I stood alone at the lectern of the River City Funeral Chapel looking out at the swelling ranks of mourners. Friends, family, and strangers packed the sanctuary and overflow room, and formed a line that snaked out into the parking lot (the director stopped counting at 400). The casket lay open and an uncanny radiance lit up the countless flowers arrangements spread across the stage. I nodded at four men awaiting my signal and we retreated into the director’s office and closed the door. I fell into their arms – my men’s group of 15 years – and allowed myself to weep convulsively for two or three minutes. Then I pulled myself together, returned to the crowded chapel, put on my stole, and began a funeral service for my youngest son, Adam, killed in an automobile accident five long, anguished days earlier. It was the hardest service I will ever do but I would not hand this assignment another – this was my job.

I have written recently about the universal realization of Heaven on Earth described by the mystics from every tradition. They tell us that Heaven is already here when we’re awake enough to see it, and I do. The radiance of Heaven transforms the Earth into an infinitely beautiful and holy place when we learn to stop thinking, heighten awareness, and see the world transfigured in the divine Presence. But where is Heaven when your son dies in an automobile accident? Where is Heaven when your heart feels broken beyond repair? Where is Heaven in the really hard times?

Well, you know, it’s still here. Heaven never leaves. It surrounds us in grief and loss as well as joy and celebration. It holds us in our deepest pain. Heaven never leaves, we do. It’s been one month since the funeral. Where is Heaven on Earth in this time of grief?

I see beauty everywhere, and it still hurts. I feel God’s Presence, and it still hurts. I know for certain that all is well, and it still hurts. I sit in the serenity of Divinity, and it still hurts. The experience of Heaven on Earth does not make grief go away; rather it draws me into a divine Consciousness in which I feel held, loved, understood, and reassured, and full of joy, even as I still hurt.

But there is more. In this Consciousness, I discover again that I have been a victim of the stories I tell. When I tell myself stories about separation and loss, about unfairness and suffering, I hurt. In the infinite silence of Eternity, as this chatter ceases, “I” disappear into the Consciousness and Being of Divinity and know beyond the shadow of a doubt that all is one, that no one is ever lost, and that Adam is as close to me as my breath. My heart swells with an unconditional love that is more than my own, and I release this grief with immense relief, understanding, and joy. Then I know that I am not this pain, I am not this loss, rather, I am the Consciousness through which everything passes unaffected. I feel again the joy of Creation and am home.

Then, with a single thought (‘I’ll never see Adam again.”), grief returns and I must hold myself with this same vast love as the little me learns how to let go, how to trust, how to be free. We are learning to live in the new consciousness of Heaven on Earth, and everything that happens becomes an invitation to embrace it, even tragedy.

The night after Adam’s funeral, I met with my men’s and again poured out my sorrow. I did so without embarrassment or shame because these men know me and they know suffering. One had just returned from caring for his younger sister for two months during her slow, difficult, and terminal illness, living with her family five hundred miles from his home. Another man had lost two younger brothers and their father to heart attacks in the prior 18 months. Unthinkable. But we have been together through so many of hard times and still we can laugh and hug and see our way through. This, too, is Heaven on Earth, a place where love has no bounds and includes everything in its healing grace.

As we were waiting for our plane to go home, my youngest daughter said, “Maybe this is a good time to tell you. I think I’ve found somebody. A man I work with. He adores me. No one has ever looked at me like this before.” Her announcement of love and renewal during our darkest moment reminded me, too, that Heaven is wherever love flourishes and that it is still all around me, and Adam.

            How do we get to a genuine personal wisdom? The time-tested way has always been to ask ultimate questions—deep, probing, personally important, big questions such as: “Why are we here?” “What is this suffering about?” “Why is this happening?” “What is the meaning of life?”  Or, as the poet Mary Oliver puts it, “Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”  Do you ever ask yourselves these kinds of questions?  Questions like these are incredibly important. The poet Rilke advises us to “…love the questions themselves…(and) live the questions now” so that one day you may “live your way into the answer.” What he means by this is to go deeply into the question—taking it deeply inside yourself, fully absorbing and experiencing its real significance, even carrying it around with you all day—until your own deep knowing begins to bring forth answers.

