Heaven

Heaven is a state of being and not an actually place either on earth or in the spirit world. 

Heaven can be attained while still physically alive and of course at some point in the spirit world.  Heaven is not a place that God is going to forbid us to enter if we have not accomplished things the way we should have. 

The Heavenly state of being is just not attained unless one has made the effort to reach that state of mind and heart.  God can only guide, counsel, prod, love, and support our effort to reach an Heavenly state of being – He cannot forbid – He created us with the ability to reach that state.

More on Perfection

No one can know if I am perfect, I am the only one who can tell.  Today I am in tune with my conscience.  I have no conflict inside myself.  I can sense the presence of God and heavenly spirits around me.  I am not as perfect as I will be tomorrow but today I am just fine.  I will make mistakes today, possibly.  But, that is not because of a selfish heart or lack of wanting to serve someone else, it will, simply because it is today.  Tomorrow I will not make that mistake.  I will have grown one more day.

The statement above does not speak about the author - It is simply stating some reflections about what perfection might be. 

Heaven and Hell - Definitions

According to what most religious people believe, they are two distinct but very much interconnected worlds in existence today.  One, we see - the physical world, and the other, the invisible one - the spiritual world.  I don't have to describe the physical world to anyone, we all know it.  We are very much aware of it because of our five physical senses.  However, the other one has been a "question mark" for philosophers and religious individuals from as far as we can remember.

With time, the spiritual world became, by many, synonymous to heaven, but the physical world did not necessarily become synonymous with hell.  Many suffering people today could argue this point very well.  Actually many of us seem to place both: heaven and hell in the same place: the spiritual world.

Recently I started to make a distinction between the term "spiritual world" and the term "heaven" because they are not the same.  Those of us who believe that the spiritual world exists also believe that the spiritual world is made up of the spirit of people who used to be on earth.  Well there were a lot of different people throughout history who did passed on to the spiritual world and they were not all heavenly.  I don't believe that they became instantaneously saints once they departed from the physical world.

Heaven on the other end is not far away for people who behave "heavenly".  People who live lives with kindness, compassion, forgiveness, understanding, care, and service towards others and themselves usually will find themselves at peace no matter where they are.  Circumstance may bring them sorrow from time to time but they will tend to find a way to look forwards with the desire to hurt no one and to leave behind a legacy of love and service towards others and the creation.  You will also find these people do have a sense of the existence of God, though they may not belong to a particular religious group.  When they go on to the spiritual world, they go in peace, with a sense of heavenly accomplishment.

"Heaven is not any kind of Disneyland; heaven is in the midst of you because the place where you are becomes God's dwelling place and the dwelling place of your parents."

Word and Deed, January 30 1977, Rev. Sun Myung Moon (1920 - 2012)

"Once, on being asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God would come, Jesus replied, “The coming of the kingdom of God is not something that can be observed, nor will people say, ‘Here it is,’ or ‘There it is,’ because the kingdom of God is in your midst.” "

Luke 17:20-21

Who am I?

I am no one special.
I am an ordinary person born in 1951 to ordinary people in a country who provided good welfare to it citizens.  I was loved by my parents.  Their income was not good enough for us to go on vacation once a year but it was good enough for gifts under the Xmas tree every year and for every birthday.  I cannot complain.

At the age of 15, I dreamed of a peaceful world, not because my country was at war, but because others were.  By 19 I was already a registered nurse and working.  By 21, I left the world I had known and the people I loved, behind, and entered the new and uncharted waters of spiritual war.

2011 will see my 39th spiritual birthday, my 32nd wedding anniversary, and the 21st anniversary of my motherhood.

I am no one special. I do not comprehend politics very well, and do not understand economists.  I do not resent people who make a lot of money but resent calls for voluntarism when I perceived so much selfishness and shortsightedness of the leaders of our societies.

I believe that ignorance breed fear, and fear breed war.  Ignorance does not affect only uneducated individuals.  Ignorance is a disease that affects all of us.  We judge and make decisions from what we know and forget that we know very little.

Sins versus Mistakes

What I thought and taught about sin and mistake back in 2008 at Character Education Classes.

Sin is any willful action, thought, or behavior that works to the detriment of oneself, others, and/or the universe.  Mistakes are not sins.  Mistake is an action, thought, or behavior that is done because of the wrong knowledge or due to a misunderstanding of events or people.  Mistakes are corrected by better educating oneself.  Sins are eliminated by learning how to love and live for the sake of others.

Anne-Marie Mylar 2008

What my husband is telling me now:

Sin is a hole in the spirit. It is not an action, but a point of being, being in darkness, dimness, in no light. Redeeming sins is self-worth. Redeeming sins is through loving self but not in a self-aggrandizing manner. Sin is the absence of light. It is the absence of God’s light.

The word translated from ancient Hebrew/Greek means: “to miss the mark.” (www.ancient-hebrew.org/emagazine/061.doc)

Mistakes are human. To “err” is human. But to sin is also human in the idea that one does not perfectly live in light.  One can miss the mark because of the absence of light. When one has self-doubt, goes against the code of their self-reflection, their self-appraisement, then “sin” is what happens, in a manner of speaking. It is so much more clear from here. On the earth, the whole idea and concept is so muddled and so misunderstood, it is tragic.

