Hell Trilogy, I: Going to Hell
Hell is where nothing is as it should be, and all your concentration has to start going into remaining your most simple self.
Hell is where you let go of every expectation, every ideal - the way you would have wanted it, your personal favorites – in order not to let them weigh you down and drown you in the flames. Hell is the place of places in which to say: what the hell.
In hell, everything is instinctual and reflexive. Even this thought is instinctual and reflexive. Even your thoughts about your thoughts are instinctual and reflexive when you’ve been in hell long enough.
At first, however, you are ungovernable, governed by the instinct below instinct. You jump over flaming logs, your feet on fire, tripping, nearly falling off ledges. (Some do.) You are the anti-human animal, ranting and raving, threatening to bite off their faces – anyone and everyone’s. Because the world has let you down by sending you down here.
You roll around the hell-forest floor howling tears of abandonment and pain. Of course, no one comes. You are in hell.
Happily – kind of -- you can only weep, wail, and gnash your teeth for a limited amount of time. When your teeth start hurting from the gnashing, this is one of the signs that you really are in hell and not starring in a dramatic film of self-visualization.
One of the things about hell is that it has to last a really long time, usually eternity or until the end of your life, which can feel pretty similar. If it’s very much shorter than this and just feels like hell, seems like hell, or is miserable as hell, then be happy. It isn’t hell.
Hell is where you let go of every expectation, every ideal - the way you would have wanted it, your personal favorites – in order not to let them weigh you down and drown you in the flames. Hell is the place of places in which to say: what the hell.
In hell, everything is instinctual and reflexive. Even this thought is instinctual and reflexive. Even your thoughts about your thoughts are instinctual and reflexive when you’ve been in hell long enough.
At first, however, you are ungovernable, governed by the instinct below instinct. You jump over flaming logs, your feet on fire, tripping, nearly falling off ledges. (Some do.) You are the anti-human animal, ranting and raving, threatening to bite off their faces – anyone and everyone’s. Because the world has let you down by sending you down here.
You roll around the hell-forest floor howling tears of abandonment and pain. Of course, no one comes. You are in hell.
Happily – kind of -- you can only weep, wail, and gnash your teeth for a limited amount of time. When your teeth start hurting from the gnashing, this is one of the signs that you really are in hell and not starring in a dramatic film of self-visualization.
One of the things about hell is that it has to last a really long time, usually eternity or until the end of your life, which can feel pretty similar. If it’s very much shorter than this and just feels like hell, seems like hell, or is miserable as hell, then be happy. It isn’t hell.
Posted by Paul at 4:32 PM Permalink
27 Comments:
A friend of mine has a saying, "Satan votes against you, the Lord votes for you and you cast the deciding vote.
You can't imagine the efforts my family and I have made for fifteen years to choose against this - the medical travel, research, adaptations at home and on the job - and then, when five years ago disease progression made it impossible, to keep me driving and walking.
Today we battle pressure sores, repeated infections of the feet and lower legs, and just try to keep me from going from mostly to completely bedridden.
I hope you don't make it to hell too. I know that if you do, it certainly won't be because you chose it.
We, Hindus, light an oil lamp when we pray or launch on any serious endeavor. The solid wick moisturized by the oil burns with a brilliant display of energy and gets consummated by the void of infinity surrounding it. It is a symbol for the manifestation of the trinity that holds the manifested universe together. It just reminds… ‘…stay connected with the fundamentals’…an advice often forgotten by the specialists obsessed with the empirical details who push the world towards a hell.
Hell is where the flame is extinguished…by addictions, afflictions and deprivations.
But these negatives could also invite the positive. The external privations could perhaps make the flame to burn inside with extra clarity. Didn’t Christ say something about the deprived inheriting the kingdom of heaven?!
It also reminds me of the lives of those who are in jail, some on Death Row. I don't mean just their life in jail but before that: what made them become "the anti-human animal, ranting and raving, threatening to bite off their faces - anyone and everyone's". For the world has indeed let them down.
And for those whose job it is to sentence those people, guard them or attempt to rehabilitate them, I'd like them to read your post and understand a little more.