            The Greek philosopher Socrates understood this kind of wisdom. Karen Armstrong explains, “Socrates’ purpose was not to impart information, but to deconstruct people’s preconceptions and make them realize that in fact they knew nothing at all…(i.e., at the level of real wisdom)…You did not receive true knowledge … second-hand. It was something that you found only after an agonizing struggle that involved your whole self. It was a heroic achievement.” When we enter this process, in other words, we are doing heroic work! And just as importantly, “To fail to think deeply about meaning” Socrates said, is “a betrayal of the soul.” 

            One way to access deep wisdom is a simple but powerful Socratic technique. It involves repeatedly asking the same deep question—one you select—over and over in a safe and sacred context, and then letting your own responses come up spontaneously from within. Like sending sonar waves down into the ocean depths and then recording the patterns created as the energy waves bounce back, this method asks you to send powerful questions down into the depths of your being to evoke its wisdom and then, in the inner stillness, listen for the answers. The great Zen master Suzuki was asked once, “What is Zen?” He answered, “Zen is that which makes you ask the question, for the answer comes from where the question arises…” That’s such an important statement: the answer comes from where the question arises. It comes from the same deep place.

Exercise: You may wish to try this method of inquiry as the beginning of your own personal wisdom project. Here are some simple instructions:

•    Write down several questions of personal significance. Reflect on them, pick the one that seems to call to you most powerfully, and start repeating this question to yourself.

•    Write down a different answer to each repetition of the question, letting it go as soon as you’ve written it so you mind can be open to more answers. And as you answer your repeating question, relax your critical or logical mind. Let your responses come spontaneously from somewhere deep inside you. Don’t judge, don’t censor, don’t interpret, just receive what comes to you.?    ?There are no ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ crazy or inappropriate answers, and this is not a test! Rather, your various and changing answers represent the many facets of this topic that are being revealed as you receive and release each response, allowing you to open to the depths of your own unlimited wisdom. You can do this process alone or with a partner. It is far easier than it seems, and you may find the results to be both surprising and amazing.

Here are some additional guidelines:

•    Notice any feelings that arise in the process. Sometimes your response may be just to express your feelings about the process.

•    Sometimes you may find yourself repeating the same response over and over for a while, and that’s ok but that, too, will change.

•    If the questioning process begins to feel frustrating, if you can’t seem to find more responses, just ‘free associate,’ that is, say whatever comes to mind and just go along with the exercise. You may be surprised by what happens after several ‘dead-ends.’

•    You should expect to feel some frustration, irritation, and confusion as you work with your question. Remember, Socrates said that finding true knowledge only comes after an “agonizing struggle” and is a “heroic achievement.” Your question may even begin to feel like a burden or curse, but stick with it.

•    You’ll know when you’ve found real wisdom—you may have the ‘aha’ experience, or feel slightly stunned, or emotional, or just sense that ‘this is important.’ There may not be a final definitive answer, but instead a range of meaningful answers—and that’s ok too.

•    Trust the process. Don’t worry about whether your responses make sense, whether they seem important or not, or whether you’re making progress. Just let whatever happens to happen.

Now take a few minutes to review your answers. Reflect on which answers feel the most real or meaningful to you, what you discovered from this process, and any important feelings that arose. If the process led to another question, write it down. Then consider journaling about your experience for a few minutes. What have you discovered? What touched you?

I have been implicitly doing this kind of personal Wisdom Project my whole life. It finally occurred to me (in this wisdom stage of life) that a formal method of deep questioning might have a role in helping people to discover the kind of wisdom we all need to learn how to live in peace.

We can all experience this process of spiritual revelation. Our questions are, in a very real sense, a form of prayer, a vision quest, a longing for spiritual direction and guidance. They open us to another dimension of consciousness—Divine consciousness—so that we may become co-creators in the moment-by-moment flow of Creation.

I invite you to begin such a Wisdom Project to discover your own deep knowing and your own unique and infinitely precious place in the universe.

I believe that the discovery of personal wisdom and a place in the universe are two incredibly important and deeply connected ideas. Now, in my 60s, my need for wisdom and purpose seems to have taken on even greater urgency.

Like all of us, I am deeply worried about our world. The Earth and its peoples desperately need a renewal of real wisdom to handle the ever more complex and dangerous problems confronting all life. I believe we have the wisdom to change things—if we can learn how to find it.

