Is Heaven Supposed To Be Perfect?

You know, I had a vision of Heaven at one point. Um, Heaven was a place where people were eternally playing, and it was a place where everything was good. But everyone was playing to make it better. Yet, so it was a combination of what was really good. But that wasn't the end of it, and maybe that's because being itself is not good enough; you want becoming as well, right? You don't want things to be static and perfect; you want them to be as good as they can be, but dynamic, so there's still something to do.

And so you could play at making things better and better, and that would be lovely if that was true, right? If you could have what you wanted. If you really think it through, you might think, well, it would be lovely if everyone could play a voluntary game that everyone wanted to play that was aimed at making things good. But even when they're good, the aim was to make them even better. And then it would even be better if, when you were doing that, it was marked by a sense of, what would you say, a profound sense of positive engagement and the cessation of negative emotion.

One of the other things we do know about play is that it's quite disruptable by other motivational states. So it's not that easy for children to play if they're hungry or tired or anxious or upset or hurt. If your children are playing spontaneously, it's actually a mark that what you've created around them is a Walled Garden, right? The walls protect them, so there's not too much chaos and uncertainty, and the garden is this place where things can flourish. A playground is a Walled Garden in any, you know, in any real sense.

Walled Garden—Paradise, "paradesa"—means Walled Garden, by the way. It's a balance between culture and nature, or between structure and possibility. You could also think about a Walled Garden as a game because a game isn't—you can do anything you want. A game is, here's some principles, rules, you might say. Here's some principles by which you can govern your behavior within that set of principles. Here's some play, right? Some freedom to maneuver—not so much that you drown and no one knows what they're doing, just exactly the right amount so that it's playful.

That's how it looks. And so, back to treat yourself like you are someone you're responsible for helping. Well, you want to approach other people in the spirit of play. But I would say, even though you probably shouldn't teach people to play with themselves, so to speak, it's the right attitude to bring to bear on yourself too, and that's a hard thing to do. You know, like we tend to think that most people, if we're cynical, we think, well, people are rather selfish, they're self-centered; they only want what's good for themselves.

It's like, first of all, that's actually not true. There are some people who will routinely take advantage of other people to get what they want in the moment, but that's pretty rare in its extreme forms, which would be psychopathy, let's say. In its extreme forms, it's never more than about 3% of people. And then around the psychopaths, there might be another kind of cloud of narcissists who are inclining in the same direction but haven't got quite so far. And maybe you could add another 5% on that, you know, depending on the severity.

But that, it's just not the case for most people. Most people have the reverse problem—they treat themselves worse than they treat other people. And why? Well, why would you do that? Well, you know, maybe you treat other people not so well because you think they deserve it. And why would you think that? Well, 'cause you know things about them aren't as good as they could be, and you know that they've made mistakes.

They've walked off the pathway; they've done things they shouldn't have done. And so you don't treat them as well as you might otherwise. But then you know that about yourself more than you know that about anyone else, right? You have privileged access, if you want it. And even if you don't, you sort of have privileged access to the entire panoply of sins that you're responsible for, and that's a lot, you know?

And most people bear a pretty damn heavy burden of existential guilt. And some of that isn't warranted, you know? Lots of times, you see people in the Freudian sense who have a super ego that's yelling at them too vociferously. You know, one of the things you do in therapy for people who are hyper conscientious to the point where their own internal voice is a tyrant is you try to moderate that.

And so people can call themselves out on their misbehavior too much. But even if you don't do that, generally you have quite a lot of misbehavior. And as a consequence of that, you're ashamed and uncertain about your own value. And so then you don't think you really need to be treated very well, and so then you don't.

One of the things you do as a psychotherapist is, well, a lot of what I did, for example, people sometimes would fall into a situation where they were being terribly accused of some misbehavior. Maybe in a divorce case or maybe at work. And I would help them mount a defense for themselves. It's like, you know, we have the presumption of innocence, right?

Which is a complete bloody miracle, that presumption. It's such a miracle that our legal system actually starts from that perspective because it would be so much easier just to say, "You're accused of something? Hell, there's 20 million people in the vicinity. We don't need you. Maybe you're guilty. Off with your head." That's way simpler than, despite the fact that 40 people are coming after you with accusations, we have to assume you're innocent.

God, it's very hard to do that for yourself, you know? To mount a defense. And one of the things I used to have my clients do, if they're in such a situation, is write out a defense. It's like, treat yourself like you're innocent just for the sake of argument. We can also do the same thing on the guilt front, you know?

Maybe you should make a case when you're in trouble about why you're guilty as well as why you're innocent to lay out the whole territory. But at least you should defend yourself. And then we might say also, if you think other people are worth taking care of, if you think that—if you think that other people have value, well, they're individuals like you.

And it doesn't seem all that plausible that they could have value and that you don't, unless you're the worst person around. And you're probably not—I mean, you're bad enough, but on average, you're no worse than everybody else. Maybe in your worst moments, you know, you managed to climb to a new pinnacle. But generally speaking, you know, other people are carrying a fair weight of guilt around on their shoulders too.

And so if anyone has value, then you do. So what would happen if you treated yourself that way? And this is a dead serious question, and it isn't a matter of thought.