{"id":9473,"date":"2015-07-02T11:00:34","date_gmt":"2015-07-02T15:00:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=9473"},"modified":"2015-07-02T11:23:17","modified_gmt":"2015-07-02T15:23:17","slug":"what-if-heaven-were-really-real","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/what-if-heaven-were-really-real\/","title":{"rendered":"What if Heaven Were Really Real?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Image<\/a>
Image credit: Rachel Shannon<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There are those weekends where I just plop on the couch or bed with remote in hand.\u00a0 The house is quiet.\u00a0 No one is around to occupy or bother me.\u00a0 I\u2019m not in the mood to write, so I flip on the tv and cruise through all those mindless channels, looking for something, looking for anything.\u00a0 Sometimes, I stumble across a true find like \u201cDisconnect\u201d or \u201cWelcome to the Punch.\u201d\u00a0 Other times, I find nothing, and nothing makes my head hurt.\u00a0 And then I found the movie, \u201cHeaven is for Real.\u201d<\/p>\n

After Colton Burpo\u2019s supposed journey into heaven and back, there was a scene with such argument over how the boy could have gone to heaven, if he had never died.\u00a0 Did he die?\u00a0 If he did, why didn\u2019t the doctors just say that? But there was no evidence that he did.\u00a0 So, how did this child see heaven, if he did not die?\u00a0 How could his mind have opened that door, or his soul, if still stuck here?\u00a0 Or is there more at work here than we know of, and we just can\u2019t understand? \u00a0And we deny his vision, his mysterious knowledge because he did not die, so therefore, he did not see heaven.<\/p>\n

The only thing I know is my own mind.\u00a0 I\u2019ve had nightmares since I was a kid.\u00a0 Vicious nightmares.\u00a0 I value the nights where I do not dream, but somewhere along the road, I\u2019ve come to the decision to grab hold of what my mind thrills and chills me with and harness my dreams into stories.\u00a0 Some of these stories can be found on Gadfly Online such as \u201cThe Parachute Kids,\u201d \u201cAlien Dream,\u201d and \u201cConcrete Dreams.\u201d\u00a0 There was one story that grew into a novella, which I decided to self-publish through CreateSpace called, \u201cWaken Dream.\u201d\u00a0 In this dream, I was at a New Years Eve party, and we were all counting down.\u00a0 But it was the man by the window who caught my attention.\u00a0 He stared outside as if something awful were about to happen to him, and something did.\u00a0 He was struck by lightning, and he disappeared.\u00a0 When I awoke that morning, I wrote the story, so I know how powerful the mind can be.\u00a0 Yes, it can play tricks on you, sometimes cruel tricks, but other times, it can open a door to imagination and maybe more.<\/p>\n

I read this book once about past lives.\u00a0 The subjects were put into a deep hypnosis, and the doctor instructed them to forget about everything.\u00a0 Forget who they were.\u00a0 Go back, back to where they were before they were born.\u00a0 Who were they?\u00a0 What year was it?\u00a0 What were they doing? And the patients spoke of living those lives.\u00a0 One was a villager carrying water.\u00a0 Others were people like soldiers and royalty.\u00a0 They described their eras, their worlds down to their core as if they were really there and those worlds were not lost.\u00a0 Don\u2019t you ever get a sense of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, as if you were somewhere before where you\u2019ve never been, but the only key lies somewhere deep within your mind to confirm that? And we just shake off that vibe and continue to live the lives that we\u2019re in because maybe we don\u2019t want to know, or maybe we\u2019re too afraid to know.\u00a0 We\u2019re afraid to look deeper, to see what truly exists beyond our reach.\u00a0 This is not what happened to Colton Burpo.<\/p>\n

What about a premonition?\u00a0 Have you ever had a dream where someone died?\u00a0 What if a few days later, if not that day, they did?\u00a0 Would you call yourself psychic, or was your mind just trying to warn you to soften the blow?\u00a0 How could your mind have known, if they had not died yet?\u00a0 You were just sleeping.\u00a0 How do you explain that, or that real bad feeling in your gut, knowing that something bad was going to happen?\u00a0 Do we ever get a good vibe, a good dream?\u00a0 Wouldn\u2019t it be nice to dream of winning the damn lottery instead?\u00a0 Maybe this is what happened to Colton Burpo.<\/p>\n

These days, we seem to be bombarded by the end of the world, zombies, and angels and demons especially on the CW.\u00a0 The CW\u2019s Supernatural<\/em> loves its angels and demons, and it portrays heaven as everyone\u2019s own personal playground, their finest moments.\u00a0 How do they know what heaven is?\u00a0 Did one of the writers, if not all of them, have a glimpse at heaven, or is this how they want heaven to be?\u00a0 Is heaven like the Nina Barnes portrait, where seagulls fly over crashing waves and storm clouds gather, not of a coming storm but of a storm that had come and gone?\u00a0 Would this be heaven?\u00a0 We seem to want to know, and we wonder, if heaven is real, are angels?\u00a0 And hopefully not like the angels in SyFy\u2019s Dominion<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Maybe, heaven is for real.\u00a0 For whatever reason, Colton Burpo recanted that story, but does it matter?\u00a0 There\u2019s enough evidence, especially in today\u2019s world, where we want to know, where we hope to know.\u00a0 We need something to believe in.\u00a0 If there is no heaven, does that mean that there are no angels, no God?\u00a0 If that were true, then why are we here? But I feel that this strays from the point that I\u2019m trying to make.\u00a0 The point is that we do not need to die to find the answers.\u00a0 I feel that Jalaluddin Rumi said it best when he said, \u201cI then looked into my heart and it was there where He dwelled that I saw Him; He was nowhere else to be found.”<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Melissa R. Mendelson is a published author and poet, whose writing has been featured in Names in a Jar: A Collection of Poetry by 100 Contemporary American Poets, Espresso Fiction: A Collection of Flash Fiction for the Average Joe, and Antarctica Journal.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“After Colton Burpo’s supposed journey into heaven and back, there was a scene with such argument over how the boy could have gone to heaven, if he had never died. So, how did this child see heaven, if he did not die? How could his mind have opened that door, or his soul, if still stuck here? Or is there more at work here than we know of, and we just can\u2019t understand? And we deny his vision, his mysterious knowledge because he did not die, so therefore, he did not see heaven.”<\/p>\n

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