Making Today Celestial: Living Heavenward, One Moment at a Time

"Behold, the kingdom of God is within you." — Luke 17:21

The restoration is on going. The idea of restoration is more about restoring people, helping them follow Christ's instructions in celestial physics, and be restored in Him. Not just resurrection, but also the ability to regain our divine senses - feel, hear and see as Christ feels, hears, and sees - to be steadfast in Him. I offer the following as a rough draft map of God's pattern for that divine purpose to become like him: our WHY.

Because Christ is the truth and light and way, I am constantly seeking to understand His patterns and principles woven in to God's invitation to help us become like Him - maps and tools that help translate divine patterns into daily rhythms and songs of gratitude. How do I rise up from a Telestial (fallen/earthly) existence to Terrestrial (skyward) existence, and then rise to a Celestial (heavenly) experience.

As I've pondered Christ's invitation to the divine path of ascension, and how we follow Him, I have been playing with this visual framework—connection doctrinal dots—a roadmap to understanding how to to feel, see and hear like Christ feels, sees and hears. Obviously this cannot replace divine or personal pure doctrine, but is rather a visualization of how to aspire to terrestrial and then celestial heights, closer and closer and closer to home.

How do we live the Celestial law now—not just wait for it later? We worship and love.

In a world wired for distraction, disconnection, and performance, this chart gives us language and structure to pursue presence, process, and promise. It combines scripture, ordinances, covenants, and spiritual symbolism to map out the celestial path not as a future destination—but as a lived possibility today.

I. From Commandments to Consecration: Each Kingdom's Governing Laws

The far-left column highlights the corresponding divine laws associated with each kingdom—the laws that Jesus summed up in two commands: Love God and Love your neighbor (Matt 22:35–40). Yet here we add a third law essential to Zion-building: Love Yourself.

Why? Because a kingdom of priests and priestesses cannot rise where shame, self-hatred, or self-neglect reign. Loving self is not vanity—it’s spiritual alignment with who God says we are. It's accepting his love - following the divine order - receiving and then sharing that love - that helps us all ascend - together.

In a beautifully simple way, each law corresponds with each Kingdom. And as we master those laws, I believe we make ourselves more readily available to enjoy the fruits of that kingdom, and be quickened by its blessings, principles and virtues.

Love (Worship) God

The command to Worship the Lord with all our might mind and strength is the final destination. Because it's harmony with his light frequency and joy. It's how we are not the hoar frost that is consumed by the rising sun, but rather, are live in harmony with the light, song and dance of the sun. To get there, we must follow the law of the celestial kingdom - unity. We can achieve unity as we obey the other slightly lower, but still higher laws of sacrifice, obedience, the gospel, chastity and consecration. Loving God means aligning our will with His - being in harmony with his song of redeeming love. It’s about letting His vision for our lives take precedence over ego or fear - and surrendering the comfort of darkness for the quickening of divine light. Scriptures like D&C 105:3–5 and Exodus 20:14 are not just checklists—they are blueprints for wholeness.

Love Others

Here we find the “law of Christ” (Gal. 6:2), including empathy, justice, and relational responsibility. We see others as fellow travelers, also redeemed by His love - seeking to climb Mount Zion skyward back home to to Heaven. To love others is to obey the baptismal covenants, to mourn with those that mourn, comfort those that stand in need of comfort, and carry their burdens without enabling their avoidance of growth. It's to call forth the divinity - the kingdom - inside each of us - in compassion and candor, in truth and love, even when why forget it's there.

Love Self

D&C 88:35 points out that laws not followed are self-condemning. This isn’t about punishment—it’s about disconnection, disharmony, dissonance. When we ignore divine rhythms, refuse divine light, or resist divine song, our spirits ache. Loving self includes receiving harmony with God - in body and spirit, receiving His grace to relish in worthiness, and walking in integrity - with Christ's truth and because of Christ's love.

II. The Power of Ordinances: Embodied Transformation

The next vertical is often misunderstood in modern discipleship. Ordinances are not religious checkmarks—they are divine technologies. Each one marks a crossing, a transition from one state of being into another. They seal heaven into our bodies and relationships.

Here’s a glimpse of how they anchor celestial living:

Baptism & the Holy Ghost cleanse and commission. They root us in covenant identity.
Sacrament renews us weekly—an embodied moment to reset our trajectory.
Priesthood authorizes divine service and intercession.
Sealing & Endowment draw us into eternal purpose and divine partnership.
Washing of feet reminds us of humility and the radical notion that the servant is the leader.

