Mike Parsons –
The way you engage (in heaven and in your own heart) is essentially the same, and the experiences you have are broadly the same. What differs is the place in which you have them. The heavenly realms are different from your internal garden or first love gate simply because they are heavenly realms. That said, there are things you can engage in both places. For example, the river of life flows out of heaven and flows into you and into your garden, and you can engage that river there.
The heavenly realms are where you are seated, where you learn to function in a position of authority. That authority flows out of the intimacy of your internal relationship with the Father. There is intimacy internally, and there is also intimacy with the Father in heaven, at the throne of grace, which is itself an intimate place. But there are also governmental spaces, such as the throne room, where the perspective shifts.
When I was first experiencing this, I did it in parallel. That is hard to teach, because you cannot easily jump from one to the other. You usually describe the pathway of relationship, where intimacy develops internally. But you do not have to wait until that is fully established before engaging the pathway of responsibility in sonship.
Sonship carries both relationship and position. There is the relationship with the Father, the intimacy that reveals our identity as sons. But there is also the position of sonship, the authority of being a son of God, a co-heir and co-creator with God.
For me, the relationship I initially engaged with God internally came because he opened that way and drew me into it. At the same time, I began to present myself as a living sacrifice. I became aware that there were things in my life that needed transformation. I knew I was not going to do that myself, because trying to change myself would be self-defeating. What would I change myself into?
What was revealed was that as I came to know God more internally, he began to reveal more of who I was. That revelation then enabled me to surrender. Each day, I would present myself as a living sacrifice, and Jesus took me through the process. Symbolically, he is my high priest. He prepares the sacrifice, so I did not need to work out what to change in my thinking, my heart or my behaviour. I simply needed to follow him and allow him to do the work.
Much of what he took me through was symbolic. Symbolism gives meaning and provides a framework of understanding. In the process of preparing a sacrifice, the high priest does not simply place it on the altar. It is prepared. Symbolically, the sacrifice is killed. That is not pleasant imagery, but it is meant to represent death. I died with him. I am entering into a death that has already taken place.
A living sacrifice is not physically dead, but it symbolically dies to self. I was not trying to kill anything. I was entering into what was already true. I had died with him. I simply needed to catch up with the reality of what that meant. The renewing of my mind is the process that transforms me into the truth that I died with him, and therefore I am alive with him, and he lives in me.
The life I now live is no longer lived from the self that was in control. For most of us, that self is rooted in the soul. I was surrendering my soul and everything associated with it, my thinking, my patterns and my independence. My thinking was no longer to be attached to the part of me that had been in control. That required a process of renewing my mind and dismantling old beliefs so they could be replaced with truth.
Symbolically, the sacrifice was opened so that everything inside was exposed. Nothing was hidden. That became my prayer. Search my heart, God. See if there is anything in me that is not aligned with my true identity in you. He showed me my heart, the hurts, pains, brokenness and memories that were stored there.
Other parts of the symbolism spoke to action and direction. I surrendered what I did, choosing only to do what I saw him doing. I surrendered where I went, choosing only to walk where he was leading. Each day, I expressed my desire not to do my own will, but to know and follow his will.
This was the process I went through when I first began to engage the heavens. It was not about pursuing experiences for their own sake. Those came later. It began with relationship, surrender and transformation.
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Sons of Issachar 