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What is Your Version of Heaven?

If *you* could imagine your heaven, how would you make it?

What is the ‘ideal outcome’ of our Great Work?

If you could shape the world, how would that go?

This post is related to “The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom“, a course on the integration of better learning, better planning, and better work, into creativeness.

What is Heaven?

I did some research on the concept of heaven in different cultures, and was amazed how it seems to reflect a similar number of themes, and earthly life itself, including cultural values… even ones related to work.

Heaven is a place where a more perfect life can exist… one better than earthly life. This is true even if some of its elements and roles are simply continuation of existing ones (see next sections).

Heaven is a manifestation of justice and reward for hard work, moral behavior, and earthly suffering. It seems to reflect social elements like reunion, hierarchies, and communities.

Heaven is beautiful and comfortable. Landscapes, weather, beings, food/drink, and other sensory elements exist.

Heaven is associated with peace, bliss, and tranquility (not always on the same level, see below). It reflects some freedom from negative emotions and includes higher levels of awareness and knowledge.

Versions of Heaven (Cultural)

The concept of heaven often emphasizes what a certain culture values most. This is why the Vikings’ vision of heaven involves fighting, eating boar meat, and drinking, while some tribe’s version involves hunting buffalo ‘peacefully’, and a third version involves working as a bureaucrat…

I am not sure about the reader, but neither of the above seem to be great eternal destinies to me.

This is normal – though.

People think from within their paradigms, and their cultures define their values. These values are how they define what is important. The image of the heavenly society, the imagery of heaven, the symbols used: All are cultural outputs that reflect the particular destinies and concerns of a group…

Consider:

  • Ancient Egyptians — Heaven as place of bountiful harvest and agriculture
  • Ancient Nordics (Vikings) — Heaven as place of endless wars (plunder is an ok activity, if you can’t really do agriculture)
  • Native Americans — Heaven as a place great for hunting buffalos
  • Ancient Chinese — Heaven as a place with bureaucracy and different posts as scribes, officials, and clerks
  • etc…

But all this makes sense… People’s understanding is anchored to their culture, so is their imagination, and concepts of morality. Culture is not assumed to be a social thing, but looks like a transcendent invisible fabric extending into the after life.

The question is… What about *you* ?

What if you could create the perfect world, with your work…?

How would you make it?

If *you* could imagine your heaven, how would you make it?

Versions of heaven - Variations by Culture

Work as reward for Work?

Quite interestingly, the relation between heaven and work is rich and complex. Many cultures considered heaven to be a reward for good deeds done during life… A gift or a prize.

But there are many examples in which work doesn’t end, and is actually carried out to heaven…

The Norse mythology version (Valhalla) has people continuing to fight and hunt (their work) in heaven. Hunting is also expected to continue perfectly in heaven by some native American tribes.

Some Chinese myths imagine heaven as a vast bureaucracy, and ancient Egyptians imagined the continuation of professions into heaven, with specific focus on abundant agriculture and harvest.

Some Islamic interpretations talk of continued worship and service, and intellectual pursuits, while Zoroastrian beliefs add to learning and teaching more service and fighting evil.

Good Work?

So… What is good work? great work?

Work that leads to – and could be continued into – a heavenly after-life?

Natural, good, enjoyable work.

We don’t usually think about that…

Culturally, there are many characteristics… Top among them are Humility, altruism, morality (all related to being of service to others, something explicitly stated in some traditions). Others include faith and devotion, pursuit of knowledge and wisdom, diligence, self-control, and duty…

Can we talk of subjective characteristics? ones that individuals can determine for themselves based on their own preferences?

We could use a framework for that… and the Awareness-Intent-Creativeness framework is suitable here too.

Great Work is work that is supported by proper knowledge (awareness), good plans (intent), and focused actions (creativeness).

Working for the Ideal World? Your Version of Heaven.

What do we work for?

Ideally… A better world.

Ideally… A perfect world.

What is that world… for you?

It is quite far from where we are now, and getting there will probably be an eternal pursuit. A perpetual crossing.

But, assuming we could, how can we do that?

What should we do now?

We need to keep learning… develop our knowledge… gather resources… envision the future… master our actions and selves… and have courage.

Stubborn Ignorance and Excessive Greed ruin Knowledge and Actions… They are the other face of evil… That is extreme selfishness. Extreme selfishness is greedy, small, and doesn’t want to learn/grow.

Our dedication to learning and the pursuit of knowledge, our effort to imagine a better world and move whatever we can towards that, and our ability to master our own actions…

All our work tries to build the ideal world…

Later is Now.

More

The Atlas of Worldly Wisdom : A course about achieving levels of peak personal performance and creativeness. It is the tool to make sense of the (so many) super ideas about excellence and growth by integrating them into the Awareness-Intent-Creativeness (AIC) Triple Helix.

The Prometheus Shot : is a platform dedicated to what we can consider “Great and Creative Work”. It looks at amazing works of human creativity, and tries to decipher what makes them relevant to our understanding of the world, innovation, appreciation of beauty, and our everyday efforts.

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