These touchstones tether our daily lives to eternal truths. They are portals through which heaven reclaims, restores, and rehabilitates earth—if we let them. It starts in us and then radiates all around us

III. Symbols of the Kingdom: The Pattern in the Heavens

Moving centerward, we encounter sacred symbols— sourced in scripture and temple pattern. These are not abstract metaphors. They are spiritual mechanics.

Lightning (Matt. 24, Revelation 4) = sudden revelation, power, divine connection to the heavens.
Veil = separation and access, the threshold between mortality and glory.
Flesh & Bone / Water & Fire = transformation through body and Spirit.
Blood = sacrifice, atonement, covenant renewal - surrender of mortality for eternity.
Spirit + Fire = the empowering presence of God that reshapes our nature. What the Hebrews refer to as "sheckinah" that is to say divine burning, eternal radiance and glory.

This section is designed to help us see daily life symbolically. When we experience a trial, are we passing through the veil, surrendering the old and dark for the brilliance of light and fire - like when we were born - only now we are becoming born again - and awakening our divine senses? When we receive clarity, are we touching lightning - light meant to invigorate, enliven, quicken us and fill us with divine purpose? The more symbolic we become in our worldview, the more heaven blooms from the earth.

IV. Reigning Presence: Who’s on the Throne of My Soul?

In every moment, someone or something reigns within us. Agency is not the ability to be free from influence, but to choose what influences us. Yes, we are agents, but this does not mean we are free from superior influence ourselves. Rather, it is because of God’s superior influence on us that we have any power at all. We are subject to one influence or another -and we are here below to choose which spirit we will list to obey- as President Eyring taught in a General Conference talk entitled Finding Safety in Counsel, in April 1997

“When we reject the counsel which comes from God, we do not choose to be independent of outside influence. We choose another influence. We reject the protection of a perfectly loving, all-powerful, all-knowing Father in Heaven, whose whole purpose, as that of His Beloved Son, is to give us eternal life, to give us all that He has, and to bring us home again in families to the arms of His love. In rejecting His counsel, we choose the influence of another power, whose purpose is to make us miserable and whose motive is hatred. We have moral agency as a gift of God. Rather than the right to choose to be free of influence, it is the inalienable right to submit ourselves to whichever of those powers we choose.“ Henry B. Eyring, Finding Safety in Counsel, April General Conference, 1997.

The Lord tells us we will be quickened by that portion of the spirit we are willing to received. The spirit that possesses us when we die will rise with us in the life that is to come. This portion of the chart helps us recognize the governing presence within the kingdom level we’re inhabiting:

Telestial = Self/Holy Ghost
Terrestrial = Christ
Celestial = The Lord - Elohim - Heavenly Parents

This isn't judgment—it's discernment. To avoid being a puppet, I often ask myself, "Who is influencing my reaction right now?" Am I letting Christ reign, or has fear taken the throne? Is the Holy Ghost whispering peace, or is my ego defending control? Peace is power. Not anger. Not control. Knowing who reigns within us is the key to spiritual agility. We harmonize in light and love - and can enjoy the kingdom, based on what presence we yield to, and what divine laws we are willing to obey.

V. Redeemed State: The Inner Landscape of Salvation

We often view salvation linearly. But here, it's layered as a path of ascension and becoming:

Justification

Our standing before God is made right by Christ’s grace. This is the foundation of worthiness and belonging. We are justified simply by being born - because we chose to follow Christ and descend here to this fallen earth. This keeping our first estate qualified us to receive more - to descend to ascend even higher - like a bird leaving a nest - falling and then spreading its wings to soar the skies. This is our divine heritage. And its exhillirating! We can soar because we are justified by Christ's grace.

Sanctification

But we are in a probationary state, a time to learn how to fly, and to choose how high we will go into the eternities. So Christ invites us to be sanctified or made "holy" or "purified" like oil (another word for "sanct" or "unct" in latin). Which brings us to sanctification - how to have the oil of our soul refined. As we surrender to Christ with a broken heart and a contrite spirit we become receptacles to His spirit - to his light and song and redeeming love. He fills us with His spirit and lifts us higher. Our inner world is reshaped by His divine influence. This is the work of becoming holy, whole, and healed - becoming like Him!

Exaltation

Exaltation literally means to be lifted up to a higher plane, a celestial pinnacle. This is when as Christ's did, we as his disciples and his fellow children of God, receive all that God has, not just as an inheritance, but as an identity. Exaltation is not a heavenly status—it’s a relational and harmonic fullness, a life of divine service and eternal increase - and JOY.

Each step builds on the other, and we often live in all three at once. We are justified by faith, sanctified through obedience, and exalted through union.

