Another revisited topic:
Anything we imagine, including any maps we have about the world and anything described in religions, and especially the ones that feel juicy and capture our imagination, reflect something in ourselves.
And so also with purgatory, heaven, and hell.
For me, purgatory is what happens when I befriend the parts of me I have seen as an enemy, alien, a problem, or something to avoid, fix, or get rid of in some other way. I meet the unmet, feel
And that can be very painful. It’s a pain that leads to heaven.
Heaven can be seen as a pleasant and comfortable state. And a more real heaven is when we befriend our current experience.
Hell is what the mind creates when it believes hellish thoughts. It’s what we create for ourselves when we believe painful stories, and when our most cherished identifications are threatened by life and situations.
Of course, we can say a lot more about each of these. For instance, we can say that heaven is when we find ourselves as that which we already are, that which this experience happens within and as. Or it may be when we recognize all our experience, including the ones our personality doesn’t like, as consciousness, or the divine, or happening within and as the One. Or that it’s all of that when our human self is more healed and thus less in pain. Although right now, I like the befriending way of talking about it.
….
….
….
- purgatory
- purgatory
- befriend those parts of us we have seen as an enemy, alien, a problem, something to avoid or get rid of
- meet the unmet, feel the unfelt, examine the unexamined, love the unloved
- heaven
- (a) pleasant state
- (b) befriending the experience that’s here
- hell
- created by painful beliefs, identifications, when (our stories about) life/situations trigger them
- ….
- purgatory