You Might Get Bored of Heaven

“Phew! I finally made it. Well, it’s so good to see all of you again: Mom, Dad, Jenny, Bobby, Auntie May, Uncle Earl…” Amy pauses, her voice trembling as emotion wells up. “You were all missed s-s-so-so m-m-m-much,” Amy says with a stutter.

Her eyes fill, and tears begin rolling down her cheeks.

“Now, now, my dear. Everything is fine,” her mother tells her in a soft and gentle voice that would make a Sunday school teacher jealous. “The important thing is that we’re all together again.”

Amy wipes her face and exhales. “Yes. Yes, of course.” Looking around, her eyes widen. “Hey, wow! What an amazing place this is!”

“Well, it is heaven you know, sis,” Bobby grins.

“Well, yeah. I just didn’t expect it to be so—opulent! I mean, marble columns, glass ceilings, and pink ice sculptures? It’s like Vegas!”

“It’s all just a projection, hun. None of it is actually real.”

Amy gives her a sidelong glance. “Thanks for the tip, Auntie.” Then, turning to her father, “Dad, how are you doing?”

“Can’t complain. No more prostate problems!”

“That’s good. And Jenny—you look like your previous self, before the accident.”

Jenny smiles, “Well, like Auntie May said, it’s just a projection—as was the accident, it turns out.”

“Um, okay…” She says, a bit bewildered. Looking at each of them now, her sense of joy dampens. There’s something off. Too perfect. Too…even. “Mom, Bobby, and the rest of you—everyone looks great.”

“Yes, yes, we’re all just fine, Amy,” answers her mother. Then, after a moment, “But there are a few things you should know.”

“Okay, camp counselor. Give me the lowdown!” Amy responds, somewhat hesitantly.

Her mother takes a breath. “For starters, heaven isn’t much different from the world we came from, hun. These bodies are just projections of a younger version of our previous selves, but we still have the same mind with the same conditioning. That can be…troublesome.”

Her father clears his throat. “Let’s just say, earthly habits done die easily.”

“And,” her mother continues, “because heaven is still a duality, for it to function, there must still be pairs of opposites. For every hot, there is still cold, and for every sweet... Well, you get the picture. So, as you can imagine, even paradise still has its ups and downs. And lastly, just like worldly pleasures, heavenly pleasures don’t last long. Familiarity eventually breeds boredom, no matter what realm you’re in, dear, so even the most delightful celestial experiences will eventually become mundane for you once you’re here for a while. In short, you might get bored of heaven if you were accustomed to the constant stimulation of chat messages and online shopping.”

“Gee, Mom, you make it all sound so wonderful!”

 “That’s what I’m here for, dear. Let’s see, is there anything else I forgot to tell you…?”

“Yes,” her father chiming in. “One other detail. Your stay in heaven is not forever.”

“That might actually be a good thing after what I just learned from Mom.”

“We seem to be on some kind of virtue credit system up here,” explains her father.

“When each of us was in the world, we apparently accrued a certain amount of merit, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. Rumors have it that once your credit is used up, back to the world you return! Your credit might be good for a month, a year, or several thousand years—there’s just no telling.”

“So, this is just a respite. Is that what you’re saying?” Amy begins to panic. “A little time away to recharge the batteries before being thrown back into the chaos again?”

“We don’t really know how long each of us will be here, Amy,” her sister tries to tell her in a calm voice.

“And we return to where, exactly. And as what?” Amy wonders, disappointed to learn that even heaven has its limitations.

“We don’t really know.”

“Wait. Wait. HOLD ON JUST A MOMENT!” Amy’s voice rises, her heart pounding. “Something feels off, here.

Her family watches her carefully, a quiet unease settling over them.

“Whooooooooa! I just noticed it.” Amy scans their faces. “Yep! Ever since I landed in this place, you’ve all been so nice and pleasant. What I’m wondering is, where is the emotional, irrational family I used to know? You know, the one that was always bickering about some petty thing and on the verge of cutting each other’s throats? It’s like you’ve all checked out of your previous selves. Am I missing something here? Are you not the same people I knew before? Maybe you’re all just a simulation, and this is some kind of AI-concocted metaverse I’m experiencing while my brain sits preserved in a vat somewhere?”

