Where Is Heaven, and Where Is the Kingdom of Heaven?
Heaven and the Kingdom of Heaven are one and the same. What is defined in Heaven appears in the material world. The Kingdom of Heaven is here when we, too, are here—not seeking to change what exists, but to understand it.
The present, in which we always exist, can be hell, it can be Heaven, or it can be anything in between.
The nature of the world we live in does not depend on us. We did not shape it into what it is. Even in the short term, the effect of our will upon the world is only apparent, because our will itself depends on our current knowledge, which is determined by all our experiences up to this point.
How we perceive the present depends on our expectations. The ideas we have formed about the world determine what we want.
Our will may be completely different from what we experience, or it may be completely aligned with what is happening, or it may be anywhere between these two. What we truly want depends on which evaluations we have adopted throughout our experiences.
Our evaluations are themselves learned interpretations of experienced reality. The more we devalue what we experience, the more existence in the world becomes suffering. Conversely, the less we evaluate our experiences as being any particular way, the more capable we become of understanding why things happen and what their causes are.
We recognize the laws of Heaven when we do not evaluate our experiences, but instead understand why things happen as they do. In this way, we are increasingly in Heaven for as long as we are able to maintain this judgment-free way of seeing.
When evaluation begins during our experiences, we want to change the world according to our evaluations. We want more of what we evaluate as good, and we want to eliminate, remove, and destroy the experiences that we evaluate as bad.
The world is not good as it is; therefore, we want to change it. The world as we imagine it should become appears to us as Heaven, as the Kingdom of Heaven, and the greater the difference between this imagined goal and the present, the more we experience the present as hell.
In reality, the present cannot be anything other than what we experience it to be, and we cannot shape the future either, because we do not know the laws of the world. We want what we want according to our current knowledge and our evaluations, and because we want something different from what exists, the present becomes devalued.
The intention to change, however, is determined, because our knowledge is also determined. Because our knowledge is limited, we do not understand why the present is as it is. Therefore, if we do not seek to understand the present, we seek to change it. This is lawful and determined by the will that appears according to our knowledge.
It is not important how much knowledge we currently possess. Whether we are able to see the present as the Kingdom of Heaven or experience it as hell does not depend on the amount of our knowledge.
The recognition lies in understanding that no matter how much knowledge we possess, it is still limited knowledge, because the Human's perception is limited in both time and space.
If we understand that our knowledge is limited, then we also understand that changing the world is not possible, because we do not shape the world—we come to know it throughout our lives. Our intention to shape the world is completely self-identical and real, but the world does not unfold according to our will; it unfolds according to the laws of Heaven.
If we want to shape the world, then whether we feel well in the world depends on the extent to which our will is fulfilled. If it is fulfilled, we are happy; if it is not, we are sad. Between these two, countless experiences and emotions may appear.
If the intention to change is absent because we know that our knowledge is limited, and we seek to understand the world and our experiences, then our emotions temporarily become calm. As long as there is no intention to change, both positive and negative emotions recede, and reality becomes increasingly understandable through our experiences.
Calmness and peace appear because no intention to change arises. This is the experience of Heaven; this is the Kingdom of Heaven. We remain in it until an evaluation appears and, with it, an intention to change.
The Kingdom of Heaven is always here; it never disappears. Yet we are not always in the Kingdom of Heaven, because we evaluate our experiences, our will appears, and we seek to shape the world. This is not a flaw in the system, but the way in which we come to know the world. At times, however, it can be exhausting, because we are constantly confronted with evaluation and dissatisfaction. The good news—the gospel—is that the Kingdom of Heaven is always here. Even if only temporarily, whenever we are able not to evaluate the present and not to change what is happening, we can rest here in the Kingdom of Heaven.
The process of knowing then continues. We continue to evaluate, and once again we seek to change the world. In this way, we recognize more and more of the laws that define the world.
The Kingdom of Heaven is a place of rest throughout life, where learning continues without interruption and we come to know more and more laws. The intention to change that arises through evaluation and free will gradually introduces us to more and more of the laws that define the world, because this is the meaning of life. Yet if we know that the world truly exists according to the laws of Heaven, we can rest in the Kingdom of Heaven before another experience gives rise to another evaluation along our path. We do not need to avoid it, because this is the path of knowing—the path on which we move toward complete knowledge.
The imagined perfect place, where no pairs of opposites exist, does not exist, because in the material world it is the pairs of opposites that appear and become perceptible. Therefore, if the pairs of opposites were to cease to exist, then that which previously existed through them would also cease to exist.
The Kingdom of Heaven—Heaven itself—appears in the material world, on Earth. Therefore, the Kingdom of Heaven is always here. How we perceive it depends on where we are along the path of knowing, which is entirely unique in both time and space, yet determined and unchangeable, because everything that exists is defined by the laws of Heaven. The present, the knowledge available to us in the present, and the will that appears according to our knowledge are all determined by the laws of Heaven. Therefore, all of these are always present.
Heaven and Earth are the spiritual and material forms of the same world. According to our perception, we are always here and now, and this determines what we experience at this very moment—which part of the Kingdom of God we are coming to know.