - these shattered falling -
Lo! now at last or yet awhile in due time to behold that
which ye have so long sought -
O eyes, no wonder you are intent.
- Edward Carpenter, from Towards Democracy