If you’re tired of the hell realm
“Had we not been stung so many times
Would we ever have arrived
At this Heaven on Earth
That I don’t want to waste”
–Salt then Sour and Sweet, by Sara Bareilles and Andrea Gibson
If you came upon a stairway to heaven, would you step on it? Even while you’re in this body, this time, this life? This moment?
The phrase “stairway to heaven” floated through my brain as we walked through DIA this morning. There’s something about airports that seem to open me to an expansion experience, like I’m in a portal to a different dimension. Maybe it’s my years-long practice of appreciating while I’m on the little train taking us all to our terminals, a habit that’s been so rewarding now I have an instant association when the doors open. (I still remember that one guy’s stunning orange ball cap.)
As I dragged my little purple suitcase along the cavernous stretches to our gate, I visualized the first step on that stairway: stepping back into life. Life as it is, not as my mind has decided what it’s supposed to be. I felt my limbs relax, my chest open. We were still walking, so I tried out the next step: to feel my feet squarely in accepting life. Right now. As it is, across the board. Nothing different.
If you’ve followed my work at all, you know where this is going. My Stairway to Heaven is the Inner Map, but with a flourish. A Stairway to Heaven certainly wants to have music and beautiful colors and wafting beings floating around. Sounds nice, doesn’t it?
Before we take that first step together, however, can we talk about the hell realm? Because, to tune into most of what we’re collectively communicating is to dip our toes into hell. The steady onslaught of fear, contempt, and catastrophizing, the despair accompanying the never-ending flood of descriptions of horrors that we can’t do anything about.. The adrenaline-filled, stress-out vortex of calamity and shit. The hell realm.
Knowing that the hell realm is as real as any other, would you be willing to step away from it? At least for some of the time? Reactive Brain (aka “Below the Line”) doesn’t want you to. It insists that staying in your threat response is helping. That there’s something noble about it.
It’s a liar.
My life has been blessed by my deep connection with Andrea Gibson. Now that Andrea has left their body, the messages they so passionately, so beautifully, so fiercely sent out into the world circle and swirl through my awareness. The line from the song they cowrote with Sara Bareilles, “this Heaven on Earth that I don’t want to waste” echoes through my awareness, again and again.
How do we answer Andrea’s call? What does it take to not waste this Heaven on Earth? Doesn’t it seem so impossible today, to claw our way to the surface through the ceaseless torrent of messages about how impossibly broken our world is? And how about what life throws our way, the overwhelming losses, the seeming never-ending obstacles, all the real (and even imagined) threats to our very survival?
With all of those, let’s let Reactive Brain do its job, communicate between this mass world and us so we can step in, be with it all. But let’s not let it mesmerize us into believing that we truly are stuck in the hell realm, into giving over our precious lives to a version of reality filled with unhappiness, drama, and the poison of stress. Instead, we can learn to ride the waves of density through our body, then turn around, find our way back to those divine steps. They are always, always there, waiting for us.
Want to try with me? Let’s walk up this Stairway to Heaven.
FIRST STEP: NEUTRALITY.
The action: Join life as it is. Generate the thought until it lands in your body: “It is what it is.”
SECOND STEP: ACCEPTANCE.
The action: Generate this thought until it lands in your body: “I accept all that is. Completely.”
THIRD STEP: APPRECIATION.
The action: Appreciate as much as you can possibly muster about life. How about 10 things, right now?*
FOURTH STEP: LOVE.
The action: Generate love in your body—right now!—by remembering something or someone you love easily. Keep breathing into that love as you feel it filling your whole body.
FIFTH STEP: JOY.
The action: Generate joy in your body—right now!—by imagining one of your most joyful moments. Cultivate those sensations. Blow a kiss to any part of you that is trying to interrupt how good you’re feeling. Lean into joy as your birthright, as your natural state.
SIXTH STEP: PEACE.
The action: Breath into and open your heart (probably pretty easy by now) and let your being bliss out into connection with all that is. You not only belong to this ever-evolving murmuration of life, you’re an essential, sacred part of it.
Heaven on earth. Here. Now.
(And it turns out that the stairway can be an escalator, even an elevator…
With great respect and love,
Julie
Interested in living in this realm with me? My team and I have been creating some wonderful offerings for you—an immersion program, weekend retreats, coach training, our Living Above the Line community, a new on-line men’s group, and so much more. Check us out!
* I’ll start: Flying above the clouds. Being able to breathe easily even though I shouldn’t be able to. The countless people who invented designed, tested, certified, airplanes, including this one. Sitting between two warm bodies, one I already love, the other who I easily imagine I could. Someone coming through the aisle whose job is to ensure my safety. The people around me who would absolutely help me if I needed that. (I could go on…)