Taoists don't have a notion of a future heaven that exists as a reward for "being good." Instead they reason that being good is in our own best interests. This life can be all the heaven we need if we live it right. The Taoist approach is to live it right, right now.As I've aged, I have grown more puzzled by this concept of heaven after death. Why wait until we die? What is wrong with right now?
~ from The Tao of Food by Richard Craze and Roni Joy ~
It dawned on me that the reason so many aim for peace and serenity in an afterlife is that they must view their current life as a form of living hell. They need to dream that they can escape from their own self-imposed purgatory.
I don't write these words in a pious and self-righteous manner. As I have well detailed on this blog, I wrestle daily with autism and mental illness -- there are many days that I lodge myself in my own house of purgatory.
But through the haze of anxiety, delusions and the weird voices in my head, I have come to realize that how I address and deal with my own self is up to me. I can fight who and what I am or I can embrace it. I can continue to go to war with my psyche or I can lay down an olive branch.
I have spent a great deal of my life holding to the former; I'm now trying to find the path to accept the latter. Heaven can be my here and now, if I will only allow it to envelop me.
How about you?
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