Heaven Doesn’t Exist

Heaven doesn’t exist. Sorry if this bursts your bubble on some level. Heaven is a mythic belief, and although many of us are way beyond that level of development we still hold onto the concept. We think that by suffering now we will one day get to heaven, whether it be a literal paradise in the clouds, or a more rational future life with cars, houses and money, or whatever else. It’s all the same. It’s a fantasy. Holding off anything for the sake of experiencing it in the future is simply a tragedy. We have to get really serious about that and just die to the whole idea of future reward for present suffering.

It is entirely understandable why people would not want to metaphorically die to the notion of a future heavenly paradise. It’s so comforting to feel like no matter what happens now, no matter how painful it is, there is some reward waiting for all our hard work and suffering. However, if there is any hell, that’s what it is –holding onto a sense of self or belief longer than you need to.

For a long time I had the belief that work gave me value. I thought that the more I worked, the more value I had as a person. So I needlessly created work for myself to feel that sense of value. The truth is that my value is inherent. I understand that now. I don’t need to do anything. That shift in belief allowed me to stop working and just experience life as it is. Through that perspective, I do things that bring me joy instead of things that only hold the promise of future joy. The irony, of course, is that I now add more value to other people’s lives than ever before. Adding value is no longer a compulsion, however. It’s a healthy expression of who I am.

It takes an enormous amount of courage to face the fact that the now is all there is. We have been so strongly conditioned to believe that the future is where we will get a release from suffering, that we slavishly work to escape the present moment all our lives. The thought of not being rewarded in the future is quite frankly scary when it first starts to dawn on us. But in letting go into this realization and accepting things as they are, a peace begins to pass over us. Eckhart Tolle describes this thought beautifully in A New Earth. He says, “The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, can not come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event –through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you –ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are”. Heaven moves from the future to the present when we embrace all the love and joy that is already within us. Heaven is now.