Heavenly Must Be Enlarged to Include Earth

We are the product of centuries of Christian training that teaches us to abandon our earthy nature in order to accomplish our heavenly goal. I think the original teaching of Christianity was that Christ, the prototype of true man, is equally god and man. I was thrilled to learn that the word HERESY is not the dictates of some old men in the curia in Rome, but precisely the error of believing that Christ was more man than god or more god than man. This, the basic tenant of Christianity, somehow got misplaced into the belief that the more spiritual (heavenly, god-like) we could become the more nearly we had come to true Christianity.

For many people today the task is to divinize their earthy nature. How does one make one's earthy nature heavenly?

I was stuck at this point for many years and unable to get past the impasse of spiritualizing my earthy side. If viewed in this context it meant 'de-earthing' my instincts, especially sexuality, and disdaining everything earthy about my nature. My fundamentalist Christian upbringing taught me that everything of the body was sinful and to be at least kept to a minimum. Even fun and joy were suspect. I remember my Grandmother's stern forefinger admonishing me, "Now cool that happiness or you will offend our beloved Jesus'.

This might be excused as stern measures needed to compensate for the excesses preceding the Victorian age, but it is exactly the wrong medicine for our overly abstracted thought-dominated present age.

From this I learned who the THEY are who look over one's shoulder and disapprove of some Dionysian revelry one is engaging: THEY are the militiamen/women who are devoted to keeping the old rules intact when a new era is needing a new set of standards. THEY carry an illegitimate but terrible power over one. What will THEY think if they knew what one is doing - or even thinking?

This leaves us at the very cutting edge of evolution and requires some new terminology. New wine can not endure in old wineskins- as scripture tells us.

I found a new area to explore when I could replace the word CONSCIOUSNESS for DIVINIZING. To make something conscious which had been unconscious is to prepare it to stand in the skies along with its heavenly twin. Then both can take on godly beauty and divinity.

Another word must be updated if we are to avoid a stalemate; HEAVENLY must be enlarged to include EARTH. Heaven in not some other time some other place, but is here and now; and it is here and now that the process of the divinization of our earthy side must be accomplished.