Sustaining Heaven on Earth: Keys Forged by and for Love

By Isaura Barrera

Heaven on earth is a reality that defies description and even belief at times. Yet all who have fallen in love, felt deep wonder, or witnessed what could only be classified as a miracle can attest to its presence. Unfortunately, that presence is all too often only fleeting. What if it didn’t have to be so? What if it was possible to sustain the experience of heaven on earth? This book suggests four keys to doing so, each forged by and for a love that challenged the author to remain awake to the presence of heaven on earth that love had awakened.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press
• Release date: Aug 11, 2021
• ISBN: 9781982272395

Isaura Barrera

Isaura Barrera is a life-long spiritual seeker. From an early age she has been convinced that “what is essential is invisible to the eye,” (though she did not read know that phrase until much later when she read The Little Prince). Now, retired after 20 years as faculty at the University of New Mexico, she has completed a Master's of Spirituality at the Oblate School of Theology and is focused on sharing her primary interest: learning to perceive and experience Infinite Light and Love (i.e., heaven) while here on earth.

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Copyright © 2021 Isaura Barrera.

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intent of the author is only to offer information of a general nature to help you

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Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

All Scripture quotations are taken from THE MESSAGE, copyright ©

1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. Used by permission of NavPress.

All rights reserved. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7240-1 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7241-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-7239-5 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021915487

Balboa Press rev. date: 08/09/2021

DEDICATION

As always, to my beloved friend

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I want to acknowledge Victoria, Joel and Christyan, the Oblate School of Theology Continuing Education staff who made it possible for me to offer a course on sustaining heaven on earth. Your warm and welcoming spirit allowed me to share my ideas with greater confidence. Your technological support allowed me to share them more skillfully and smoothly than I might have otherwise.

I also want to acknowledge all the students in that course whose enthusiastic participation helped me to both refine and expand my initial ideas. Thank you so much for your kind reception of my words. I am particularly grateful to the students who volunteered to serve as beta readers for my initial manuscript.

Finally, I want to acknowledge all those, met and unmet, whose words brought me both inspiration and insight. These include all the writers listed in the Book Providence of this book as well as others met in person and through Face Book posts.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Author’s Note

Introduction

PART I CONTEXT

A Daring Adventure of Love

Heaven on Earth

PART II KEYS

Choosing Heaven on Earth

Deepening Love, Hope, and Faith

Seeing with Binocular Vision

Reading Life as Sacred Text

PART III AFTER THOUGHTS

Following

Shifting to A Higher Wattage

Co-Creating Heaven on Earth

En_joy_ing

Appendix I: Excerpt from Abbey of the Arts Monk in the World guest post

Appendix II: Questions for further exploration of the keys

Endnotes

AUTHOR’S NOTE

An anonymous quote I once read came to mind as I started to write this book: Please excuse the inefficiency of my work. The nature of it requires such a high degree of complexity that I simply don’t know what I’m doing.¹ The task I have undertaken in writing this book requires something different yet equally daunting: a radical simplicity of such depth that its mystery cannot truly be addressed with any clarity. Or perhaps radical simplicity is merely the underside of complexity. Whatever the case, I ask you to bear with me as I dare to address the task before me: an exploration of four keys to sustaining heaven on earth forged by and for a love I never expected or imagined.

The content in this book is rooted in the lived experience of that love, which changed me even as it returned me home. Writing about that experience has both affirmed and deepened that return. I share what I’ve learned now in the belief that the value of others’ stories is not to tell us how or whether to proceed. ² It is, rather, to create a space of engagement within which readers can find hope and inspiration for themselves.

I hope that I have done my work of creating such a space well. To whatever degree I have not done so, Please excuse the inefficiency of my work.

INTRODUCTION

Heaven on earth is a reality that defies description and even belief at times. Yet all who have fallen in love, felt deep wonder, or witnessed what could only be classified as a miracle can attest to its presence. Unfortunately, that presence is all too often only fleeting, an experience that leaves us awaiting the next extraordinary event. What if it didn’t have to be so? What if it was possible to sustain the experience of heaven on earth?

This book suggests four keys to doing so, each forged by and for a love that first re-awakened me to heaven on earth and then challenged me to remain awake to its presence. Part I overviews the twofold context within which the keys were forged: an adventure of love and my understanding of heaven on earth. The adventure of love on which I found myself was first and foremost the driving force behind forging the keys. It was through that adventure that heaven on earth became concrete for me, something beyond anything I’d imagined I’d ever experience, something to be sustained.

Part II devotes a chapter to each key starting with a discussion of my understanding of that key as it was forged through my adventure and followed by a scripturally based reflection associated with that understanding. A brief overview of selected practices that I found supportive of the key is also included along with a section titled Book Providence, which identifies significant books from which I drew information and inspiration related to the key. Each aspect—discussion, scriptural reflection, practices, and Book Providence—provides one piece of the whole from which, or perhaps through which, the keys emerged. Additionally, Appendix II provides questions for exploring each key in more depth.

Part III, After Thoughts, encompasses several reflections on living a heaven on earth sustained. These reflections, outgrowths of the four keys, remain unfinished, as do the understandings that have given them birth. They provide only hints of what will draw me next as my adventure of love continues.

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Part I

CONTEXT

I remember when I was first recalled into a love I’d

stopped believing could really be. Heaven come to

earth! How could I not follow? I didn’t look back then,

not until I started to stumble across new ground with

no familiar paths and love opened long locked doors.

(I. Barrera)

C ontext: that which forms the setting for an event, statement or idea and in terms of which it can be fully understood and accessed. ³ The context within which the four keys addressed in this book were forged was twofold: heart-based and experiential as well as mind-based and conceptual.

Chapter 1 addresses the heart-based experiential context: my unexpected adventure of love. This heart-based experiential context is in many ways the most pivotal. Though detailed in another book,⁴ its role vis-à-vis the forging of keys is too significant to not mention in this one.

Chapter II focuses on the more mind-based and conceptual component of the context within which the keys were forged. Its focus is