In a context of Heaven on Earth, anything is possible.

Let's take this now to the individual level - to you and to me. Let me tell you what Heaven on Earth is for me. Heaven on Earth exists:

• When I listen to Jussi Bjoerling & Robert Merril sing, "The Pearl Fisher Duet."
• When I see my favorite flower, a Heleconia.
• When I see the beauty and love of my wife.
• When I produce a fine piece of art.
• When I put my tallis, my prayer shawl, over my head and pray the sacred Amidah in Synagogue.
• And it exists when I read of the compassion and magnificence of human kind.
  Let me give you another example.

My second example is about a young man, Danny Seo - a true partner in creating Heaven on Earth.

Danny is the son of Korean immigrants. His father, a physician, arrived with his family in the United States with a few hundred dollars and two suitcases. He worked hard, invested wisely, and was able to raise his three children in affluence and comfort. Two of the children followed in their parents footsteps and went to university. But from a very early age, Danny was different. Even as a child he was donating his birthday and gift money to charity. Shortly thereafter, he began volunteering every chance he got.

At age 12, with just $10 he founded Earth 2000, a 25,000 member teen organization dedicated to the preservation of the environment. At 18, he announced to his parents that he was not going to go to college, but was going to fulfill his specific mission in life: "to show others that they can do extraordinary things if they allow themselves to reach their fullest potential."

As a warm-up act, he raised $30,000 in less than thirty days for Habitat for Humanity as part of Oprah's Angel network. His purpose in doing so was to illustrate to others how easy fundraising can be. He wanted to show others how to raise the maximum amount of money in the shortest period of time, and to this aim he has written a book called, of course, "Heaven on Earth", subtitled, "15-Minute Miracles to Change the World." If you want to be moved to action, pick up this little book published by Pocket Books of Simon and Shuster.

Let's pause for a moment and ask, "When does Heaven on Earth exist for you?"
Describe some of the times, some of the places, some incidents in which Heaven on Earth existed for you?
Please take some time to do that now.

Notice that there are times when Heaven on Earth existed or exists for you. We've all had glimpses of it, had times of Heaven on Earth.
Now, if Heaven on Earth was the context for Humanity - was the way it is everywhere on the planet, all the time - what would it be for you? What would Heaven on Earth be for you? What we're doing is moving Heaven on Earth from a particular time or place to always and everywhere. Take a moment to reflect on that now.

Now, for the larger issue. Danny Seo says that good intentions never change the world - action does. For example, if each of us talked to 2 people per day about Project Heaven on Earth, and asked each of them to talk to 2 people per day, and so on and so on, it would take only 33 days to have talked to the entire 6 Billion people on the planet.

Would you be willing to work on extending Heaven on Earth from a moment to always?

Would you be willing to work with others to have Heaven on Earth be the context for our planet?

Would you be willing to start now?

If you answered yes to these questions then you've begun. You've started!!

The more people we talk to, the more people we get engaged, the more the momentum grows, the more we have Heaven on Earth be the context, the paradigm that the earth works in.We need pioneers now.

We need people to start it going. We need people to start speaking about it, acting on it, engaging with it.
And over time, it will start to spread, it will start to happen, it will start to flower.

I know I am Project Heaven on Earth, I know Richard Porter is Project Heaven on Earth, Danny Seo is. I believe Nelson Mandela is, as is the organization, Doctors Without Borders.
Now it's time to ask, "Are you Project Heaven on Earth?"Let me suggest some possible avenues to move from context to action, to get your creative juices flowing.

Some possibilites in which you can participate in creating Heaven on Earth are:

a) Cleaning up the major sufferings confronting the world such as:

• Hunger
• Disease
  The most dangerous infectious diseases in the world, and the number of people killed in 1998, according to the World Health Organization are:
  • Acute Respiratory Infections (including pneumonia and influenza) 3.5 million.
  • AIDS: 2.3 million
  • Diarrheal diseases 2.2 million
  • Tuberculosis 1.5 million
  • Malaria 1.1 million
  • Measles 0.9 million
• Illiteracy
• Non-Access to Opportunity
• Dirty Water
• War
  • The National Defense Council Foundation, a group that keeps track of battle zones, reported that in 1999, 65 of the world's 193 nations had conflicts going on, up from 60 conflicts in 1998.
  • According to the Office of Management and Budget, Center for Defense Information, the 1997 Federal Discretionary Budget total for the United States was $506 Billion Dollars. Of that amount, $267 billion (or 53%) was spent on the Military and $239 billion (47%) was spent on everything else: Commerce, Agriculture, Energy, Economic Development, General Gov't., Transportation, Science & Space, International Affairs, Veterans Benefits & Services, Natural Resources & the Environment, Justice, Health, Other Income Security, and Education & Training.
• Environmental Pollution & Degradation
• Prejudice and hatred for whatever reason: nationality, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, sex, etc.
• Crime
• Slavery

Are there other issues for you?

