The Meaning of Life: Heaven or Hell, This Very Moment
In 2024 I died once. The first thing I said when I woke up: heaven or hell is now — this very moment.
Whether or not there is a God, whether or not there are past lives (or whichever starseed you are) — whether you are in heaven or hell is decided in this very second.
In 2024, I died once.
Many factors added up, my body suddenly couldn't take any more, and I went into shock. According to the people around me, I was out for about a minute — but to me, that minute was a very long time. I went on living my daily life: talking with my partner about what to eat today, taking a walk by the sea… Day after day of simple, plain, happy living passed this way, until one day I suddenly saw that my dog was there too, and I realized — "Oh. I might already be dead?"
At the time I was living in a small town in Mexico. The town gave me a feeling of peace and ease, so I stayed for three months. Because I wasn't sure whether bringing my dog into Mexico would mean quarantine problems on the way back to the US, I had left her with her godmother. So when I saw my dog beside me, I understood: this was no longer reality. Then I remembered that the last thing I had said was, "I think I'm about to faint."
Once I realized this wasn't reality, two great rivers of time seemed to rush past on either side of me — everything from the beginning of my life up to that very moment, streaming by at speed. Then I arrived at a vast meadow, and in the middle of the meadow stood a door. I walked up to it, knowing with complete clarity: "This is the door. If I open it and walk through, there will be no more suffering." But in the same moment I remembered that the last person I had spoken to was my partner — and that if I simply opened the door and crossed over, he might live forever inside the trauma of watching the person he loves die in front of him.
I pulled back the hand that wanted to open the door, and began to think, hard: "No. I have to go back."
I thought about how to wake up with all my strength — truly "strength," a whole-body effort, like straining against a machine at the gym. Then I heard my partner's voice calling me. I told myself, over and over, that I had to wake up — and the instant I felt my consciousness return to my body, before I could even open my eyes, the first thing I felt was: "It hurts! It hurts, it hurts, it hurts!" Every inch of my body, head to toe, inside and out, ached until it went numb — like all the blood had been drained out of me and then forced back in.
After sleeping for three days, I finally woke up. The first sentence I spoke was:
Heaven or hell is now — this very moment.
And then I went back to sleep.
At the time I didn't really understand why returning to my body hurt that much. My reasonable explanation was that all my organs had to start working again — of course it hurt.
Later, during a long stretch of deep meditation (three days), I returned to the moment my consciousness first entered a body — the embryo. The first sensation then was also "It hurts! It hurts!" That was when I finally understood:
The body is the root of suffering, the first turn of the wheel of suffering. The beginning of a body means the law of birth, aging, sickness, and death — the helplessness of entering decay.
And yet the body, and the material world, are the only way a consciousness can feel and experience anything at all. As long as there is "consciousness," as long as there is "desire," this medium called the body must exist.
But existing does not mean we have to live inside "suffering."
When the pain of the body is only a physical sensation, not a psychological pain; when the discomfort of the heart is only a feeling, not an anguish of the spirit — the moment you can do that, you are in heaven right now.
If you are not in heaven now, you will not arrive there when your body dies. And if you are living in hell right now, then when your body reaches its last moment, it will carry you with it into the everlasting hell of consciousness.
Heaven or hell is now — this very moment.