The rest of the family members exchange glances and are now whispering among themselves, trying to figure out how to respond.

“This is coming up a lot sooner than I thought,” her dad mutters.

“Yeah, should we tell her?” asks Uncle Earl, who in his previous life had been a chain smoker, and begins looking for a cigarette.

“It’s okay, I got this,” says Jenny.

She turns to Amy, speaking carefully, “Look, sis, one thing you learn while you’re here is that there’s no real difference between us.”

“Right,” Amy blinks, “because we’re all family.”

“Yes, that, and much more,” says Jenny. “On the outside, we all appear to be individuals, with different appearances, temperaments, and likes and dislikes—and we are. Now, all of us have done a great deal of thinking while we’ve been here—which becomes a lot easier without all the emails, 24/7 news, social networks, chats, rampant consumerism, and the thousand other distractions. And, well, as a result, we’ve learned things about ourselves that we didn’t know before.”

“I can’t wait,” says Amy. “Fill me in!”

“Take, for example, these bodies,” Jenny explains. “Each appears different, but they’re all made up of the same biological components and abide by the same physical rules. We all feel pleasure and pain and know, for example, to keep our hands and feet away from fire, or not jump from high places. We all cry, laugh, sneeze, and cough. We all eat, sleep, and require movement. But we take all these things for granted because they’re all common to everyone, and there’s no point in talking about something that we all experience all the time.”

“And the point is?” asks Amy.

“There’s only one eternal body here—a ‘cosmic body,’ if you will—replicating itself. It’s the one appearing as the many. Or take the mind,” Jenny continues. “We all have an ego. But isn’t it really just the same ego?—that same mysterious entity that’s trying to navigate in an alluring but perilous world full of desire and fear? Is your ego or my ego really different from the next? Aren’t we all just looking out for number one, making sure we’re happy and kept far away from any danger? And what about these thoughts we experience? Ask yourself, ‘Am I really my thoughts?’ Because if you were, you could stop them when they become too disturbing or too distracting. All minds have an ego and all minds have involuntary thoughts. So, there’s just one eternal ‘cosmic mind’ operating here.

“But beneath it all, there is a light—awareness—that keeps it all going. The body is known by the senses, the senses are known by the mind, and the mind is known by awareness. Awareness, then, is like the sun, which, while not taking part in the actions of the world, contributes by its mere presence. The light has no differences. There is no tall or short awareness, fat or skinny awareness, white or black awareness; it’s all just the light. The light in you is the same as the light in me, and in all individuals.”

“Amy,” her mother reaching for her hand, “it will take some time for you to no longer see us as you once did. But the truth is, we were never those separate individuals you still imagine us to be.”

“There’s just one of us, Amy!” her father blurts out.

“I don’t know,” says Amy, awestruck by the sudden realization and by her changed family, who could never agree on anything before. “I mean, this is so out of character for you guys. It’s like you’ve been reprogrammed or something.”

“And we have,” says Bobby. “We’ve been reprogrammed to see the truth! Your problem is that you’ve been sleepwalking for so long that you don’t know what it’s like to be awake.”

“But I am awake! I’m awake n-n-n-now, and I w-w-w-was awake b-b-b-before,” she says, stuttering again. “I didn’t s-s-s-spend eighty-seven years of my life down there in a coma, you know!”

But there is no response from the others, just compassionate faces.

“I mean, what is this, some kind of in-in-interv-v-v-vention?”

Amy feels like she is losing her mind. First death, and now the discovery that she, her family, and everyone is else is just one “cosmic person.” She is trying to reconstruct the story of her family as it was before, so that it might continue into her new existence, but her family isn’t willing to play their parts anymore. The actors have left the stage and are now sitting in the dressing room, waiting for Amy to change out of her costume—just as they had each done before.

“C’mon, Amy. It’s still us,” says Bobby, trying to lighten things up. “We each still have our little quirks—like when Uncle Earl reaches for the pack of cigarettes he used to keep in his front pocket, or when Jenny starts up again with her restless leg syndrome. You know—habits and tendencies that are so deeply ingrained in us that not even death could snuff them out.”

