Tuesday, November 26, 2013

The Night I Visited Hell


CHRISTIAN assumptions can be dangerous. Some lead to the pride of self-righteousness, others lead to fear of condemnation, and others, again, can lead us to think miracles occur in every situation (and be sure, they can, but they don’t always do).
I’ve always made the assumption that I’m not going to hell. I believe it’s a safe assumption, and made never surer by a correct reading of the Holy Scriptures.
But, recently, I was given a glimpse of one possible eternal hell. It came manifest in ‘real form’ via a dream.
A Vision of Hell
I don’t recall how the dream started, but let’s just commence the journey in a transporter – a four-person transporter. There were room for two couples; me and my partner (not my real-life wife) and another couple. None of these three people’s faces or identities do I recall – it’s not a significant detail.
Once we were strapped into the transporter by a fifth person – perhaps an angel – I recognised I could adjust my seating position slightly, but I was nowhere near comfortable. My knees were locked awkwardly and, whilst there wasn’t the presence of disabling fear, I did experience a calm dread. Once seated and restrained in our seats we were all given a ‘green dream’ intravenously. Perhaps the worst memory of all was knowing death was being counted down from about 30 seconds away.
The transition into death was not painful. The transition was the transport. Without noticing the transporter even start – like it was just simply travelling at what seemed like light speed already – there was a large type of liquid electronic display (LED) clocking up the years. We were taken in what seemed like several seconds into a future thousands of years from now. I cannot recall the exact year.
My initial impression of the place I knew was Hell, was pretty unremarkable. It was a place like Earth in many respects; suburban, yet purposeless.
The purposelessness of this place I was in struck me. Groups gathered on the land as if it were an eternal picnic. There was no sun there, but the darkness wasn’t so dark that you couldn’t visibly see. Seeing seemed superfluous, though, because communication occurred between all the beings by thought. Everything you thought could be discerned by others, but it seemed that some of the beings had so locked out their thoughts – like they had none, or they had total discipline over them.
It was a sad place from a marriage viewpoint. Perhaps being there with knowledge of a partner’s presence meant nothing. There was no love there, no feeling for the significance of memories, and no place for any sense of connectedness. There was no sense of connectedness.
The most significant event occurred when a being from a group lower down in the valley from where I was sitting threw me up a microphone and stand. I was being commanded to sing by this being who was more a master of Hell than I was. I was exposed at once, for I had been thinking how good a singer I was.
I did sing, and I did so beautifully. But then it was revealed by a huge spotlight from the being below me, a house from back on Earth; a house in a suburb so far away back in time... “Whose is that house? The voice you sang with, that is his home,” he said. I said, without any thought, “That house is your house!” There was no laughter, nor derision, nor shame, nor guilt... just the truth. I had sung what I thought was beautiful, but I sang in his voice, though it sounded like my own.
The dream ended, or it had no further significance after that.
Now, the psychoanalytic school of therapy would make something of the event just described. I will let it be just now, other than to say, this may be a reminder from God, to speak his words and his alone. A secondary reminder is that I must establish congruence through thought and deed, and conform all my thinking to Divine will. A final reminder is how easily we can be deceived; we must sing in our own voices – having discerned in obedience.
***
From my dream I wonder if Hell – the real place – is an eternal destination where all feeling, all emotion, has been purged. No love, no conscience, nothing of purpose – an eternal vacuum where nothing is significant. That would be hell. One thing worse than too much emotion is no emotion at all.
As we focus on Heaven, not Hell, we can look forward to being in a place where love resounds, where emotions-of-truth are welcome and freeing, and indeed, where full emotional expression and healing occur seamlessly.
© 2013 S. J. Wickham.

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