You cannot be happy unless you be with God
Here is a hard fact: "A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God."
That is literally saying, if you don't have God, you CANNOT be happy. The ONLY way to be happy is to be with God.
There are NO EXCEPTIONS to this for anyone on the planet.
Why? Because God literally IS HAPPINESS. He himself is pure happiness. He is joy, love, life, peace, perfection.
If you want any of these things you can ONLY GET IT FROM GOD.
Given that he IS these things, you cannot find these things ANYWHERE ELSE. In any opposite state, alone, separate, without God, God's "stuff" doesn't exist.
There is no happiness ANYWHERE OTHER than where God is.
If you are with God, one with God, aware of God, then you are happy because you are SHARING in God's happiness. God is literally happiness itself.
Happiness does not come from doing stuff, going places, relating to people, buying stuff, or any other form-based activity. Nothing in the world can GIVE you happiness or MAKE you happy.
You can be happy doing all these things ONLY IF you are WITH GOD as you do them. Or at least closer to him.
Be with God, be happy. Be without God, be miserable. This is the choice you have because you are free.
Choose God and smile.
Happiness IS the state of RECEIVING God, and EXTENDING God. The giving is joyful. The sharing is blissful. The oneness is uplifting.
"Grace is the natural state of every Son of God. When he is NOT in a state of grace he IS out of his natural environment, and does NOT function well. Everything he does becomes a strain, because he was not created for the environment which he has made. He therefore CANNOT adapt to it, nor can he adapt IT to HIM. There is no point in trying. A Son of God is happy ONLY when he knows he is WITH God. That is the only environment in which he will not experience strain, because that is where he belongs. It is also the only environment that is worthy of him, because his own worth is beyond ANYTHING that he can make."
Comments
Paul
Hi there Stuart.
At the highest level I believe it is pure formlessness with no such things as tulips or any other such delineated object. That said from what I gather there is also a kind of ‘lower heaven’ which is where people tend to go when they die, which has seemingly flowers and meadows and places and other such things, as a kind of higher form of them, but isn’t the ultimate heaven and is still some kind of a dream layer.
The course describes us as like a start in an eternal sky, and as a shaft of perfect light. When we are ultimately infinite and everywhere it’s hard to say that we can be a finite specific thing.
No I don’t think there’s tulips and grains of sand and cows and forests and such at the highest level of reality.
Stuart
I’ve been reading your blog. No one has been able to answer this question, so I thought I’d give you a try:
Are there tulips in Heaven?
ACIM stresses there are distinct beings in Heaven. You talk about the holographic nature of these beings. Are we all exactly alike? Or are we like the first creation story in Genesis—God creates lights, animals, plants, stars, etc? Each part of God’s creation is a hologram of the whole creation.
Can a tulip be a holographic image of all creation and still be a single tulip?
Are the tulips in the world an illusion? Or are they the separated, physical form of an eternal tulip which God created in Heaven?
Is Heaven nothing like the world of our perceptions? Or does Heaven contain all the things we see and touch except they are eternal in Heaven?
God Himself once looked upon what He had created and knew that it was good. [CE T-2.XIII.6:3]
God looked (perceived) and knew at the same time. Doesn’t this suggest our perception of this world tells us what Heaven is like?
We see tulips here because we will know tulips in Heaven. And grains of sand. And waves. And stars.
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