I was up for much of the night reading James Allen’s spiritual masterpiece, As A Man Thinketh, written in 1914.  I got this curious feeling it was written in 2020 in the morass of moral confusion that is our country right now.

I’d heard of Allen but never read him, and I am correcting that mistake. Allen believes we are what we think. He offers a very different idea of heaven and hell, once  I can embrace with all my heart.

This morning, I read a Kabbalah mystic’s writing about whether there is any such thing as heaven and hell, and if we are, as God promised once, rewarded for kindness and good works and punished for bad deeds.

I’ve never expected to go to heaven or hell or hoped to be rewarded in any other life but this one. Doing good is either done for its own sake or not done at all. I don’t think my life rises or falls to the level of Biblical Hell or Heaven.

But I fell in love with Allen’s ideas about reckoning and spiritual justice and of the rewards of kindness.

Nothing comes unbidden, he wrote.

Where the shadow is, there is also the substance. That which comes to the individual is the product of his or her own deeds. His writing is very timely for Americans now as the battle rages over the very definition of good and evil.

Allen’s ideas are useful for me or anyone seeking peace of mind in the midst of rage and chaos.

He writes about what he calls the effects of deeds, destines wrought by the thoughts and deeds of each one of us.

It is true, he writes, that when people die, they “go to heaven and hell” in accordance with their deeds. But heaven and hell are in this world, not the next.

The rich or powerful man who abuses his wealth or obtained his riches through cruelty, fraud, power, or oppression is reborn in poverty and shame.

The poor man who used the little he possessed wisely and unselfishly is reborn in plenty and honor. The unjust and callous are reborn in the midst of “harsh and untoward surrounding.”

The kind and just are reborn where kind hearts and gentle hands watch over and tend to them. Thus with every vice and virtue, each receives its own, each declares its own destiny.

I appreciate that in Allen’s beautiful vision, even those who refuse to believe in rebirth and resurrection will find that in this life, people almost invariably reap what they sow, in one way or another.

In one poignant passage, Allen predicts that the time is surely coming when social and political reformers will pay more attention to the development of character than the mere gaining of political or party issues and power.

If they fail, they will be in their own hell.

As the individual reads what he sows, the nation, being a community of individuals, reaps what it sows.

Nations become great when their leaders are just ordinary men and women; they fall and fade when their just men and women pass away or run away or are driven away.

Those in power set an example, good or bad, for everyone else.

Above all is the force that Allen calls The Great Law, calmly and with infallible justice meting out to mortals their fleeting destinies, tear-stained or smiling, the fabric of their hands.

We don’t really need a Bible to know what good is; we all know; we carry it in our hearts from birth, even if we fail to choose it. We chose our own destiny. We don’t look outside for it; we look inside.

I felt a chill reading this today; more than a hundred years ago, Allen saw our dilemma and pain in 2020. His writing gives me hope and comfort.

I believe in rebirth; I am reborn, not in a religious sense necessarily but for the effect of deeds.  I, too, believe in heaven and hell, but I don’t believe I have to travel to get there.

It’s not about what happens next, and in another life. It’s about what happens right now, in this life. I don’t ask St. Peter to judge me and tell me that I was good.

If I wish to be good, there is nothing stopping me from doing good right now. No religion will take me off the hook, justice is in the soul

Heaven and hell are right here, where I live right now, and what I reap is what I sow.

Life is a great school for the development of character; we either rise or fall to the challenge.

Every one of us is given that opportunity. Character is what we choose to do. My promised land is that world where kind hearts and gentle hands watch over me and tend to me.

Through pain and struggle, evil and virtue, success, and failure, we slowly but surely learn the lessons of wisdom.

Photo by Maria Wulf