Photo by Maximilian Müller on Unsplash
I debate talking about big topics like this. They can be controversial. They stir up stuff you maybe don’t really want to face.
Like memories of nuns slamming rulers on desks. Or being told you were going to hell because you talked out of turn — or worse, to a boy, in the middle of class. Or Sister Anne Christine informing you, with complete certainty, that missing Mass over the weekend had sealed your fate.
Oh wait. Those are my memories. Yuck.
Maybe you were raised with a version of this, too, the idea that if you behaved, you’d earn your way to Heaven, and if you didn’t, you were headed somewhere far less comfortable. A fiery, terrible place reserved for evil people and the ones on the evening news.
Double yuck.
I’ve got an idea.
Oh, wait, I think this might actually be Jesus’ idea, just not the way most of us were taught it.
Jesus talked about going to heaven when we die. But what if he didn’t only mean when we die physically? What if he also meant when the ego dies? When you read a lot of what he said through that lens, it’s possible — and yes, this is just one interpretation, so stay with me — that heaven and hell aren’t destinations waiting for us at the end. They are experiences available to us right now, at every passing breath.
So what would that look like?
Heaven, I’d argue, is a spiritual experience available right here on earth, when we are fully present. Three-centered. Connected to something bigger than ourselves. It would explain why, on so many deathbeds, the regrets aren’t about money not made or things not bought. They’re always about time. About presence. About the people they loved and how they showed up…. or didn’t.
And hell? Hell is what happens when we’re not present. When the ego is running the show. Which, if we’re being honest, is where most of us spend a lot more time than we’d like to admit.
So what pulls us away from Presence? From heaven? Why is it so hard to just be… here… now? What is our suffering?
Here’s what does the pulling:
Personalities
Patterns
Unconsciousness
Triggers
Other people and circumstances
Stress and anxiety
Our differences from each other
In other words, being asleep. Asleep to our possibilities. To our reactions. To our ability to pause, to choose, to decide in the moment. Asleep to this moment, right here.
We are prisoners of our egos.
And this is exactly why I’m obsessed with the Enneagram. Because I believe it is one of the most powerful paths to personal freedom, it helps us see ourselves. Clearly. Maybe for the first time.
Our prison cells don’t all look alike. Some are like San Quentin. Others like Alcatraz. Different in design, different in location, but still prison.
From an Enneagram perspective, here’s what those cells look like:
Point Eight: The Challenger — They carry the weight of everyone’s safety on their shoulders, never quite able to rest because letting their guard down has always felt like a risk they can’t afford.
Point Nine: The Peacemaker — They’re so good at making sure everyone around them is okay that they rarely stop to ask themselves the same question.
Point One: The Reformer — They hold themselves to a standard that keeps moving, working so hard to get it right that they rarely give themselves credit for how much they already are.
Point Two: The Helper — They pour so much love into the people around them that they sometimes forget to leave a little for themselves.
Point Three: The Achiever — They’ve worked so hard to build something meaningful that they haven’t had a quiet moment to remember they were already enough before any of it.
Point Four: The Individualist — They feel everything so deeply that the world can seem like a place that never quite has room for all of who they are.
Point Five: The Investigator — They understand so much about the world and yet sometimes find themselves watching life from a safe distance, not quite ready to step all the way in.
Point Six: The Navigator — They care so deeply about the people they love that their mind is always working overtime, trying to keep everyone — including themselves — safe.
Point Seven: The Enthusiast — They bring so much light to every room that almost no one notices how rarely they let themselves simply sit with what’s hard.
Sit with that for a second.
We’re all out here running around, telling ourselves and everyone around us our stories. These programmed inner dialogues, these unconscious scripts, quietly run the show. Keeping us locked up. Keeping us from the very life we want, the one we were meant to live.
That’s prison.
So how do we escape? How do we get a first-class ticket to heaven, right here, on earth?
By doing the work.
You cannot be present if your personality is running the show. And you can’t even see who’s running the show without awareness. That’s where it starts.
So wake up and start your journey. It isn’t too late.
Take a look around. Heaven is right here. You just have to decide how badly you want it and whether you want it badly enough to do the work.
I hope you do.
We need more people living in Presence. Because people who are doing that kind of work, people who are truly awake, they’re the ones who make this world feel a little more like the loving, kind, expansive place we all know it can be.
Right here. Right now.
Agree!❤️
Brilliant!❤️