‘Trishanku’s Heaven’ is the state of limbo between one’s goals and one’s current state.
It’s based on the tale of a handsome Indian King, Trishanku, who asked a sage to send him to heaven with his physical body. The sage refused to partake in such stupidity and told him to do good deeds and then he will enter heaven. The King went to the sage’s sons who also refused and were appaled that the King went behind their father’s back, and so they promplty cursed him with a wretched life and made him old and ugly.
The old ugly King then went to a rival sage, Vishwamitra, and told him of the misery that his rival sage had cursed him with. The King begged the new sage to help.
Vishwamitra was keen to help and promised to fulfil his wish using his magical powers.
Vishwamitra meditated and mustered up the power, and sent the King up towards heaven, but the Gods refused the King’s physical body and pushed the King back down to Earth. As the King was returning to Earth, the sage then started pushing him forward towards heaven again.
Caught between the two forces, the King was then kept in a limbo between heaven and Earth, and, as a compromise between the sage and the Gods, the King was suspended in his own little universe, but upside down.
The story makes a fitting metaphor for a transformation. Heaven: the aspiration. The body: the current state that needs to die and be reborn.
By wanting to enter heaven with his body the King is refusing to accept change. He wants both the aspiration and his current state – which is a contradiction, and so the limbo manifests.
The rest of the message is self-evident with all the clues neatly contained within the story for the reader to interpret for themselves.