Kem Mylar 3/31/2014

Convergence not Conversion

The point of prayer for conversion of the entire world to their particular brand of faith couldn’t be further from what would really help: to move out of religion. But move out of all of it. In other words, the man-made aspects of every religion are impeding parts of the spiritual growth of the believers, and impeding the communication and direct channeling of God to individuals and from individuals, both on earth and here, in the “heavens.”

This does not mean to say, though, that faith is not a component that is helpful and useful to some, (but not necessarily everyone). But it is in the separation of one’s individualized faith capsule and the intentional shunning of those who do not have the same mindset or thinking and belief that creates the divide, the chasm between individuals and God, between nations, and between individuals.

That does not mean to say, too, that being in community with other individuals who share common knowledge or beliefs isn’t beautiful. It is! This can be and is of tremendous comfort and solace. But, at the same time, it can be narrowing.

So there is a problem here – how to balance these factors:

For examples, if Christians would pray that they could understand the words of Confucius and the Taoist beliefs, those of the Baha’i faith, or the Mennonites, etc. without the idea of conversion but to really pray, sincerely without such a thought as “oh those poor people who believe differently” from what they do (or vice-versa) as a gesture of spreading light, that would open the way for the spiritual world to infuse more light on earth.

Simple, straight forward and right? Not done easily, though. I will say this:

Conversion should never be the goal, but convergence should be. I say convergence of light-in-one’s soul to another’s light-in-their-soul.

Seeing and respecting God’s light in each other without the objective of converting them. Humbling sharing one’s belief is encouraged if it fosters the idea of ecumenism, of the union of peoples. Not just tolerance, but coming to accept, and perhaps even love others, as one’s brothers or sisters.

Doing that, the world around would make for a whole new world culture, wouldn’t it?

Do you Believe in God?

If someone were to ask me if I believe in God, I would not know how to answer. 
Why? If I answer YES, would this person assume that my belief of God is the same as him or her?  If I answer NO, would this person think I am a non-believer?

Because of my place of birth and my race I probably have a long line of ancestors who believed in God before me.  They may have been indoctrinated by force way back but soon incorporated their belief of God into their way of life.

I do not remember ever doubting of God’s existence. God is part of me, He exists within me.  We are inseparable.  By the time I reached my late teens, I very much questioned the rules and rituals of my church and argued about their logic; however, I never argued about the existence of God.  Just because I was not accepting all of the dos and don’ts in the Catholic Church doctrine that did not mean that I was able to assume that God did not exist.  What I knew, however, is that I did not necessarily understand how the world worked and what the history reported in the Holy Bible really meant.

As a young person I was upset about the attitude of many of my contemporaries towards one another.  I never understood religious groups killing each other or the necessity to dominate another group of people by force.  My confusion and rebellion made sense, since most humans are religious and believe in some kind of ethical behavior towards one another.  Why could they not apply them?  I could!

In my twenty-first year I came across the Divine Principle, a book written about Rev. Sun Myung Moon’s revelations concerning God, the Bible, and the history of man.  I was not forced to believe in it, I was not indoctrinated; I did not even go to any weekend workshops like many others.  I read it on my own, and I liked it.  It answered basic questions that could not be answered by my Priest.  It was not complicated for me.  So, I adopted the rules and regulations that were attached to these revelations.

Forty plus years later, younger people questioned why they should belong or remain as the case maybe within my “church”.  How should I answer this?  It seems that when one belief in a particular set of thoughts then one has to incorporate all of the rules and regulations that come with it.  It may be true if one wants to become a Boy Scout, or a Mason, or the citizen of a particular country.  But in the case of religious belief, in the case of God, I don’t think so.  Why?

God has tried to reach out to man from the beginning of time.  He has used many different people and many different ways to do so.  Religions are just one of the tools that God is using to reach us and teach us who we are in relationship to each other, to the creation, and to Him.  Understanding how to live in harmony with one another and the creation is one of the goals.

It is obviously very difficult to live our lives for the sake of the whole.  It is difficult to love people who are unlovable.  It is difficult to forgive and to be compassionate.  It is difficult not to be envious of those who have more than we do.  It is difficult to overcome anger.  I guarantee you it takes a life time to understand what living for the sake of others means, and how to apply it in one’s daily life.  But it is a lot more important to do so, than questioning with which group of people am I going to worship today.  Remember, rituals should never lead your life only support it.  God and you lead your life.

Yes, I believe in God, "the creator of all things under the sun.  He is the true parent of all humanity.  He is not the parent in the parochial sense, existing only for a certain religion, a certain race, or the residents of a certain region.  You may call Him by any name.  What is important is that He positively exists, lives as the true parent of all people, and is carrying on the great work of creation in accordance with the principles and the laws of nature that He set up at the beginning of time. Sun Myung Moon."