What and Where is the Kingdom of Heaven?

Do you ever wonder what it really means to “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven and all these things shall be added unto you?” How do we seek first the Kingdom and still live our daily lives in this world? It can be confusing when the world around us is absolutely governed by commercialism and it seems our happiness actually is dependent on money. How do we navigate our way through the confusion to extreme clarity and peace? I guess it would make sense to start by asking what is the Kingdom of Heaven? Many of us were taught that the Kingdom of Heaven is the afterlife, which is an illusion anyway because our true selves (our spirits) had no beginning and has no end, it is immortal. Therefore, Life itself never dies. May I go so far to say that death is an illusion when we identify as our true selves (our spirit). There are thousands of people who have had near death experiences and all of them talk about leaving their body and observing their physical body from above. This is the spirit of God inside you that never dies. When we think of EGO, many of us think of the manifestation of arrogance or superiority. That is just one form of ego. Our Ego-self is the self that we identify with through thought and beliefs. The Ego-Self is who-ever you believe yourself to be in this physical body and this physical life. Even your physical body is a reflection of your thoughts and beliefs about yourself. It doesn’t matter where the beliefs come from, just that you continue to hold them as your reality. When we look on the internet, it is smattered with “manifestation” tips and tricks. The critical mass has come to once again re-discover that our thoughts form our “reality”. Because of this, everyone is trying to teach each other how to change their thoughts from “bad to good”. One of the ways of doing this is visualization and imagination. People say, “imagine your ideal life”, visualize everything you want and say affirmations until you yourself believe these good thoughts about yourself. In this way, we are constantly trying to BECOME someone who we do not believe that we are….yet. If you’re anything like me, even the process of deciding who I want to become and the life I want to live, can change with the wind from day to day; like a kid in a candy store overwhelmed with the endless options. And what these “manifestation techniques” do to us is keeps us identifying with our Ego or our persona. It keeps us in the world of duality, good thought, bad thought and “I want, I want, I want.” The Kingdom of Heaven is the realm beyond thought, the realm beyond duality, it is the realm of “I AM, I AM, I AM.” BE STILL AND KNOW THAT I AM…GOD The Kingdom of Heaven is not something you earn or where you go when your physical body dies, it is what’s available to you right now when you go to your heart. When you put all of your attention on your heart, your take attention off of your thoughts. When you take attention off of your thoughts, they lose their power. To enter the Kingdom of Heaven, we want to focus on the heart because that’s where love abides, and God is love. This is where you will rediscover the Divine living within you, the source of all life and true intelligence. The mind of God is in your heart, not your thoughts. There is nothing in this physical life that you can visualize that will evoke the feeling of divine love. The truth is that YOU ARE LOVE, and when the thoughts stop and there is silence, you will realize yourself as love, and joy, and peace, and power, and intelligence beyond human comprehension. Love is the great spirit living inside of you. Your true identity is spirit, is light, is love. There is nothing to become, you already are. Only your thoughts keep you from realizing this, which is why even “good thoughts” absolutely limit us and keep us from our true or highest-selves. Our highest self is not in this physical body, it’s the spirit within us. The Kingdom of Heaven is beyond good thoughts. Even if you used your thoughts to create exactly everything you want in this life, you have limited yourself from the Kingdom of Heaven. The key to the Kingdom is in your heart. Here is a little exercise to help you connect with your heart:

Drop your attention into your heart, go to the core of the beating of your heart. Feel the pulsing of your heart and its vibration and power. Do not imagine anything. Silence and stillness of the mind is where absolute peace and solace abide. Don’t expect to “see” anything, just enjoy the spaciousness and freedom from racing thoughts. Just BE. Now, what we know is that there is a force and a source of infinite life that starts our heart beating. This life is a source of great power and it keeps your heart beating, without it, your heart and breath would stop. Go past the beating of your heart and into the source that beats your heart. It’s an indescribable feeling, but the best I can describe is that it is vibrant and alive, all while being still and silent. It feels so peaceful, like you just arrived home and in the arms of someone you love. It feels expansive and infinite. Now notice how your breath interacts with this source of life that beats your heart and how the slower your breath becomes, the more they become one. With your eyes closed, let your eyes completely rest and relax, let them fall naturally into nothingness, into your heart. Your lungs are the power center that feeds the flame of love in your heart. As thoughts pass by, give them no attention; do not judge the thoughts as good or bad, do not entertain the thoughts, even ones that evoke any emotion. Just let them pass and go back to the silence of your heart. Do not allow your thoughts to come into any shape or form. If you do not give attention to the thoughts, they will eventually “leave you alone” because you are not feeding them. Continue on in this way in your meditations and even as you move through your day, and soon you will begin to identify more with your true self and less with your egoic persona. Now you may be wondering, how is nothingness the Kingdom of Heaven?

The Kingdom of Heaven is in your heart, when you are fully present, and that just takes a little shift of your attention, and patience with yourself. Kindness with yourself will propel your journey. Give thanks for every step, for each one serves a purpose. Embrace it! As you continue doing this, you will begin to feel yourself as the love -being that you are. As you identify with love and focus your attention on that infinite power of love, then you will vibrate and exude love, which will spontaneously manifest THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN before your very eyes, in every part of your life. You will be free from having to imagine or visualize the perfect you or perfect life in physical form, and you can allow the Divine within you to manifest your heart’s desires for you and allow the abundance of life to unfold without fear. Our Egoic self does not even know our heart’s desires, but the Divine within us does and it will manifest them when we abide in love. The power of love is above all! We have actually been trained to believe that love is weak because it makes us vulnerable. But if we will send love to those who want to harm us, to those we consider evil in the world, they will destroy themselves because their vibration is no match to the great power of love. This is a pure love that cannot be sent with the intention of serving your egoic self, it is sent with the intention of creating the Kingdom of Heaven on earth, the pureness of love beyond reason. We don’t have to worry about what’s happening in the world, just vibrating from our highest selves has the power to bring form the new age of enlightenment and peace. We must recognize that this is the power that will change the world, especially when we stop giving thoughts of separateness any more power. We only separate ourselves from others through our thoughts and judgements, but the truth is that we are all ONE and when we are ONE in LOVE, The Kingdom of Heaven will prevail. Do not give up on this dream. Do not worry about what other people are doing or not doing, just focus on what is happening within you and the love of God that exudes from you will be so contagious, and so healing to our world. If you ever wonder what you can do to help the world, this is it! This is how you “Seek ye first the Kingdom of Heaven” and this is how together, we build the Kingdom of Heaven on Earth. When you look around at all the things you think you are lacking or that you need, these are coming from thoughts that keep you in your egoic persona who will never be good enough according to your thoughts. We must untangle this attachment from this imagined, or thought -up-self and begin to attach more with our true nature, the nature of God, which is perfect, divine, whole. This is what I am that I am means. In the world of good thought, bad thought, we are never good enough, we are never perfect or worthy. This is an illusion to keep us from the power of love. I know when you first begin, it’s difficult, and you may second guess which is the true reality but just remember …you were made in God’s image and God is perfect.. How could you be any less than perfect than by your own thoughts of duality? God does not see what we see. He does not see though eyes of duality. He sees through the one eye of love, and when we choose to do the same, we enter the Kingdom of Heaven. This is what happened when we decided to eat from the tree of knowledge…the knowledge of duality. Now we must navigate our way back to the Garden of Unity.

I AM THAT I AM

Love,

Jennifer