𝐈 𝐅𝐄𝐄𝐋 𝐋𝐈𝐊𝐄 𝐈 𝐀𝐌 𝐈𝐍 𝐇𝐄𝐀𝐕𝐄𝐍

I pondered this before sharing it publicly.

Someone asked me:
"Hey Mate, how are you feeling today?"

Without hesitation, I answered:
"Oh yeah… I feel like I am in heaven!"

Then something stopped me.

I asked myself:
How the hell would I know what heaven feels like if I’m still alive?

We are taught to think of heaven as a place — a final destination, the last frontier beyond this life.

But think about it…
Has anyone truly gone there and come back to tell us the whole story?

So I went back to my own words.
Why did I say, "I feel like I am in heaven"?

And suddenly, I understood.

Maybe heaven isn’t somewhere we have to die to reach.
Maybe heaven is already within us.
Perhaps it is a state of consciousness.
A state of being.

The YOU behind all the noise.
The I AM that existed before fear, judgment, competition and separation convinced us that we were something less than what we truly are.

We spend our lives wishing to go to heaven…
while being afraid of dying.

And maybe that fear itself becomes the barricade between us and the heaven we are capable of experiencing while we are still alive.

What if heaven is not a destination?
What if heaven is a way of being?

A place within ourselves where peace replaces fear.
Where love replaces hatred.
Where abundance replaces scarcity.
Where people no longer need to destroy one another simply to survive.

And this thought brought me back to something I have been trying to build:

A German–Filipino self-sustaining community.
Not simply a project.
Not simply houses, farms, solar power or cooperatives.

But a living experiment —
Can we create a community where people can experience a little more of the heaven they are searching for?

A place where people can live with dignity.
Where food, energy and shelter are created together.
Where cooperation replaces isolation.
Where people help one another instead of competing against one another.
Where peace is not merely something we pray for…
but something we practice.

Perhaps the greatest journey is not the journey to heaven.
Perhaps it is the journey of discovering that we were carrying a piece of it all along.

Maybe the question isn’t:
"Where is heaven?"

Maybe the question is:
"What would happen if we started creating it here?"

Just a thought from a man who suddenly realized that his casual answer —
"I feel like I am in heaven"
— may have contained a much deeper truth than he first understood.

Arsenio Antonio
ECPP European Community Projects Philippines