Chapter 2
<blockquote>Journey into Heaven Tip #3: Be prepared to be wrong about many things, or more accurately, be prepared to be surprised.</blockquote>
Heaven is far more than we can expect. Experience, teaching, other people’s beliefs can prepare us somewhat for what Heaven can be, but, overall, the reality of Heaven surpasses our expectations. One of the most beautiful realities of being in Heaven is the ongoing surprise. Heaven is always more, more than we thought, more than we imagined, more than we believed.
Unless you develop in your daily life the capacity to admit you are wrong when the truth about a person, a situation, a rule, a law, an expectation, a long list of details and assumptions is different than you believe, you are going to have a hard time seeing Heaven and moving into its life. When you encounter evidence that something in your life is different from what you believed to be true, you need to develop the skill of accepting what the evidence proves. As hard as it is, you have to learn to say, “I was wrong about that” and move on. We all resist admitting that what we hold as being true often isn’t.
The experience of entering into Heaven cannot be fully imagined. When it happens, you will be surprised, surprised by love and what love creates.
The experience of entering Heaven is in actuality the experience of seeing and touching and embracing more than you ever could have known. Heaven will begin to reveal itself to you and you have to relax and accept what you experience. A common part of going to Heaven is involves meeting someone you known, a person you heard or read about from history, or an ancestor from your genetic line. That person will help you to begin to accept the reality of Heaven and help you let go of all your apprehension, your misinformation, the mistaken ideas that you have developed in life.
A story:
Janine died from a heart attack. In the moments after her death, her vision at first cloudy gradually started to reveal details of the afterlife. Walking toward her was her older sister who had died several years before. Janine was shocked. She and her sister had not spoken to each other for years before the sister’s death. Janine had reluctantly gone to her funeral but held onto her anger. Now standing before her was this woman, so important in her life, painful in memory. As she looked at her sister, she first saw the woman through the anger she still held. Her bias, prejudice, judgment against her sister shaped what she saw, but gradually as her sister came closer, Janine saw something else. She saw her sister as she knew her in childhood, her friend, confidante, and companion. She tried to hold onto her angry vision, but she was touched and reminded about all the reasons she had once loved her sister. She was lucky. As she relinquished the angry vision, the whole landscape around her started to come into the light. She now saw that her sister was the first of many family members to be with her to welcome her into Heaven. As her sister stood in front of her, she reached out and hugged her sister. She gasped, and she said with a deep sincerity, “I was so wrong about you. I’m sorry.” At that moment she a fuller sense of the presence of Heaven around her. She started to see beyond her human limitations.
She was surprised by what she didn't know and what she didn't see.
Many people have a difficult time letting go of their old expectations and misunderstandings. Imagine standing with a group of people hoping to embrace a loved one coming into Heaven and witnessing that the new arrival cannot let go of their mistaken ideas and feeling. All of Heaven surrounds that person, but that person cannot see beyond the parameters of their beliefs and is unable to see what is waiting for him or her. That person cannot admit that he or she is wrong. --------------
Janine has strong opinions about her sister but she had learned throughout her life a capacity to recognize the truth clearly beyond her bias. Other people do not have that capacity and so they cannot let go of their wrong mindedness and wait in the dark.