Heaven and Hell

[Astral Entities]

This is something I wrote earlier today on my blog thing, thought I'd post it here as well

Ah, here we go! A most controversial subject, bound to raise some opinions...as well as tempers.

Where is heaven, and where is hell?

If we don't obey some kind of (almost dogmatic) religion that states if we put any other gods before god, or if we commit any sins in this list of ten rules, we will be judged and sent to hell to wallow in eternal suffering. Unless we recognize our sins and make a full transgretion or something.

Well where exactly is this hell? And where exactly is heaven? Are they in space? Are they in the clouds? Are they in another dimension? In the middle of the Earth?

First, let's look at how it is literally impossible to piss off god. He is the creator, and we are the creation. That says it all right there. We all have this notion that god is this vengeful dude up in the clouds or whatever, with a white beard watching and listening to every single thing we do. How can one little carbon unit offend such a supreme intellect? How can we be "judged" for having free will? If the creator wanted us to have "no gods before him", then he would have just made us without free will. If the creator knew not all of us would worship\pay reverence to him, nor act in accordance to what is right...what right does he have to judge us for that? Looks like he needs to judge himself first.

Duality. That is the problem. We are conditioned in to discerning between right and wrong. Truth is, there is neither. There just is. That is it. Religions (most christian religions anyway) teach us to dissasociate ourselves with the one. Call it god, call it being, call it whatever you want. They preach that we are somehow seperate from god, and that to get in his good graces we need to obey and conform to a certain way, pray, pay homage, whatever. And THEN maybe, after our lives are over, we may be reconnected with him and prance around in heaven and enjoy eternal bliss. That is what they call the RIGHT thing to do.

The WRONG thing to do is stray from the path, do what you want (within moral standards of course...even then nothing is wrong really), pray to whome you choose, have sex all you want, have relationships with who you want, etc etc...

Welcome to duality. Good vs Evil, Right vs Wrong, Up vs Down, Rich vs Poor...

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS DUALITY!! There is only the One. There are no mistakes, no coincidences, no good or bad. There just is.

So back to the question, where is heaven and hell? Well, if you're even remotely paying the slightest attention to this, then you will have already come to the conlusion heaven and hell simply do not exist. Duality.

The CLOSEST thing to heaven and hell that I can describe, is how we create our realities. There is heaven, there is hell, there are both, and there are neither. If everyone around you is suffering, but you are at total calmness, total silence, total peace with yourself...They are in hell and you are in heaven. All coexisting at the same time. No duality.

So just what the hell is going on here (no pun intended)? Open your eyes and think for yourself. Question authority (in the religious sense). Don't take everything at face value...not even the things I have said just now...you have to experience it for yourself.

We are not seperate from anything. That is the illusion. We are all one, part of the one. Some call it god, others call it the source. Names do not matter, what matters is that we recognize our inherent true nature and awaken to the reality that everything is perfect. You literally create your own heaven and hell. You literally create your own existence. We are god, we are the one.

[Ariel]

Yeah, good stuff. I'm diggin' it.

One thing I've been finding lately is that there's actually quite a bit of validity to a lot of what Christianity has to say.

Like the idea of us being separate from God and then dying and being reunited with God.

Yeah we've adopted the ego and so now we experience separation from God, even though it doesn't actually exist. Yes the self does die so that we realize our true nature as the Self. Yet this death is only the death of a superficial identity. I guess we could say the same is true for bodily death at the end of an incarnation.

In time, it looks like we connect to God in the future and then are with him forever and ever.

Yet from timelessness, we recognize that awakening/salvation does open up the recognition that God and I are one, for all eternity. Not as a long time, but as no time.

Yes we do need to purge the evil, aka. surrender away the ego's stuff in favor of God/Truth/Love, but the self-incriminating stuff isn't necessarily the way to go about it. That's a product of the blind leading the blind, and more ego trying to get rid of itself, but never actually doing it.

The gift is not that we will be granted eternal life, but that we have eternal life.

It's not that we will one day be loved for who we are and forgiven of all our sins, but that we already are loved for who we are and are forgiven now for all that we have done, for we have done nothing wrong anyways. We're just being ourselves to the best that we can.

There's almost an innocence to the human ego, like a baby trying to walk, but not quite getting it right. Just faulty dualistic programming out of alignment with Truth. Forgive them Father, for they know not what they do.

I'm just rambling now and I'm tired, but there does actually seem to be quite a bit of truth to Christianity's teachings which, when we start seeing beyond the whole dualistic stuff, it seems like we're probably coming closer to what Jesus was originally saying back in the day.

Kinda like revealing the nuggets of gold within the mud.

[Astral Entities]

amen, brother

[CaterpillarWoman]

Where is heaven, and where is hell?

I don't believe in either one. So, nowhere at all. Or, anywhere you believe they are.

Duality. That is the problem. We are conditioned in to discerning between right and wrong. Truth is, there is neither. There just is.

That's at least part of the allegory of the traditional Judeo-Christian-Islamic creation story. Adam and Eve, who were in perfect harmony and unity with each other, their environment, and God, fell out of that state when they gained the power (or made the decision) to "tell good from evil".

Religions (most christian religions anyway) teach us to dissasociate ourselves with the one.

I don't know if they teach you to do it. They do reinforce it, generally speaking (well, except for Unity churches ). But, in my estimation and experience, it's not necessarily out of malice or some sort of organised plan to keep people from spiritual truth. It's because it is, to paraphrase That Jesus Guy, the blind leading the blind.

They preach that we are somehow seperate from god, and that to get in his good graces we need to obey and conform to a certain way, pray, pay homage, whatever.

Yes. Because they're blind.

Well, if you're even remotely paying the slightest attention to this, then you will have already come to the conlusion heaven and hell simply do not exist.

I came to that conclusion ages ago, but I came to it via a different route. I actually studied the New Testament trying to find out where this stuff came from and I found that it's not supported by any scripture, and then I found out that the whole "heaven and hell" thing wasn't even official doctrine until about the fourth century, which is when Christianity went from being a hip, spiritual, underground mystical movement to being the political tool of a pagan emperor. Aside from that, I couldn't believe that any Creator would happily condemn most of his/her/its creation to eternal torment for no reason other than being blind and maybe stupid. It's like sentencing someone to be tortured to death for picking their nose.

This is an interesting topic, by the way, one I've been looking at for a long time. I used to make a hobby out of arguing with fundamentalist types, but then I realised that they liked being blind and I stopped wasting my time on them and directed my attention toward my own enlightenment.