Ok. Now it’s time to face your fears. You must on some level like these spiritual journeys and tangents with all these nods to the many, many people, situations, and authors that lead me through mine. There’s a word for where we are going and it’s a word we don’t even utter in my house. Yet as a concept I think it’s one of the most important I’ve ever even pondered. Our images of Hell might easily be manifested as a lake of fire or a crowd of shadowed torturers. Pick your nightmare and label it, just don’t feed it though. It really doesn’t matter. The important aspect of this thought is for you to do the work of considering the possibility - that we are all actually already in Hell.
Yes, sit with this for a moment. Don’t just dismiss me as fleetingly negative or depressive because I’m not. What if we are all actually currently in Hell? Even if Hell, as I heard it once I believe wisely defined, as simply “without God.” What if that’s all it would take? All our horrible nightmares, seas of stuck faces, fighting, lusting, ripping each other to pieces, - it doesn’t matter. Try it. Truly stop a moment and imagine all of us currently in this life caught in a Matrix sustained by our own imperfect perspectives busily managing or manifesting our own realities and only glimpsing the occasional momentary escape in love or light, laughter, ecstasy, “Ah ha” moments, meditation, or prayer. But the root of us, our feet, our bodies, - all of us - are actually side by side swaying this way and that, each essentially planted in some specific part or rung of actual Hell.
Every person we meet - every single person - is often either going about their lives as though God doesn’t exist or Gods are irrelevant or arguing over who’s flawed idea of God is best. I have so many issues with the God or gods I’ve been introduced to that it almost seems like a casualty of the job. Who cares which god is God? Who cares if there is a god or was a god or you were god? So what if I was a god? How would I do the job? As a mere thought experiment it works like this: you saw What Dreams May Come, right? If you didn’t, stop reading now and go watch it as it will haunt your deepest thoughts forever. Millions of people here writhing around in our own bubbles with this god or that, in this reality or the next, Heaven or maybe even a kind of eternal us just outside our bubbles yelling, helling, healing, teaching, judging, whatever - all of it whispering all around us - within us that it’s us amongst us.
Every “righteous” person bearing signs of our (not their) doom is actually breaking their own rules. Try it out - all of us actually standing here shoulder to shoulder burning in our own manifestations of sin and torture (or bad trains of thought and habitual unconsciousness) - we are all true fellow sinners in the way Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed explained (but have any of us ever really internalized before?) It’s one thing to be told you’re a sinner. It’s another to truly plant yourself in the understanding that we all are.
Now look at the consequences. Nobody above or below, yet everyone is here, existing. Ever see a person with a shadow around them? Ever see a person glow? Ever judge them like you know everything? How’d that go for ya? Still coming from a good place?
Now, let’s back up a bit. One of the issues with a simulation, manifestational (Yeah, I’m keeping that) or multiverse theory is that it cuts people off. If I am the center of my own universe then doesn’t it follow that you don’t exist or at least you don’t exist within my real reality. I’m guessing that seems counterintuitive to you at best. At worst, it’ll drive you mad. (I mean this is Hell!) Sartre was right. Hell is other people. But, we all know that the first real step is identifying you have a problem.
I trust this because following this thought does so much more good than it does harm. For example, there is no mind-body problem if only the mind exists. If this is the case, and we can come to the agreement that on some level we are truly manifesting our own realities, then I can manifest you if and only if you serve me in some way. Now this sounds cold and as much as it’s a stretch, in some ways it simply just doesn’t stretch far enough. That’s the real issue. The truth of the matter is irrelevant. The Truth is within what’s true for you. I know those I love are True.
Stay with me: We live in several dimensions with only a somewhat clear empirical sense of 3 (length, width, depth). I have those three, you have your three, and the only way I can know anything about yours is through you (if you’re honest with me). It’s almost like there’s another dimension of reality that can be experienced through our minds connecting. If you think about the dot’s perspective of a “line world,” and how it would only know of that world communicating honestly and accepting the truth of a line’s perspective, you can begin to see the trajectory. Why would the line care that the dot is there? Because they are parts of each other. If you keep raising the dimensions, this becomes almost clear. We live in a 3 (maybe 4?)D universe, experiencing each other. But just like the aliens at the end of Jodie Foster’s journey across the universe in Contact, the only thing we’ll ever really find is each other. And isn’t there an inherent beauty in the truth of that statement?
This thought is grounding for me. Whenever I get too caught in my ego, or feeling sad or alone - whenever I just can’t seem to find the way out or I can’t repair my relationship with another ego for some reason; this is the thought that sparks what I need. Just like Elsa at the bottom of a cave in Frozen II, it’s a terrible place. At some point though, when it gets quiet, and you can see your own breath, there are others who can help. The first person you need to help is yourself, and sometimes that just means listening, allowing the quiet to speak. And sometimes that just means exploring - thinking, or talking, or sharing yourself. It might mean praying, meditating, or asking for help. At some point though, you just gotta do the “Next Right Thing.”