We all need wisdom to live lives that are productive, meaningful and loving. Yet we don’t often search for it very deeply, both because we don’t think we have the time or ability (“Who Me? Where would I get wisdom?”) and because it’s so easy to be absorbed by the collective opinions of society and its experts (“After all, don’t they have the answers?”) As a consequence of such beliefs, we lose access to the most important wisdom source of all: our own.

So, what is wisdom? The dictionary defines wisdom as being the accumulated philosophic, religious, scientific, or personal knowledge of an individual or culture—and, of course, the ability to use that knowledge effectively. My definition of wisdom, however, goes to a different place. Specifically, it takes us into a deep inner knowing that may or may not fit with existing cultural wisdom or life experience. In this context, wisdom comes not from conscience, knowledge, tradition, or belief, but from who you are most deeply inside. This is directly related to purpose.

In a recent ChI module, Sufi teacher Shakina Reinhertz explained, “The soul is kindled with the purpose of why you are here. It shows itself in your childhood in what you love, what brings you alive. It forms as desire, and when you act on it, it feels right.” Our deep inner knowing connects us to this inborn essence, and to the natural joy we feel in expressing who we really are. Then it guides us to vocation, which theologian Frederick Buechner defines as “the place where your deep gladness meets the world’s deep need.”

So in knowing our true being, we find both our unique gifts—literally why we were born!—and our place in community. This is the beginning of real wisdom.

But there is more to this theology of wisdom. We are each part of the unfolding Cosmos that the mystics tell us is a living, conscious, intelligent Being, constantly revealing and evolving itself. Because we are literally part of that Being, we potentially have access to its consciousness, creativity and wisdom. In other words, our wisdom—that is, our own deep knowing—actually comes from our connection to the living Cosmos. Listening to this inner knowing allows Creation to use us according to Its wisdom.

Wisdom, then, is literally revelation happening. Deep wisdom also understands that damage to the wholeness (and holiness) of Creation—that is, wounding to the peoples and processes of Earth—generates the need for and stimulation of Its wisdom to heal our lives and communities, and to return us to sacred ground.

It follows from all I have said that wisdom is not a deductive, logical or external process. It is not something we can just figure out or learn from a book. Analytic and scientific thought are extremely valuable (thank God for the scientists helping us understand climate change!), but wisdom is something more. Wisdom reveals the deep personal significance of events, situations, and problems. It reveals what it means to you, and it evokes your unique creative gifts as part of the solution. Wisdom, then, is the very structure of the Universe, the very fabric of Being—including our own being—showing us how to heal and how to live in harmony, compassion, and peace.

It should be obvious by now that wisdom, as I’m defining it, is spiritual. Hazrat Inayat Khan, the founder of Sufi Order International, tells us, “Know thyself, and thou shalt know God.” He explains, “It is the knowledge of self (i.e., this deep inner knowing) which blooms into the knowledge of God. … Self-knowledge (therefore) answers such problems as: Whence have I come?…What happens at death?…What purpose have I to accomplish here?…In what does my happiness consist?”

In other words, if you want to answer the big questions, learn to go within to access this deep inner knowing. As Inayat Khan concludes, “The Sufi recognizes the knowledge of self as the essence of all religions” (from “Ten Foundational Principles of Universal Sufism” by Hazrat Inayat Khan). Religion is humanity’s attempt to answer its most important and pressing questions.

So it is that our questions eventually lead us back to God or the Great Mystery—not only because they are essentially questions to God, but because our deep listening for a response takes us into that Silence beyond questions, which is God. It is this process that produced the Wisdom Literature of the world’s great faith traditions.

We don’t have to be “experts” to have wisdom. I believe that there is wisdom in every person, group, life form, situation, thing, experience, and problem. From this wisdom flows action that is meaningful on the personal, community, Earth and spiritual levels. As the metaphor goes, there is “one river but many wells.” Each of us can learn to access this deep underground river of wisdom to renew and re-energize our life and work, and to contribute to healing, improving, and serving the world.

The purpose of ultimate questions, then, is to bring up our own personal wisdom in simple, powerful and effective ways, to serve the Earth community and its future generations. Each of us is critical to this process. Indeed, each of us has our own personal “Wisdom Project”—a unique work in the world. Our answers are the answers the world needs here and now, in this place, at this time.

We might even say that the world itself is the question, and our life—and how we live it—is the answer. We each have something infinitely precious to give to Creation, and in giving it we find our true place in the Universe.