Let's move now to other arenas in which people can participate.
b) Having the institutions of society be part of creating Heaven on Earth…institutions like:

• Government/Law
• Religion/Spirituality
• Medicine/Health/Relationships
• The Media/Culture/Sports
• Science/Technology
• Education
• Environment/Habitat
• The Military
• Agriculture
• Economics/Business

Are any of these issues yours to take on?

c) Living your Values:
Beauty, order, harmony, love, compassion, forgiveness, honor, doing good.

d) Living your Ethics:
Social justice, ethics, morality.

e) Using the Millennium to help launch Project Heaven on Earth.

The Millennium is an opportunity, for those of us who use the Julian calendar, to reflect on the last thousand years and on the next thousand years. Where have we been as humanity? What's worked, what's not worked? How would we like our home planet to be?
We can use the millennium to help launch our collective alignment and actions toward the creation of Heaven on Earth.f) Use the world-wide web to promote Project Heaven on Earth:

We've used the web for communication and e-commerce, but we've not yet unleashed its full potential for social transformation, for helping create Heaven on Earth. The Web is a magnificent, powerful tool for supporting us to unite in common purpose with our brothers and sisters around the world.

We have our web-site ProjectHeavenOnEarth.com up and running and will be adding to it. Our intention is that it becomes a powerful hub for this work. If you'd like to be added to our e-mail list simply send us your e-mail address.

g) Other Examples
For others, Heaven on Earth could mean:

• Being helpful to a neighbor
• Participating in community projects
• Meditating
• Going to religious worship
• Continuously affirming Heaven on Earth.
• Telling the truth.
• Being and doing good.
• Cleaning up a highway.
• Planting flowers

The opportunities are as endless and varied as the citizens of this planet.
The content of Heaven on Earth and what you'll do to make it come alive is up to you. But, by each of us doing our part, and more importantly, knowing that others all around the world are involved in the same project, it gives us all hope; it gives us all the energy, the strength and the courage to keep going.

Huston Smith, the great theologian and thinker, has a wonderful image for our humanity.
He thinks of the physical universe as being a horizontal line, that represents the 14 billion light years that is our known universe. Since light travels at 186,000 miles a second, this is a pretty long line.

He then sees a vertical line intersecting the horizontal line of the physical universe. And he considers this line to represent our common humanity - where we've been, our triumphs, our failures, our awakenings, our continual stretch and evolvement toward wholeness, enlightenment, or God. He considers this line even longer that the line that measures the known universe - longer than 14 billion light years.

When I heard this for the first time, I was catapulted out of worrying about the minutiae of my daily life into an intense realization of the magnificence of this incredible human journey we are taking together.

What we are creating together is a new and wonderful story of what it means to be human. It becomes a deep part of all of us living, working and being together.

Now, what about you?
What part will you play?

Project Heaven on Earth is "Humanity's New Story."
It is a collective story.
It is us acting in concert, in harmony.
It is not abandoning the individual for the collective. Rather, it is adding together, the Collective and the Individual.

We, the people of the earth, need to become experts at creating sustainable peace.
We, the people of the earth, need to ensure our entire family is fed.
We, the people of the earth, need to provide physical, mental, emotional and spiritual support for the well-being of all people.
We, the people of the earth, need to say with authority that we are responsible to each other for making our home, safe, healthy and enlivening for everyone.

We now have the will and the technology to make this happen.
We require a felt, shared sense of family. We can no longer talk about those people in East Timor, or those people in Kosovo or those people in Rwanda. We're talking about our family, about our relatives, about our fellow human beings . Whether you believe we all came from Adam and Eve, or from primates…are we not all from, and more importantly in, the same family.
What we're doing is changing Humanity's story from:
"This is Not Heaven on Earth" to "This is Heaven on Earth."

We're just beginning this Project.
The web site, ProjectHeavenOnEarth.com, will grow with your input.
We don't have all the answers.
We extend a warm invitation to anyone who wants to participate.
We welcome you with open arms.
We need your creativity.
We need your commitment, your pledge, to make this Heaven on Earth.

I want to look at what part God, Divine Grace, Spirit plays in all this.
What we do is play our part - give our gifts with integrity, with excellence, with joy, play and with full intention.We have free will, and it's this collective free will that we now want to harness for the common good.
And the rest…is up to God.
As Pierre Corneille said, "Do your duty and leave the rest to Heaven."Let me summarize:

• Humanity is now a tangible presence.
• Humanity wants a new context, a new story, for the 3rd Millennium, which ennobles and inspires it.
• Heaven on Earth is the new story. It is the next phase of our human evolution, and its time has come.
• The work now is to take this conversation out into the world, to talk to people about being part of making Heaven on Earth real.
• We also need to produce tangible results which demonstrate that Heaven on Earth is actually occurring.
• We have the technology to get the job done, and with your help, we've now begun to unleash the interest and the intention to make it happen.
• Project Heaven on Earth is a global initiative whose time has come.

Think of Project Heaven on Earth as a beautiful, innocent, fat with possibility, Divine baby, placed lovingly in your arms for care and nurturing.Frances Hodgson Burnett said,

"At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, and then they begin to hope it can be done, then they see it can be done,
then it is done…
and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago."

We are now free
to explore
the adventure and wonder
of Heavening on Earth.



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