Take
a Left
“The
heart is a sanctuary at the center of which there is a little space wherein the
Great Spirit dwells, and this is the Eye. This is the Eye of the Great Spirit
by which He sees all things, and through which we see Him. If the heart is not
pure, the Great Spirit cannot be seen.”
Black
Elk
Our Native
people have always known that God dwells within all things. When we ask a
Hindu, “Where is God?” they will point to their heart, because they believe
that Atman dwells within. When we ask Christians, Jews, or Muslims the same
question, they point up or out—because they see God as external to themselves. I
wonder what you believe about the dwelling place of the Divine?
As a
child, we are taught about heaven and hell—pointing up for heaven and down for
hell. And even though we are no longer children, we think of hell as being
underground and heaven as being above the clouds. As a child, we thought of
them as actual places with their own architecture—heaven’s streets paved with
gold, and hell is dark and cold or perpetually on fire. Recently, a man told me
that he was certain he would go to heaven after he dies and insinuated that I
likely would not. I wondered whether you need a passport for that trip—mine’s
current, by the way.
There
is no right or wrong way when it comes to believing where the divine dwells or
where we are going after we die, since it’s all hypothetical anyway. We are all
on this journey about which the Hindus say, “the paths are many, but the
goal is the same.” We all want to believe that life has meaning and that we
will end up in paradise after the turmoil of earth.
There are no hard and
fast rules, nor are there manuals with directions for doing it right. What we
are expected to do is to have an inner moral compass. That compass, which tells
us right from wrong, points the way we should go—individually, by ourselves, following
our own heart, and our own guidance. I cannot choose for you, and you cannot
choose for me. Whether we travel the same road, or go in opposite directions,
we will all end up at the same place. In the words of the late Ram Dass, “We
are all just walking each other home.”
In the Spirit,
Jane
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