The ancient split between heaven and earth, God and human, secular and profane, time and timelessness – ancient in terms of eons and original childhood wounds – is resolved when consciousness returns to being. As we learn to become intensely conscious of the body, to dwell in bodily consciousness, the split and its symptom/cause – contraction – melt in the experience of renewed unity. Feeling your bodily being as intensely as you can, without thought, without agenda, notice what begins to happen. We begin to feel the oneness of Being and validity of the equation Consciousness + Being = Flow/Bliss. This is the unity all seek and it’s always been within our own grasp. Everything we look for, everything we want and seek, is only an attempt to heal this split, but fails (and creates addiction) because it’s looking for unity outside oneself. This return to unity, however, is the see-saw’s fulcrum, shifting the consciousness back to the Oneness of Being that we were born with. Then all the world becomes your being and you return to the flow that is Being’s nature. You become the One you have been seeking elsewhere and the love, joy, and freedom that flow from this reunion are amazingly liberating. Moreover, new insights flow from this unity that were never possible in the split nature of the divided self. From this unity, we know exactly what to do in any situation without analysis and we know the real nature of the “problem” that lies before us. A new human is born in this unification and the old one, the contracted/imagined false self, is forgotten along with its long and endlessly-complicating story. And it is the Divine love that flows from this unity that heals the world, for it erases all the divisions that generate to human conflict and brings all in harmony with the One – and a new life on Earth is born.

With the World of Man falling apart, there is so much room now for newness to open up – new forms of love, relationship, and creativity awakened by new dreams and possibilities. Creation creates through us. Don’t be afraid of this time of descent into Darkness for it moves though Divinity to reveal Heaven on Earth. As the World of Man’s illusions and blinders disintegrate, see again the wonder that is the Divine World and let’s start anew.

         When you experience the world as it is, without the lens of thought distorting your vision, you will discover a place that awakens your heart. Heaven on Earth is like a newborn baby – fresh, vulnerable, beautiful, perfect, and divine – and you cannot help but respond to it with love and tenderness. The filters of thought, on the other hand, block this loving response and lock us instead into the cage of ideation, judgment, analysis, and comparison. From the distance of thought, we can actually rationalize violating the Earth with countless poisons, killing people and animals for “good reasons,” and allowing others to suffer because they are “different” or “far away” or “deserve it.” But direct, undivided, intense attention to the world always evokes compassion, love, and unity. Anytime you truly listen, see, and experience the “other,” you transcend separation and discover that you are the other! Their pain is your pain. Deep attention unites all of us in this way and heals the artificial, thought-generated schisms that allow and cause so much suffering. From this deep unity, violence and harm can no longer be justified, explained and accepted. Then war cannot be tolerated. More than morality, this kind of deep awareness of the world forbids injustice not because we are being “good” or “ethical,” but because you can no more poison the world than you would an infant, for it is you: vulnerable, beautiful, and holy. This kind of seeing is so powerful that it changes everything. This, too, is the doorway into Heaven on Earth.

         From the perspective of Heaven on Earth, the mystical experience – that moment when time stands still, silence erases the mind’s chatter, a loving Presence fills reality, and everything seems infinitely precious, beautiful and unified – is simply the fullness of the Divine World breaking through our customary defenses. In fact, Meister Eckhart called it “breakthrough.” Our thick wall of thought and belief normally keeps this experience at a distance, but in when we learn how to wake up (See the Keys to the Garden in Ordinary Enlightenment) and shift our vision – there it is! This has always been the secret meaning of the mystical experience. Once you learn this secret, the spiritual search takes on a completely new meaning. It’s not just about enlightenment, it’s about discovering where you really are and then living there! And this principle holds true wherever you are, in this world and the next, for the mystics often counsel that if you don’t find it here, you may not find it anywhere, for the world we create with our beliefs and behavior always conceals the Divinity as reality. Heaven on Earth is now, is here, is present always, only a blink away. 

         Heaven on Earth is about freedom, and freedom is best defined by what you are free of and what you are free to do. Here are some of the freedoms. In Heaven on Earth, we are…

Free of:

• The tyranny of language and meaning that packages divine Reality into mind-forms that completely obscure the Divine World.
• The problems, questions, goals that dominate thought and start us on the wild goose chase of endless seeking for some fantasy always hiding in the future.
• The burden of the self-idea with all its problems, issues, improvements, history, and failings.
• Identification with the body and whatever you think is wrong with it.
• The need to please, convince, perform, succeed, overcome, achieve, fix, or figure things out.
• Fear, desperation, urgency, anxiety, and suffering caused by harmful beliefs.

