Part five of The Journey to spiritual peace and Freedom; Paradise!

Oblivion is comfortable; knowledge means responsibility, hand me another bottle please! The above is going to be the response of many a person when they discover the Christian heaven is just an absurd notion without merit. We do not seem mature enough to face the fact that the reality we seek is not the reality of our dreams. The biblical God may be evil but we desire to make excuses for him in order that we can carry on along the same treadmill to nowhere. We are so good that we would rather spend eternity in this dismal netherworld than find out our ancestors were wrong.
The real state of affairs on the planet today, especially the Western societies, was brilliantly described in Plato's Republic 2500 years ago. Here, Plato describes Man as sitting inside a cave in a position where all they can see is the rock wall in front of them. They cannot turn their heads but are stuck in this one position. Above where they are sitting, there is a low wall and behind this wall, people walk carrying various statues of such things as animals and people. Further back, a fire burns which casts a shadow of these statues on the wall directly in front of these people sitting in the cave. Like today's society, their reality is limited to the shadows they see on the wall. The shadows to them are the real wall. The voices of the people carrying these statues are the voices of the statues.
Like the people in the cave, most people would be afraid to see that these shadows are not the real thing. You would rather live with the imagined reality you have become accustomed to. Wake up! Life has much to offer beyond the shadows on the wall!
We may also here use another piece from Plato to see how we react to the information contained herein. According to Socrates it comes from the ancient Greek rites and refers to those that elect to seek wisdom. The saying is: "Many are called but few are chosen."
In other words Socrates states the many are called to the quest for wisdom, yet few manage to separate the body enough from the evil trappings of the flesh to truly acquire wisdom.
Yes, I am fully aware that the same thing is found in the Bible and supposedly used by Jesus (Matt. 22:14, for many are called, but few are chosen.) This is religious plagiarism. It does not come from Christianity. It was never issued out of the mouth of Jesus as anything other than a reference to Greek philosophy.
Every time a religious leader or priest uses it, it refers to the chosen ones in Christianity. He is a liar without regard for honesty.
The Paradise sought by us all is not the one depicted in the Bible. Biblical paradise comes from the book of Enoch which the Christians deleted from their doctrine almost a thousand years ago. We do not need to go into it, I would be more than happy to cover it if someone writes and asks personally as I’m happy to clarify all aspects.

We are not evil and this may be the most important aspect to understand before we can reacquaint ourselves with the true Paradise. The next important aspect is that we do not have to go anywhere to realize this Paradise.

That which it takes is a paradigm-shift, we have to learn to think of ourselves as existing independent of the physical universe and we have to employ no excuses for mistakes, we have to take on responsibility for our own condition without relying on some mythical savior figure to rescue us.

We are much like alcoholics/drug addicts; there is not anyone who can do it for us. We have to do all the hard work ourselves; we have to go through the DT’s of rejecting the “Just In Case