VI. Restoration of Divine Senses: Becoming Fully Alive in Christ

The final column is perhaps the most exhilarating—and the most literal. Where we see the restoration of our divine senses, us becoming like Him. The Book of Mormon speaks more of the idea of restoration in terms of restoring people and peoples, God's children than in any other context. Restoring us to our lands, to our inheritance, to our pre-mortal ability to feel, hear, see, sing, and be like our Heavenly Parents - Elohim - the Gods.

When Adam and Eve fell, they lost these divine senses. The ability to feel, hear, see and sing - to know God. Now here in our fallen state, we too have lost our divine ability to connect and see the glory of God-the brightness of divinity- that is within us. But through Christ's grace, and by following in his way, He can liberate us from the darkness, until the scales fall from our eyes, the veil is lifted from our senses, and we become what we once were, only enriched by this earthly experience - we become like Him.

This restoration of divine senses, is not just symbolic - but literal. Isn't it odd that birds seem more colors than we do? That all things in existence emit light, but we only see a fraction of that light - even though we are Children of Light - heirs to the Father of Lights? Isn't it odd that we often don't feel seen or heard in relationships? That we all crave a deeper more fuller sense of connection and significance? We crave this because we once had it - in the pre-mortal Heaven where we knew exactly how much God loved us and we felt seen and heard and known because we were. We were surrounded by divine light so powerful so satisfying - that's why 1/3 part of the hosts of heaven chose not to descend to this cold, dark place called the Telestial Kingdom. They didn't want to leave the warmth of the nest.

We are invited to turn darkness into light, storm into peace, depth into height.

But we came down here to better appreciate those divine senses and learn how to reclaim them as victors over death in Christ. We came to learn how to turn hell into heaven, and how to turn darkness into light - just as God has been doing throughout the universe. How we do this is by uniting our hearts in the laws of love, in unity and by building Zion.

Zion is not merely a place, but a creative co-existence. A perceptual harmonic resonance with light and truth - and our brothers and sisters. When we’re aligned with Heaven, we our divine senses return. We being to feel promptings. As we follow those we begin to hear divine direction in answer to prayer so that we can live by every word that proceeds forth from the mouth of God. And as we do so, we begin to see Christ's hands in our lives, until one day we will be able to see His face - and know that he is and sign praises to his holy name.

In short - he is redeeming his people - restoring them to who they were before, enriched by this earthly experience - as our spiritual senses are restored:

Seeing clearly: discerning truth, reading hearts, perceiving beyond appearances.
Hearing God: receiving revelation, being guided moment-by-moment.
Feeling deeply: compassion, awe, conviction, presence.
Knowing innately: moving in certainty, not just belief.
Singing eternally: resonating with joy, praise, and eternal purpose.

Isaiah prophesied that in the day of Zion’s rise, the blind will see, the deaf will hear, the dumb will sing (Isaiah 35). This is not just physical healing—it’s spiritual awakening and arising, and becoming.

Christ sees the divinity within us. Our potential to rise and shine forth in the Kingdom of God.

VII. Living the Chart: How to Use This Tool Daily

This isn’t just a theological model. It’s a spiritual mirror. Try using it like this:

Daily Check-in: Which “kingdom” am I feeling and seeking right now? What presence is reigning?
Prayer Focus: Ask God to restore a spiritual sense. For example, “Help me see with celestial eyes today.”
Family Devotionals: Pick one ordinance or law and explore how it can show up in real life.
Ministering/Coaching: Use the chart to help others identify what stage of growth or grace they’re in.
Temple Preparation: Use the symbols column to deepen your connection to temple covenants and rituals.

Zion is not built in haste, but in intention. This chart is a compass to help guide that intention heavenward.

Conclusion: Thinking Celestial Is a Choice

Celestial living is not reserved for a perfected future self. It’s available now—in our choices, relationships, inner states, and responses to grace. We can rise and radiate now, be elevated and illuminated, lifted and enlightened.

This chart doesn’t answer every question. It doesn’t replace scripture or the Spirit. But I hope it offers a lens—a way to see the interconnected dots of our Why. This moment, this day, this struggle—is a part of the path - an invitation to learn to fly - to see Christ in every experience, to become like him, as part of an eternal ascent to the Heaven.

“Draw near unto me and I will draw near unto you; seek me diligently and ye shall find me.” — D&C 88:63

I honor President Russell M. Nelson's invitation to think celestial. We are as we think. And we can think, feel, and even be celestial. Not because we’ve earned it, but because Christ offers it. Not by perfection, but by reception in thanksgiving!

May you hear His voice over mine - as we make straight His paths.

Samuel CastorZion Rising

Learn more at zionrising.org

Celestial Now?