Dear Heaven Maker:
Paul Marcus, Ph.D., is a supervising and training psychoanalyst specializing in the treatment of: difficult teenagers and young adults; people who’ve suffered trauma; high-conflict couples; and, divorce.
He’s written a book called Creating Heaven on Earth: The Psychology of Experiencing Immortality in Everyday Life.
I was fascinated at why and how a person working in a field so full of ‘hells on earth’ would write a book on Heaven on Earth. In my interview with him he said, “Heaven on Earth is the capacity to access the transcendent in the everyday life. That’s the real art of living. That’s what constitutes a flourishing life.”
I asked him how he does this and he said, “Make it simple. There’s always something that these kids and pained adults idealize in their mind as signifying something beyond themselves as good…To the extent that you can access that…you can begin to build a cathedral on it…one brick at a time.”
He defines his ‘Make it simple’ as those easily accessible, everyday activities, like gardening, sports, drinking coffee, storytelling, or listening to music. We can “consecrate” these ordinary events in a way that points us to experiential transcendence, to what he calls “glimpsing immortality,” and by doing that we access a core component of “The art of living the good life.”
It takes work to turn a hell on earth into a heaven on earth. “You’ve got to go and evoke it.” You must re-imagine the small things of life into Heaven on Earth experiences. That’s what counts – rather than waiting for an epiphany which happens so very infrequently. “When you see something very small, if we change our perspective on it, it becomes something very big.” It’s this core realization that the perception of the everyday, the mundane, can be transformed. That’s what Dr. Marcus is doing in his practice and in his life. And that’s why what he has to say is so vitally important and inspiring.
PS: An Explanation. My speaking on the video is sometimes out of sync. I didn’t realize it until I saw the video. I wondered if I should re-do the interview and decided against it. Paul was so fresh and immediate and real that re-doing the video would lose some of its impact. So…a suggestion…Listen to me but watch him.
Please share this blog with one or two people.
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Dr. Marcus’s book, Creating Heaven on Earth: The Psychology of Experiencing Immortality in Everyday Life, is available on Amazon here.
Martin Rutte