Free to:

• Live in sacred time and space.
• Lose yourself in a flower, cloud, tree, friend, project, or pet.
• Love the world as Divinity in all her generosity, beauty, magic and grace.
• Enter gratefully the flow of Being and discover its moment-to-moment revelation.
• Respond to the world through feeling, fusion, merging, direct contact, and deep connection, an experience that always reveals exactly what needs to be done in every situation.
• Be lived by the Divine Self, the flow found in the Being of your being and its intrinsic magic, creativity and love.
• Know that you are already made of the Divinity so that as you feel into “your” being you are actually feeling God’s Being.
• Enter experience and participate in revelation – Divinity revealing Itself as what is in the unfolding moment.
• Be one with the whole rather than being mistakenly identified and attached to an artificially defined part of the whole.
• Live, love, work and create outside the artificial lines of right-and-wrong defined by the World of Man.

            The joy of this kind of freedom is beyond words but you will know it and when you do, Heaven on Earth will be your home. 

            There is a profound freedom and joy available when we live in mystical consciousness. It is a consciousness cleansed of identity, time and story and filled instead with divine freedom, joy, and continuous revelation. What is mystical consciousness?

            Mystical consciousness is the intense and thoughtless awareness of Creation. Tuning into the everyday world exactly as it is without the veil of thought interfering with perception, we find the exquisite holiness of Heaven on Earth right where we are and tune in instantly to the mystical dimension of existence. Not only is everything is magical here but we begin to sense and understand the divine nature of the world as if looking through God’s Consciousness, for that is exactly what is happening. In this heightened pristine Consciousness, we know intuitively who and what we really are and find the amazing freedom that comes when the fictions of identity, personality and society are released. Now problems disappear, wounds heal, divine energies swell, and a spiritual wind fills the sails of our own being inspiring new possibilities beyond thought.

            In Ordinary Enlightenment (Unity, 2000), I describe mystical consciousness at length and provide experiential exercises to enter its spacious perfection, and in Finding Heaven Here (o-books, 2009), we use mystical consciousness to move from the World of Man directly into Heaven on Earth. So I invite you to enter this fathomless consciousness and discover for yourself the extraordinary nature of the “ordinary” world it reveals. In fact, all you sense here becomes revelation happening before your very eyes. Words can never properly describe this wonder so you must find it for yourself. Then reality becomes Divinity and you are free from all the worries you have been creating in the guise of personhood. Wake up. It’s already here. Come join me.

             Watching my 89-year-old mother, I realize again how much aging has to do with returning to the flow. All through the arc of adulthood we seek and exert control, plan and achieve our goals, and impose order (or what we conceiver of as order) on the great mysterious emerging flow of Being arising each and every moment. All we do under the aegis of control actually keeps us from experiencing this mystery; instead we experience our view of the mystery and try to make it conform to our wishes and expectations. It is this process, the Buddha said, that creates suffering. Even spiritual seeking interferes with flow: every conclusion, insight or interpretation we find so valuable represents another thought form imposed on the ever-changing “is-ness” of Being.  We hang onto each new insight instead of surrendering back into the magic and marvel of what is. In the end, we will never “get it” and what we do “figure out” will be forgotten or discarded like yesterdays fashions. All “answers” are obstacles because, as mind forms, they obscure the direct experience of the Divine World. Every idea is a temporary structure that will disappear like a child’s stick house swept up in a vast river. Freedom lies in letting go and discovering what happens next. Live in surprise and astonishment, watch each moment dissolve into the next, and the beauty and sublimity of God-as-the-world will take your breath away.

            Collective consciousness, of course, does carry our evolving mind forms along and as human understandings change, so culture, science, technology, and society change as well. So it is that the World of Man absorbs our individual insights and we each contribute to the creation of this world. And as our capacity for consciousness evolves beyond identity and duality, so too will the gates of Heaven on Earth open and we will once again live closer to the mystery that we are, and the joy that is in that mystery. Then the World of Man will be transformed by the experience of Heaven on Earth, and a new era of human consciousness will be born. In fact, it is already here. Look.