“You mean, like the way I always stutter when I get nervous?” asks Amy. “Well, th-th-th-that’s a depressing thought.”

“They’re like little programs running their own algorithms.” Uncle Earl smiles.

“Shhh, you’re not helping!” scolds Auntie May.

“Amy, you’ll be just fine,” her mother says, trying to console her. “You’re not accustomed to your real identity yet. It will take time. You’ll get there eventually, kiddo.”

Visually annoyed she responds, “Mom, I know you like to call me that, but you only lived to be seventy-five. So, technically, I’m older than you.”

“Right. Well, I’m still your mother.”

“But why wasn’t this known before? I mean, why am I just learning about all this now?”

“We only have theories,” says Jenny. “One says that as individuals, we don’t recognize that we’re all the same because of awareness taking on the qualities of the body and mind. In other words, due to its proximity, we identify with the body-mind as ‘me.’”

“Which makes sense, I suppose,” replies Amy, seriously considering her sister’s hypothesis. “I don’t identify with your body or anyone else’s body, only this body,” point to herself.

“Another theory proposes that it’s simply God dreaming that it is each of us. Our mistake is that we, God, take the individual and the dream to be real.”

“But why would God play a game with itself?”

“Again, we don’t know. It’s fun to speculate that God does it for entertainment—if God needs to be entertained—and that God purposely hides itself in each of us and then forgets in order to experience the adventure. It’s like when you’re dreaming and don’t know you’re in a dream. Things might get really scary, and it appears like you’re about to die as you hang from a branch over a cliff, but it’s only a dream—which, of course, is only known by you once you wake up.”

“And, of course,” Amy adds, “God must create the drama, because without it, there would be nothing interesting about the dream.”

“Right. It’s no fun if everyone is already enlightened and just sitting around, contemplating their nature as limitless, shining existence.”

Her mother breaks in, “Each of us is on a sort of hamster wheel in order for us to eventually discover the truth. And because we are unaware of our true essence as unified, limitless, eternal awareness, we feel incomplete and insecure. So, we chase objects and relationships to feel fulfilled and do whatever is in our control to fend off what appears to be our imminent death.”

“Some decide to stop running,” adds Amy’s dad, “and instead, choose to relax and discover their true essence, while others keep running in place until they collapse under the weight of it all. It’s sad, but that’s how the game works.”

“Huh,” Amy says, absorbed in thought. “A game of hide-and-seek.”

“Yes,” responds her mother. “A kind of ‘find me if you can.’”

“Meanwhile,” continues Bobby, “everything is actually totally fine, because it’s all just play, and nobody ever actually dies.”

“Right—nobody actually dies, because there isn’t really ‘anyone’ to die,” remarks Amy. The epiphany has her breaking out in unexpected spontaneous and boisterous laughter, and the others join in, remembering the first time they had the same startling realization.

“So, it’s all just a cosmic joke?” asks Amy, still laughing and looking for some confirmation.

“Yah, A funny play!” says Bobby.

“A tragicomedy!” remarks Uncle Earl.

“A dream within a dream,” says Jenny. “God’s dream!”

“Holy shizzle!” replies Amy.

But her elation quickly dissipates, and she becomes serious again.

“What’s the matter, dear?” her mother asks.

“So, when all this ends, we’ll be sent back down with the rubes again, ignorant of our true identity?”

“Well, um, yes,” her mother replies. “But you won’t know that. In fact, you might even enjoy the process of discovery again!”

“As well as the pain?” she asks, recalling the somewhat difficult life she’d had before.

“Look on the bright side, kiddo,” her dad says. “It’s just a big show. There really is no ‘you,’ nor are there any rubes. The whole thing is just a stage with actors, props, music, and dancers.”

“Yeah, sis. It’s just a cosmic joke, remember? It’s all just the one,” adds her brother.

But Amy is still worried about the prospect that “she” will have to experience more unnecessary grief again sometime in the future. She is in the firefly stage, where the realization of who she is flickers on and off. She can see the truth but isn’t yet able to actualize it.

“It’s okay, my dear,” her mother tells her, trying to console her once again. “It will take a while to adjust. You’ll pull through. It just takes time. It always does.”