Q & A

So does God live in heaven while I'm stuck here on earth? Does that mean I'm separated from God?

* It can sometimes seem like it, but in reality you never are.

So then, where is heaven?

* Within you. Within consciousness - within your spiritual consciousness.

Where is earth then?

* The same place. Within you. Within consciousness.

How is that possible since heaven is perfect and all-harmonious and earth usually seems like just the opposite, like a swamp of good and evil and contending forces and opinions and strife and tumult and one disaster after another?

* Not to be flip, but because, like you said, it seems that way - at least when you're thinking materially, or as Mrs. Eddy might put it "upside down." Think about these statements from Science & Health:

"What, then, is the material personality which suffers, sins, and dies? It is not man, the image and likeness of God, but man's counterfeit, the inverted likeness, the unlikeness called sin, sickness, and death."

"Delusion, sin, disease, and death arise from the false testimony of material sense, which, from a supposed standpoint outside the focal distance of infinite Spirit, presents an inverted image of Mind and substance with everything turned upside down."

"The greatest wrong is but a suppositious opposite of the highest right."

"When examined in the light of divine Science, mortals present more than is detected upon the surface, since inverted thoughts and erroneous beliefs must be counterfeits of Truth. Thought is borrowed from a higher source than matter, and by reversal, errors serve as waymarks to the one Mind, in which all error disappears in celestial Truth."

"From the infinite elements of the one Mind emanate all form, color, quality, and quantity, and these are mental, both primarily and secondarily. Their spiritual nature is discerned only through the spiritual senses. Mortal mind inverts the true likeness, and confers animal names and natures upon its own misconceptions."

"In Science we are children of God; but whatever is of material sense, or mortal, belongs not to His children, for materiality is the inverted image of spirituality."

"Jesus beheld in Science the perfect man, who appeared to him where sinning mortal man appears to mortals. In this perfect man the Saviour saw God's own likeness, and this correct view of man healed the sick. Thus Jesus taught that the kingdom of God is intact, universal, and that man is pure and holy."

"God creates all forms of reality. His thoughts are spiritual realities. So-called mortal mind--being non-existent and consequently not within the range of immortal existence--could not by simulating deific power invert the divine creation, and afterwards recreate persons or things upon its own plane, since nothing exists beyond the range of all-inclusive infinity, in which and of which God is the sole creator. Mind, joyous in strength, dwells in the realm of Mind. Mind's infinite ideas run and disport themselves. In humility they climb the heights of holiness."

"Take heart, dear sufferer, for this reality of being will surely appear sometime and in some way. There will be no more pain, and all tears will be wiped away. When you read this, remember Jesus' words, "The kingdom of God is within you." This spiritual consciousness is therefore a present possibility."

So if I see things spiritually - right side up - I'm seeing the way God sees? I'm being in heaven? I'm already in heaven, right here, right now?

* Yep. If God lives in heaven (and He does), and you are His idea, His creation (and you are), then you live with Him.

Well I'm not sure it really feels like it.

* As long as you look at things "upside down" that's understandable. But what's great is that "by reversal, errors serve as waymarks" that take you home to God. So try it! Reverse your perspective. Look up! Look at your life spiritually instead of materially. Look, like Jesus did, for God's own likeness in everything and everyone around you. You'll begin to get glimpses, insights, intuitions of something "better, higher, holier" than is presented by only a mortal (dead) perspective. You can immediately change course and act from this point of view. Why? Because Heaven is your true state of being right now. To see this and to be this is to be whole, and holy, and wholly at home with God, inseparable from Him. The Lord's Prayer promises you this: "Thy kingdom come." Thy kingdom [of heaven] is [already] come; Thou art [already] everpresent - with us, in consciousness.