religious | Author – Richard F Holmes

Heaven and Hell are not places that you go to after death. Whether you’ve been “good” or “bad” there are no such places as Heaven and Hell; they are merely concepts that exist in the mind. We create our own Heaven and Hell here on earth.

The only reality, ultimately, is Consciousness, which exists as it is. For Heaven and Hell to exist, they would have to have some form of objective reality, which means that they would have to appear somewhere within the timelessness of Consciousness. If that was the case, they would have limitations (boundaries), which would render them both finite. This completely blows out of the water the mythological religious view that Heaven and Hell are eternal; eternal bliss and eternal damnation respectively. You cannot have two eternities, it is both spiritually and scientifically impossible. Eternity is timeless infinity, so if Heaven and Hell existed there would have to be a place (boundary) where one ceased and the other began. Therefore the only conclusion is that both Heaven and Hell are dualistic concepts that exist only in the mind.

Thanks to Nick Fewings of Unsplash for the image

There are two ways of looking at Hope; like everything else, I suppose. On one hand it’s great to have, especially from a religious perspective. To have hope in a world that has seemingly gone mad is surely a very positive thing. But, I’m going to look at hope from a deeper spiritual perspective. First of all though, what is it? For me, hope relates to an event or something in the future that is going to be responsible for making me happy. There’s only one drawback with that. If I don’t get the thing I’m hoping for, or if the event I’m hoping for doesn’t happen, I’m in danger of my hope turning into pain and suffering.

Hoping for a certain thing or event to happen really keeps us blind to our true reality, which is the One eternal Self. This truth can only be realised in the Now, or present moment. Past and future constitute imaginary time and do not really exist. The past that shaped and conditioned us, happened Now, and the future that everyone is worried about and that contains the hoped for things that we have spoken of, can also only happen Now.

Yes, hope can be a positive thing when it is understood for what it actually is, but it can also be a jailer, keeping us locked away in the mind-made prison of imaginary time (past and future).