Kingdom Consciousness...

                                         The Kingdom of Heaven is within you. 
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Assuming this statement to be true is not a prophetic option for most folks who consider themselves to be Jesus' disciples: it is not a "Church" consideration... which is, precisely, why Christianity is a "religion" and not​ a vital force for anything very much... Preaching a "salvation" theology instead of a "kingdom" has eliminated the rEvolutionary dynamism of Jesus' teaching: effectively castrating him... (sorry if that seems harsh to you)... but consider...

The Kingdom of heaven is within you is an invitation to a break-through into an evolutionary leap forward into a New Human Being: one in whom the Christ-Consciousness has been birthed. This new consciousness is so incredibly expansive that our current limits of imagination can barely touch its outer edges. It is a revelation of the Sacred Heart of the Divine Beloved opening, forever opening, into the world and into the very heart of creation: presaging the regeneration of the Planet and the "radical" redistribution of equality, justice, and peace in favor of everyone!

St. Hildegard of Bingen (a Doctor of the Church) described prayer as breathing in and breathing out the one breath of the universe. One could also say this in regards to the kingdom of heaven is within you. It is everywhere and it is nowhere. It is visible in the heartbeat of matter and at the same time invisible to any who would use it to their own advantage. It is all-powerful and completely powerless. It is Way and so it cannot be controlled, purchased, or exploited. It is free. It is the essential nature and the unlimited Reality of Life, Living, and Loving...

Magnificat Mary intuited the burgeoning kingdom-consciousness that was to grow within her: and she proclaimed it with her gifted  kingdom-life. (Luke 1: 46 - 55 excerpts) My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior... holy is his name... he has scattered the proud in the imagination of their heart... he has put down the mighty from their seats, and has lifted up the meek... he has filled the hungry with good things; and dismissed the rich empty... Jesus expanded upon his Mother's kingdom-consciousness with his own to-the-very-roots-of-the-matter Beatitudes (Matthew 5: 3 - 11 and Luke 6: 20 - 26) in which there are the kingdom-blessings toward the humble, the hurting, the meek, the justice-hungry, the merciful, the vision-filled, the peacemaker, and those persecuted for the sake of justice for theirs is the kingdom of heaven!

The Kingdom of heaven is within you is the prophetic knowing, beyond words and objective reality, that there is a deeper Reality, in fact, that there is Only One Really Real... and that is the Universal Compassion that has Sourced Evolution in the Sacred Rise of Consciousness: but with consciousness comes universal responsibility. We are, each and all, responsible for the well-being, for the full-development and liberation of every other human being: indeed, as we are now learning, we are all responsible for the well-being and the regeneration of the entire Planet.

Almost as an aside, and yet as something of immense importance, is the word kingdom. Perhaps most people nowadays misconstrue this word: as if Jesus was blessing the idea of a monarchy or identifying himself with a "kingship". Rather, when Jesus used the Aramaic equivalent of kingdom he was stating what should be obvious: we are being invited into a "new" reality and a new life of tuning into Jesus' own consciousness: the Christ Consciousness of New Life in Love, Lover, and Loving without Limits! The Kingdom of heaven is within you is the stunning realization that we are not called to "just" believe in Jesus but rather to instead put on the mind of Christ... 

Cynthia Bourgeault, Episcopal priest and contemplative mystic, in her book The Wisdom Jesus puts it this way, "He's proposing a total meltdown and recasting of human consciousness, bursting through the tiny acorn-selfhood that we arrived on the planet with into the oak tree of our fully realized personhood. The Kingdom of heaven is within you is the most radical statement ever uttered by a human being: it is the evidence of an awakening into something / someone brand new: from this point forward there is an opening into "no separation" between the Divine and the human: rather, there will be a "mutual indwelling": I am in You, You are in Me, and Together we are in Each Other... as cells in One Body...​