All other people could be demons, or angels, both, us (our higher selves), or our messages. Think about it this way: is there ever a situation which if not looked upon as though the world were really a giant mirror, becoming the change you want to see in the world (Gandhi) isn’t the way?
Stand here a second. What if there truly is a VERY narrow path we walk to Heaven? What if it’s like a tightrope? And the path is “walked” in our own heads? Or through Nirvana? We walk it with every choice we make as we navigate through this Multiverse. Every sin, every judgment trips us up because it’s illogical to sin or judge. God, if this is how you identify, said nobody is perfect. But God is. God made it all. Even evil. Evil moves us. Perhaps evil is good?
- Every single thought (Eckhart Tolle) - is a judgment.
- Every definition (Robert M. Pirsig) - collapses possibility.
- Every label - (Marth Nussbaum) - we place on others objectifies them. “Disgust relies on moral obtuseness. It is possible to view another human being as a slimy slug or a piece of trash only if one has never made a serious good-failing attempt to see the world through that person’s eyes or to experience that person’s feelings. Disgust imputes to the other a subhuman nature. How, by contrast, do we ever become able to see one another as humans? Only through the exercise of imagination” (Martha Nussbaum). Or connection (Polizzi).
Each of these can actually steer us wrongly, if there even really is indeed a direction, because essentially there are no absolutes. There is no fundamentalism that we can objectively access. No single perspective is ubiquitous. No possible being is without flaw.
What if we may have never even really “lived?” All this is actually a dream (Bishop Berkeley) or we died somewhere along the line and this is now a dream or a life review in a near-death-experience as some have described? And the lower you are in the Inferno (the smarter, sweeter, most intellectually and emotionally invested you probably are) the harder it is to break through the illusions - because we identify with them. Even the terrible ones. We are the heroes of our narratives.
Doesn’t all that truly fit? Couldn't it?
I have felt like I am in Hell since the moment I seriously considered this thought. And the thing is, when I share this with people they initially retreat in disgust or defense. I stand firmly in my opinion that fear is a formidable teacher if only because I have rarely occasioned a thought more important, more beautiful, more consequential than this one, because: as a result of this thought…
I've simply never been happier!
This may scare you but also doesn’t this simultaneously have the effect of casting an ethereal light on even the most totally mundane? Doesn’t it truly make you want to embrace your enemies knowing they’re simply manifestations of either the real you or God, someone who loves you trying to wake you from your own self-induced nightmares or someone experiencing those very same nightmares with you?
Doesn’t it compel you to speak to your loves your each and every truth immediately without any hesitation knowing there isn’t a moment to lose or a pain that isn’t meaningful and need be ignored or procrastinated? Looking at the world in this way gives purpose to pain so that it can be attended, alleviated, and endured. Doesn’t it wake you up to listen and talk almost directly to this universe/multiverse/self/god//energy/love? - trusting your actual life (as much as you can get your regular self - your ego - out of the way) not simply waiting for synchronicity but knowing it will answer you immediately after enough practice? Even if it (or you) need time to process or grow, trust that it will answer directly through a kind of symbolism or language specific to you that only you (and those who love you) can decipher.
It’s speaking, however, in the language of our lives when we stay on our path. Open your eyes, consider the truth of it all, come from your good place, try to do no harm and live looking for that silver lining until you reside in a path of gratitude. Serve others the best possible way you can - because we are all in this together. Nothing here is new, and yet for me everything is. Because it can also lead all…
Now, let’s back up a bit. One of the issues with a simulation, manifestational (Yeah, I’m keeping that) or multiverse theory is that it cuts people off. If I am the center of my own universe then doesn’t it follow that you don’t exist or at least you don’t exist within my real reality. I’m guessing that seems counterintuitive to you at best. At worst, it’ll drive you mad. (I mean this is Hell!) Sartre was right. Hell is other people. But, we all know that the first real step is identifying you have a problem.
I trust this because following this thought does so much more good than it does harm. For example, there is no mind-body problem if only the mind exists. If this is the case, and we can come to the agreement that on some level we are truly manifesting our own realities, then I can manifest you if and only if you serve me in some way. Now this sounds cold and as much as it’s a stretch, in some ways it simply just doesn’t stretch far enough. That’s the real issue. The truth of the matter is irrelevant. The Truth is within what’s true for you. I know those I love are True.