Where you are sounds less like hell than like life, where pain and suffering are not what you choose instead of God, but what you suffer, often without either scientific or religious surcease. That you keep hopeful, that you believe in something greater than yourself, and that you have a conviction that that something is interested in your happiness and well-being interests me. In some ways, your testimonies here remind me of C. S. Lewis' works on the meaning of pain in a religious context.
I am sorry that I am neither research scientist nor religious expert and so can do no more than read what you write as you struggle through the pain, can offer no more than a questioning mind and a willing ear. I may not share your beliefs but I share your ability to think and reason and reach out, things you do so well.
Hopefully I’ll have a chance to get back to reply to each individual comment, but glancing over them all, I want to mention that I see that about half of you are talking about Hell A and the other half Hell B. It’s important to make this distinction or there could be confusion.
Hell A: Psychological and spiritual problems.
Hell B: Highly negative life events whose effects are permanent or at least very long lasting. The worst of these tend to involve harm to our bodies or the bodies of people we love. To get a feel for this, maybe visit a nursing home – maybe one specializing in younger people, like my family had to look at for me.
You can be in Hell A, Hell B, neither, or both. If something happens to put you in Hell B, you’re going to get at least a taste of Hell A – anxiety, depression and/or anger. That’s normal. If I remember my psychological jargon, an example would be “exogenous depression” – caused by life events, in contrast to an “endogenous” depression caused by psychological difficulties and often a genetic predisposition to depression.
If you’re in Hell B long enough, you can get out of Hell A. That’s basically what I’m writing about.
Also, gnashing of teeth can't be THAT bad. I've clenched my jaw in my sleep for years and only recently are my gums getting sore during the day. :D
Don't mind me, I'm an ass. :D
I hate so much the idea that bad stuff is only bad if you let yourself feel that way about it. Disease is bad, pain, povety, loneliness, powerlessness .... this stuff is indeed bad. I think the people who find a way to turn lemons of this magnitude into lemonade are deeply in denial.
The stages of suffering you describe are truly hell, no doubt about it whatsoever.
Prayers always,
Suzy
“Everyone remembers Him in times of sorrow
In midst of happiness none cares about Him
If one could learn to remember even while being happy
How can there be any unhappiness here?!”
That is the fine nugget that not only has not been destroyed, but that you seem to have made brighter, more refined and more precious with all of your time in the flames. What a heroic choice to have made!
The human spirit can be a fine, noble thing - or abased with fear. Yours is of the finest.
Your elegant prose and clarity of vision is astonishing - you make me weep - not from fear, but from the heaviness of my heart at your ordeal.
Love to you, Paul.
AVGW: Yes, the meek inheriting the earth… And right, flame has that opposite kind of symbolism in Christianity too – of the sacred.
Great privations and difficulties can enhance the spirit – or encumber it, or do some of each. You often hear of people who suffer serious illness or accident, and retrospectively it turns out to have been mainly a positive thing.
But not necessarily. It depends, for example, on the severity of the health situation and whether it’s temporary or permanent. The stage of life/how old a person is at the time of the onset of incapacitation can be a big factor. Also, people who, to begin with, are very much on-track with their lives, can be stricken.
I like the poem – remembering in good times… I’d call that joy.
VINCENT: Great example of one of those many hells on earth that a person doesn’t choose: wrongful incarceration.
DON I: Wonderful/concise summary of one of hell’s many rooms – in the A section, as per my first boldfaced comment. For sure all of us do some time there.
GAUTAMI: Hope that it turns out to just feel like hell but not be hell, as per the post. If “This too shall pass” might apply, that could be a good thing to focus on. (Included in the category of things that often change: our attitudes and states of mind in relation to situations and events.)
PAULINE: At the risk of sounding like I’m taking an inopportune moment for a cheap marketing ploy, I really hope you read the book – I think you’d be surprised. For example, it neither endorses nor opposes any religious belief system. It’s religious but speaks entirely to experience and not doctrine.
As to well being in relation to what some would think of as the wider world or life itself and others God, this can be sustained regardless of circumstances or conditions – at least that don’t directly impact the brain. On my own happiness, I’d certainly prefer to have been able to hang onto that, but I’ve let it go – partly because of what I’ve gained, partly because of how I’ve lost the physical preconditions for most of happiness. (In brief, there’s just too much stuff I can’t do, from walking and driving to looking out a window, getting a breath of fresh air, sitting down to eat with others – or just being physically comfortable, ever.)
