Journey into Heaven Tip 1: Understanding or believing a specific theology doesn’t get you to Heaven. Living in a loving relationship with God, with others, with Creation, and with yourself gets you there. Theology can only help point the way and clarify the journey.THE CENTER OF HEAVEN
The center of Heaven is the easiest place for anyone to reach. It is the place where you look at God and God looks at you. Having that experience can happen at any time. You are aware of the presence of God and God’s awareness of you. That is the center of Heaven.
Children, as Jesus says in the Gospels, are the most open to seeing God. Mystics of all religions describe the basic encounter of awareness of God and God’s awareness of each individual as the experience of prayer. It happens unexpectedly, a moment of grace, a time of peace and reflection. It happens after study, hard work, and practice. We are suddenly looking at God looking at us. Most of us avoid the experience because it frightens us. We encounter God and the first thing we ask is “What does this mean? If I admit I’m aware of God, what will God want from me? How will this change my life.”
To get to Heaven, we each have to nurture our ability to recognize the moment of looking at God looking at us. We have to work at finding how to get to that moment. We have to work at sustaining the moment because in that moment we are at the center of Heaven. All creation revolves out from the reality that God in love knows us, loves us, and sees us.
We can’t go to Heaven until we know how to be with God being with us.
Once we find peace in that awareness then Heaven opens up for us. The loving God gets us involved in the fun and creative activity of Heaven, leads us in and out of the spectacular places that love has created, and gives us wonderful opportunities to explore the full potential of God’s world.
<blockquote>Journey into Heaven Tip 2: Find time for prayer and meditation. Learn about the wonderful ways that prayerful people have taught us how to quiet ourselves, to be open to the awareness of the presence of God. Sit down and, like John Vianney, the Cure of Ars, wait for the moment when we know we are looking at God looking at us.</blockquote>