Stay with me: We live in several dimensions with only a somewhat clear empirical sense of 3 (length, width, depth). I have those three, you have your three, and the only way I can know anything about yours is through you (if you’re honest with me). It’s almost like there’s another dimension of reality that can be experienced through our minds connecting. If you think about the dot’s perspective of a “line world,” and how it would only know of that world communicating honestly and accepting the truth of a line’s perspective, you can begin to see the trajectory. Why would the line care that the dot is there? Because they are parts of each other. If you keep raising the dimensions, this becomes almost clear. We live in a 3 (maybe 4?)D universe, experiencing each other. But just like the aliens at the end of Jodie Foster’s journey across the universe in Contact, the only thing we’ll ever really find is each other. And isn’t there an inherent beauty in the truth of that statement?
This thought is grounding for me. Whenever I get too caught in my ego, or feeling sad or alone - whenever I just can’t seem to find the way out or I can’t repair my relationship with another ego for some reason; this is the thought that sparks what I need. Just like Elsa at the bottom of a cave in Frozen II, it’s a terrible place. At some point though, when it gets quiet, and you can see your own breath, there are others who can help. The first person you need to help is yourself, and sometimes that just means listening, allowing the quiet to speak. And sometimes that just means exploring - thinking, or talking, or sharing yourself. It might mean praying, meditating, or asking for help. At some point though, you just gotta do the “Next Right Thing.”
All other people could be demons, or angels, both, us (our higher selves), or our messages. Think about it this way: is there ever a situation which if not looked upon as though the world were really a giant mirror, becoming the change you want to see in the world (Gandhi) isn’t the way?
Stand here a second. What if there truly is a VERY narrow path we walk to Heaven? What if it’s like a tightrope? And the path is “walked” in our own heads? Or through Nirvana? We walk it with every choice we make as we navigate through this Multiverse. Every sin, every judgment trips us up because it’s illogical to sin or judge. God, if this is how you identify, said nobody is perfect. But God is. God made it all. Even evil. Evil moves us. Perhaps evil is good?
- Every single thought (Eckhart Tolle) - is a judgment.
- Every definition (Robert M. Pirsig) - collapses possibility.
- Every label - (Marth Nussbaum) - we place on others objectifies them. “Disgust relies on moral obtuseness. It is possible to view another human being as a slimy slug or a piece of trash only if one has never made a serious good-failing attempt to see the world through that person’s eyes or to experience that person’s feelings. Disgust imputes to the other a subhuman nature. How, by contrast, do we ever become able to see one another as humans? Only through the exercise of imagination” (Martha Nussbaum). Or connection (Polizzi).
Each of these can actually steer us wrongly, if there even really is indeed a direction, because essentially there are no absolutes. There is no fundamentalism that we can objectively access. No single perspective is ubiquitous. No possible being is without flaw.
What if we may have never even really “lived?” All this is actually a dream (Bishop Berkeley) or we died somewhere along the line and this is now a dream or a life review in a near-death-experience as some have described? And the lower you are in the Inferno (the smarter, sweeter, most intellectually and emotionally invested you probably are) the harder it is to break through the illusions - because we identify with them. Even the terrible ones. We are the heroes of our narratives.
Doesn’t all that truly fit? Couldn't it?
I have felt like I am in Hell since the moment I seriously considered this thought. And the thing is, when I share this with people they initially retreat in disgust or defense. I stand firmly in my opinion that fear is a formidable teacher if only because I have rarely occasioned a thought more important, more beautiful, more consequential than this one, because: as a result of this thought…
I've simply never been happier!
This may scare you but also doesn’t this simultaneously have the effect of casting an ethereal light on even the most totally mundane? Doesn’t it truly make you want to embrace your enemies knowing they’re simply manifestations of either the real you or God, someone who loves you trying to wake you from your own self-induced nightmares or someone experiencing those very same nightmares with you?
Doesn’t it compel you to speak to your loves your each and every truth immediately without any hesitation knowing there isn’t a moment to lose or a pain that isn’t meaningful and need be ignored or procrastinated? Looking at the world in this way gives purpose to pain so that it can be attended, alleviated, and endured. Doesn’t it wake you up to listen and talk almost directly to this universe/multiverse/self/god//energy/love? - trusting your actual life (as much as you can get your regular self - your ego - out of the way) not simply waiting for synchronicity but knowing it will answer you immediately after enough practice? Even if it (or you) need time to process or grow, trust that it will answer directly through a kind of symbolism or language specific to you that only you (and those who love you) can decipher.
It’s speaking, however, in the language of our lives when we stay on our path. Open your eyes, consider the truth of it all, come from your good place, try to do no harm and live looking for that silver lining until you reside in a path of gratitude. Serve others the best possible way you can - because we are all in this together. Nothing here is new, and yet for me everything is. Because it can also lead all…