Heaven, hell or limbo?

Where do you live? If you are like most people the answer will be something to the effect of indoors. Whether it be a house, an apartment, trailer, duplex, condo or whatever the answer is relatively the same. But that's not what I mean when I ask.

I mean what is the situation like where you live, where you truly live? The things that we do on a regular day in and day out basis are merely to provide creature comforts for our bodies. Although they may be what others use to identify us, our bodies are not ourselves.

Our true self is a consciousness that lives inside our mind. The body is the vehicle that we use to interface our self with the world around us. The situation that our body lives in need not and in fact does not define anything about our mind, if we do not let it.

It is what we decide to think about the things that happen to us that determine whether or not we are happy or sad. The departure of a person from our life does not in and of itself create sadness within our life. It is how we feel about that person leaving that helps us decide what emotion to generate as a response. And though we may not realize it at the time, that response can be reprogrammed. Otherwise how could you ever move on when a loved one died?

Is there an afterlife? Religion in general says yes. And most people want to believe that there is. But nobody has concrete proof either way. What if there is no afterlife and no such thing as reincarnation? They are beautiful dreams but what if they are nothing more than the fanciful creations of lonely minds?

Then, if you are ever going to live in heaven or hell, you will have to do it right here on earth, in this life.  If you had to say, right now, is your life heaven hell or somewhere in between, which would it be? I promise you that no matter where you are in life, how old you are or who you live with that your life can go from hell to heaven by simply changing the way you think. Nobody has to move out, die, or get sent to a mental ward.

It is a process though, and while it is possible for it to happen overnight, it will likely take months or longer to achieve full success. Most of what makes people unhappy about their lives is how they feel about the things that are happening. The thing itself is normally not what really matters. It is what you think about it that creates the issue. And normally, what you think isn't really what is going on.

I have one friend that quite often gets upset at another friend over a perceived issue. It has been discussed multiple times and the thing that the first friend thinks is happening the second never even thought of as the reason for what they said. A lot of times the disconnect is due to the way the one person was treated by other people in the past. When things get said that resonate along the same lines as that past treatment problems happen, even when the other person had nothing to do with those things and would never do those things.

Now if this first friend would let go of the negative attachment to the past, many issues in the present would suddenly disappear. My two friends would get along better because the first would not be blaming the second for things that other people did in the past. And the first friend would be a much happier person because that internal negative conversation about the past would not be constantly surfacing and floating around within them.

Friend A lives in hell while friend B lives in heaven. We all live in the same house though. As much as some people may wish to argue, life is about perception, not reality. And we can change our perception by changing what we think.