The Kingdom of Heaven is Within You

Thirty years ago, a teacher gently began to show me that "the kingdom of heaven is within you." Through all this time, lesson after lesson, we have sought to explore and let go of the countless ways that my utterly human self gets in the way of that realization. It is a very long list of human failings and frailties that continue to be peeled away from me like the layers of an onion. The process humbles me time after time.

You'd think after thirty years of almost daily practice I would have become more adept at being my better self. Perhaps I am, yet all that practice has made it so very clear that there are yet miles to go on this journey.

To be clear, these statements are not self-critical, merely expressing self-clarity. A central principle for me is to tell the truth about myself to myself. Sometimes I have to tell those truths to you so I can remember.

You may ask why one would undertake such potentially unpleasant efforts, exploring and coming to accept the dark side of my personality and being. Largely it comes from many years working the twelve steps of recovery, but in more recent years informed by the brilliant work of Carl Jung.

My experience for the past twenty years confirms that there are large parts of our being that we cannot or will not see. While this “shadow self” does have positive aspects we have disowned, it is the more destructive aspects of ourselves that seem most important to uncover. Yet the main reason to do this inner work is because those unknown, or disowned, or hidden parts of our being are expressed through our behavior without our knowledge or consent. We are unknowingly driven by our own shadows to unfortunate results. And worst of all, we cannot see it within ourselves. Instead, we find the fault in others and outside ourselves. (No wonder this body of work is called Seeing True.)

While it sounds like a trudge, which it probably is, the fruits began to be borne a long-time ago. The most practical outcomes of this depth work is that many entrenched behavioral problems can be addressed when finally we see and accept the real root of them. No awareness assures there is no solution to be found.

Slowly but surely one’s life begins to find better and better expression. This can include paths of fulfillment and contribution we never knew. As one wise elder said, “At some point we no longer are faced with choices between good and bad, but between better and better.” That is an enviable result to which I can attest.

Further down this path, one can begin to experience spontaneous joy that sweeps over us with some frequency. The joy comes unbidden and uncaused. It merely arises and wraps us in its uplift, sometimes causing tears because there is no other way to express the emotion. An expression of the inexpressible.

I wish I had a simple explanation, or a simple formula. Yet that is a fool’s game, and while I am indeed often a fool, I am not deluded into believing that our human dilemmas can be solved like a sit-com reality in a mere thirty minutes. The reason we have achievements called “Master” (plumbers, carpenters, teachers, etc.) is because they do take an inordinate amount of time and effort.

Let me close with a radical proposition. There is well-being, and there is joy. They are woven into the fabric of our being. Joy and well-being are not to be found, but can be revealed to and through us. They are not dependent on any outer conditions, but wholly emanate from our being when those factors that block us off are addressed. Factors that are hidden in shadow.