A Wine Maker's Primer to Heaven on Earth.

You don't have to live where everyone else lives, even if you live in the same town. Even everyone else doesn't live in the same place exactly. It's all changed by degrees according to how they see it. But you could live in Heaven on Earth if you wanted to and people could visit you there; if they could recognize the place, if they might be comfortable to be there. Heaven doesn't begin somewhere up in the sky. Heaven begins where your soles meets the pressed dust of the Earth.

We move through this world or seem to move through this world, even though we are moving through our mind's idea of this world inside our minds while projecting it outward; you get the idea, if not the immediate reality of it.

Perhaps you have seen trees shaped by the wind. Surely you have seen rock cliffs shaped by water and wind. You have seen smooth rocks in stream beds and you have walked on paths formed by the impact of human feet. These paths might have been first formed by animals in some places. You have seen the sand shaped by the wind. Certainly you have noticed ocean currents and wind on water. The sun is responsible for many things. It may have a remarkable effect on the wind. What all this tells you is that things can be shaped; even very hard and tough appearing things can be formed into light and elegant shapes. Sound can move through these things and make music.

The mind is very plastic and so are the things that come out of it and everything comes out of it. Everything can be and is shaped over time. We are shaped according to wind and water and the sun. If we think of our spirit as the sun and the wind as our mind and the water as our emotions we can see that these things shape what we appear to be and we can see and hear if music comes out of the thing that we have been shaped into.

There is something about the process of wine making that has a great deal to do with humanity. Our grapes are affected by experience and environment and pressed by them too. The quality of the wine is determined by our reactions to these things. A fine wine is what it is because it is rare by comparison with other wine. Ordinary wine is common and vinegar can be had for pennies. Ironically there are fine vinegars as well. The finest of vinegars rival the finest of wines in cost. They are also rare and take the same amount of attention and care. It's something to think about. Then again, in the human spectrum it may well be something you don't 'think' about. Since masters are involved in the making of fine wines and vinegars it could well be assumed that the same is true of humans.

We become what we aspire to. Plants reach for the sun. Some of us reach for the sun too after a different fashion. Many more people bathe in it for a change in color or pursue it as an environment for easy living. Perhaps they have mistaken the purpose of the sun or perhaps the sun is multi purpose. Probably the reason so many of us are unhappy is due to what we aspire to. Why would we aspire to anything less than our highest possibility? We're afraid we won't get our piece of the action. Well, that's not enough is it? Many of us want more than our piece of action. Often our piece of action only has value by comparison with those who have less.

The same way that the sun can shine forth from a clear blue sky, this same sun can be obscured by clouds. Our minds can be clear or cloudy. The wind clears the air and sometimes the wind spreads dust. These are all simple details of observation but they have profound implications. Sound is transmitted through the air. All sounds are forms of information. In this world there are many forms of information clamoring for attention. They have their reasons, whether they are the result of one individual or a group of individuals. You can figure that out.

Messages appear and are geared to direct our attention to certain things. It could be the announcement of a new car; a war abroad, a religious movement, a cry for help, a shout of joy, someone weeping or someone laughing, a collective indistinguishable chatter of many voices in market places or concert areas. You can well imagine any of this. Some of the messages are designed to influence the way you think about what you see and hear and some of them are directed at the mind or the emotions or the body. Some are personal and some are not.

There are other messages that are not so loud and it is quite possible that they cannot be heard due to the greater noise of the other messages. Let us imagine that there is a single message that comes from the sun and that all of the other messages serve to create the environment that occurs between the sun and yourself. Let us imagine that this sun shines both outside and within you and that the messages create weather both inside and outside of you.

You can imagine that there is weather created for the sole purpose of distracting you from what the sun might be saying. Then there are messages that are designed to interpret what the sun is saying but are not actually what the sun is saying. Sometimes a new car is not just a new car. It might be a new political system, or religious system or something that doesn't seem to be about a new car to begin with but which deposits you in a showroom full of cars by virtue of some strange magic. You could imagine that this could happen. You might have even had it happen to you.

Many messages are designed with the implication that they will bring you close to the sun and the warmth of the sun and yet leave you in another place entirely and you can't figure out how that happened. Many people become discouraged about this sort of an event and blame it on the sun. It could be that this actually is the real purpose of the message.

Have you ever been in a funhouse where there are warped mirrors that change your appearance? Mirrors are very interesting. If you set a mirror outside, after awhile it will become covered with dust so that you cannot see into it. Dust is a naturally occurring thing. Sometimes the spread of dust is greatly assisted by the messages on the wind which are a form of dust and which write themselves upon the mirror in layers over one another so that you cannot see yourself at all. Then you might even forget who you are and there will be messages that will explain this to you for whatever reasons there may be.

There are ways to polish the mirror and there is the consideration that even the sun might have something to do with some of the dust that appears on the mirror. Sometimes the weather that appears between the sun and yourself may be mistaken for the sun and have the effect of making you angry or frightened because it is not the sun, even though the sun is shining behind it.

Sun and rain have a lot to do with making wine and vinegar, even if the rain is only a result of the action of the sun. You would have to decide whether it was worth it to make the wine and how important it might be that the wine was of a particular quality. It depends on what you think of the guests who visit you on the street where you live that is actually here or in Heaven or somewhere. It depends on what you think of yourself and the sun.

Heaven is possible where you touch the pressed dust of the Earth. Many things and places begin there. It really comes down to where you want to live based on what you aspire to. Meanwhile, some kind of wine is being made no matter what.