And if I can let my happiness go, I’m pretty sure that it never was on the Must Do list of God or the Universe…
CARRIE: I do appreciate that. In fairness, Lucy did have the disadvantage of commenting first – prior to my Hell A/Hell B clarification, and probably without having seen my previous post.
DARVISH and GOLLYGEE: You guys… Who gave you permission to hang out in the back of the room chewing gum and tossing paper airplanes?
GG, on the first part of your comment, it would be Hell A – so if the person just keeps on keeping on, there’s a good chance that “This too shall pass” applies. Things that feel like you could never let them go often turn out to be things that you can let go of, sometimes even happily.
CRYSTAL: I think you’re right – that when something is clearly and obviously off-target factually, then you have to look to motive.
SUZY, thanks for your understanding and prayers. While my own particular illness is extremely rare, when you look at the whole world, major suffering of one kind or another is very common – and usually caused or compounded by the actions/inactions of other human beings.
HAYDEN: And apparently the fact that the Bible doesn’t contain a word about stem cells or newly fertilized ova also doesn’t enter into it either…
It would seem as if the only thing entering into it is that certain latter day church officials have trouble with the concepts of “same” and “different.”
Maybe there’s hope – a new generation of church officials that grew up on Sesame Street?
“I see the fundi movement as equally violent in their withholding of the potential for research. In my thinking violence is both active, in the commission - and passive - in withholding succor.” Good thought – there’s passive violence as surely as there’s passive resistance.
Thanks so much for the encouraging words. As to the weeping, now cut that out - it's bad enough with mom and sis! They've definitely been going through their own forms of hell with this as well, as you can imagine... or maybe you shouldn't, lol...
Going back to the stem cell issue, I wonder if the problem isn't a kind of failure of imagination. You hear of people who oppose stem cell research then suddenly change their minds when someone in their family gets a relevant disease - like Nancy Reagan. It's like it isn't real to them unless it happens to personally affect them.
Hi Paul,
I swung by to wish you and yours a Happy Valentine's Day! I enjoyed reading your musical choices in response to my post, especially the fact that you were open with your feelings about "that woman's voice." :)
This is an interesting post. I realize it's part of a triology I don't have time to read part 1 of. However, that would not affect my comment. I do not believe there is a placed called "hell" or by another name, that one goes to after death or is suspended in limbo or what not after death.
I do feel that "hell" (semantics aside) is lived while on earth.
I agree with you that a fleeting "being in hell" is emphatically not the experience of enduring/suffering/battling true longterm hell. I wish you did not need to face, what I term as hell, everyday of your life since your illness became at that level.
As someone else who has eluded NIH, I understand, but only "understand" to the extent of my own experience.Obviously, it is not the same, by any stretch, even if we had the same illness. That would remove the individuality from the individual which is a topic for another time. I will not diminish what you are experiencing by any further comparison to me.
Thinking of you,
gel(blogger's open Id is not working so I coded my link at the top of my comment)
Thanks for thinking of me, we're on the same wavelength... and you've got me wondering what went on with you at NIH.
Paul I'd like u to come and comment on my current post...looking forward to ur very valued thoughts.
Keshi.
and living hell sounds like the term that we're after.
The conception of Hell was invented to scare the Hell out of people which is ironic since most people existed in a living hell where other people could end your life at the drop of a hat.
We live in unimaginable personal freedom compared to what 99% of humans experienced.
The other day I watched a doc on International Sex Slaves..that is Hell..
the feeling of being trapped and forced to suffer without any hope of ever being rescued.
I am sorry for your condition. In this, so far, my ultimate thought reflects back to a quote from Mother Teresa:
"I know God will not give me anything I can't handle. I just wish that He didn't trust me so much."
Tim
LT: To all your points, hell on earth would be rare to non-existent without the indifference/active participation of other people.
TIM, thanks - and funny! I'd never heard that quote.
I'm honestly taken aback by your assessment of "funny." Then again, most of the time when I feel as though God has laid a reality on me, I laugh... not out of humor, but, instead, out of the sheer hilarity of my realization that God works completely independent of my own understanding. Now, that's funny.
:-)
Tim
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