We do not expect too much from God. Rather, we expect too little. Our expectations of God lead us to imagine some kind of reward coming to us in the afterlife. While there absolutely is an afterlife, we must remember that “it is heaven all the way to heaven.” In quoting these words from St. Catherine of Sienna, I am not saying that spiritually inclined people are exempt from suffering; no one has such an exemption. Saints and mystics teach us that heaven is not first and foremost a place, but a state of consciousness and a way of experiencing reality. Heaven is the experience of truth, beauty, and goodness, that is, the consciousness of God’s presence—which can be experienced here and now. In today’s Gospel from the first chapter of Luke, we are told,
“Jesus came to Nazareth, where he had grown up, and went according to his custom into the synagogue on the sabbath day. He stood up to read and was handed a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. He unrolled the scroll and found the passage where it was written: ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring glad tidings to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, and to proclaim a year acceptable to the Lord.’ Rolling up the scroll, he handed it back to the attendant and sat down, and the eyes of all in the synagogue looked intently at him. He said to them, ‘Today this scripture passage is fulfilled in your hearing.’”
Notice Jesus’ insistence that the proclamation of glad tidings was fulfilled “today.” Again, it is heaven all the way to heaven. Yogananda tells us, “Heaven and hell are realities even here on earth.” Part of the problem is that we don’t recognize heavenly moments. Where there is peace, joy, virtue, courage, unity, truth, beauty, goodness, compassion, and love, heaven is breaking into human affairs. By contrast, when fear, greed, division, lust, selfishness, hopelessness, violence, ideological fanaticism, and addiction rule the day, we are overshadowed by hellish energy. We are in hell whenever we forget love, because in forgetting love we forget God. Remember that Sri Yukteswar told us “Love is God.”
Now, more than ever, humanity needs to open itself to the reality of heaven. How do we do this? Of course, it begins with love; when love is absent, nothing good can happen. Then, out of love, we choose to live impeccably; we embrace dharma, the principles of moral goodness. In doing so, we build up good karma. How karma works is very simple. When we live a moral life, we think more clearly. When we think more clearly, we make better choices. The better choices we make, the more clearly we will think. And the more we think and act with a compassionate heart, the better will be the choices heaven offers to us, because heaven operates in such a way that it always gives back to us what we give to it. Remember, the more we open our hearts, the more we allow heaven to bless us with grace and untold possibilities.
Divine God,
Beloved Guru,
I cannot possibly
Expect too much from you,
And I habitually
Expect far too little.
