Not surprisingly, acknowledging that there may be some sort of spiritual realm that we return to between lifetimes has prompted me to start learning everything that I can about this place. I have always been fascinated by accounts of near-death experiences, and every time I encounter a new story I eagerly study it for clues. What has always been interesting to me is that most of the time, the person reports a positive experience, which they often associate with heaven. I've read some stories about people who claim to have been to hell, and while I'm not necessarily skeptical, I think there's something more to these experiences than the scare tactic that hell is used as in the Christian religion.
I grew up absolutely terrified of spending eternity in hell. I know that the idea of Jesus and redemption is supposed to provide comfort, but for me it was just the opposite. The fact that I couldn't feel anything but doubt just convinced me that I wasn't trying hard enough, and the truth is, my heart really wasn't into it. I learned the Bible stories, and the memory verses, and the worship songs, but I felt absolutely zero connection to "God" or Jesus. Keep in mind, one of the ways that OCD affects my thinking is by distorting my perception to only see things in black and white. The only thing that I was sure of was that Christianity didn't feel right to me. Knowing this, my mind decided that there were only two logical paths that I could take: Either I could "fake it" and devote my life to a lifestyle that felt completely wrong to me, in hopes that I could earn a pass into heaven on effort, or I could just say fuck it and at least enjoy life before going to hell. Even though I eventually went with option B, I've never been fully at peace with my decision until now, because for all of these years I've been carrying the burden of this fear and worry. And you know what? That's what I think the concept of hell was originally referring to: all of the guilt and anxiety that you lose yourself in when you aren't living in the present.
So how does this relate to the "good versus evil" theme that is typically characteristic of religion? It is undeniable that people are capable of doing terrible, terrible things. However, contrary to the party line that I was taught in church, I do not believe that we are all tainted by "original sin." (I want to devote a whole entry to this later, but I actually think the Adam and Eve story was intended to teach a much different lesson). Staying on track, however, I believe that all souls are inherently good. The reason that we do bad things is not because we are "evil," but because we are reacting to life's curveballs out of fear, rather than love. This isn't always conscious- sometimes we accumulate scars from past lives or even earlier in this lifetime that are too deep to overcome right away- but ultimately, we are all the same. We will all return to the same place. It may take some souls longer than other to complete their spiritual journey, but it's not a race. There's no clock. The only "hell" that we need to worry about is the negative energy that we attract when we continue to feed into our fear.
And that's what I wanted to point out in a previous entry when I referred to souls who have been branded as the worst of the worst; those who have committed crimes so heinous that it is difficult to see even a shred of good in their existence. Let me be clear: I do not believe that we all get a free pass to behave however we want just because there's no one standing at a set of pearly gates to admit or deny us entry into heaven. We absolutely are expected to take responsibility for our wrongdoings by working through the negative karma that we create with our own negative energy, whether we manage to accomplish this task in this lifetime or another. However, I think that some souls simply get lost in their own despair. They let their fear control them, and they do terrible things which continues to generate negative karma. Maybe I'm wrong, but I think it is these souls who are responsible for much of the unfriendly paranormal activity that is reported around the globe. These reports are too widespread to ignore, even though it's often easier to turn a blind eye to supernatural phenomena that we can't understand. My theory is that while most souls are capable of accepting death as a natural part of life, others cling to the physical world so fiercely that they become trapped as entities that we would probably refer to as ghosts or demons. I don't believe that this is a permanent state of existence, but rather the spiritual version of "learning your lesson the hard way." These souls will return to their spiritual "home" eventually, but first, they must face the consequences of the choices that they have made.
This is where I think Jesus fits in. The Christian church taught me that Jesus was the son of God, sent to earth to save humanity from their sins. As the story goes, by agreeing to take on our sins and then dying on the cross, Jesus gave us a chance to get into heaven, as long as we choose to accept this version of the truth and worship the Christian God. The influence of the church is pretty obvious here- after all, it's much easier to control a large population of people when they are all taught to believe the exact the same things about human spirituality and abide by the same set of rules. I absolutely believe that Jesus existed; history tells us at least that much. However, a lot of language and terminology that is used in the Bible (which you have to remember, has been heavily edited and translated) is hard to decipher and as a result, easily misinterpreted. This entry is getting kind of long so I'm going to save my detailed discussion of soul age for later, but I believe that Jesus was a more highly evolved spiritual being who chose to visit the hurting physical world in human form because the earth was becoming engulfed in negative energy. By sharing his message of love and reminding us of who we truly are as souls, his purpose here was to "clean up" all of the negative karma that humanity had accumulated. This is still just a sketchy theory at this point that I want to study further, but maybe as a more evolved soul, Jesus had the ability to take on the bulk of this negative energy and work through it more efficiently, which freed mankind to embrace the love and joy that is a crucial part of our spiritual identity.
Break time- I hear a thunderstorm brewing and I'm getting happily distracted by the rapidly darkening sky!
-L
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