Echoes in a Hollow Space

I know it's not hip in some circles to believe in hell, and I don't believe in the classic hell of Christian mythology, but I do believe that when we die, we are forced to go through a complete life review with no filters, no rationalizations, and face up to who we have truly been. Our sins, if you will.*

That in itself would be truly hellish, having to face up to things, to uncork all the muck of our shadow selves. We're all in store for it, I believe, to a greater or lesser degree. Perhaps children are exempt since they have so little life to review. I read a book by a mystic/psychic** who said that was how he perceived of hell, and it really resonated with me. He also said that the worse our misdeeds the more darkness we face in the afterlife, and it was only as we came to terms with what we had done and who we had been, own up to it, that we were able to move closer to the light. Someone like Hitler, he said, would be alone in complete cold and darkness until he came to terms with what he had done.

He didn't believe in eternal damnation, just damnation that lasted as long as we clung to our old worldview. I don't believe in eternal damnation, either. I think the Universe is more nuanced than that, that the worst hell is the one we impose upon ourselves, here and hereafter. I know this won't be popular with those who want everlasting retribution against people they hate but think about how awful it would be to be stuck in the cold and dark, screaming alone in a void until you acknowledge the wrong you've done. Far worse than fire in my opinion. The agony of that fire would give you little time to think on and acknowledge the wrong you have done. It makes no sense.

Of course, there ain't no guarantee that the mystical side of the universe makes any sense, but I do take comfort from the notion.

I guess I do believe in karma, but definitely not the way the New Age defines it: if you do something heinous in one life you’ll be born into horrible circumstances in your next life. This is essentially victim-blaming, and I reject it utterly. The Eastern concept of karma is more nuanced (and if I’ve gotten what follows wrong, I’d be very happy if someone corrected me): if you do something heinous in one life, you have the opportunity to make amends and change your ways in the same life, but if you don’t you will be born over and over again into the same circumstances, living out the same patterns until you learn to break free of them. That’s somewhat more palatable, but it doesn’t have enough retribution for my liking. (So, I will probably have to mend my ways and get rid of my need for retribution along the line somewhere.)

All this is just my own eccentric take on things, borrowed here and there from various mystical and religious texts. My own personal gnosis, if you will. It may not be pagan enough for someone who calls herself a pagan, but there it is.

I've been trying to do some of that reconciliation work on this side of the divide, acknowledging my past misdeeds, stripping away as much rationalization and excuses as possible. You know, dealing with my shadow side here rather than there. It isn’t easy and it's very uncomfortable sometimes but when I do accomplish it, it's quite liberating. I feel myself inching microscopically closer to the light.




*What is sin? I don’t think it’s about having sex outside “permitted” channels, or self-identity, or sloth, or any of the other minor venalities of conventional hell and brimstone religions. To me, sin is about doing physical, mental, or emotional harm to fellow creatures and the planet.

**I want to say it was George Anderson’s Lessons from the Light but it was a long time ago and I can’t be sure. I downloaded a Kindle sample and read the start of the book and it seems like the one but, as I say, it was a long time ago.

Random quote of the day:

“Black holes out there in the universe are nothing compared to the black holes in our own past. Those holes are much more than ordinary gaps. They have the power to destroy our ideas about ourselves and bring us face to face with nothingness.”

—Peter Kingsley, In the Dark Places of Wisdom



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Bert and Ernie, Celine Dion, or the Band of the Coldstream Guards. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

Random quote of the day:

“The thought manifests as the word,
The word manifests as the deed,
The deed develops into a habit,
And habit hardens in character,

So watch the thought and it’s ways with care,
And let it spring from love,
Born out of concern for all beings…

As the shadow follows the body,
As we think so we become.

—Buddha, The Dhammapada



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Desus and Mero, Beyoncé, or the Marine Corps Marching Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Random quote of the day:

“I believe that art puts down its roots into the deepest hiding places of our nature and that its action is akin to the action of certain delving plants, comfrey for instance, whose roots can penetrate far into the subsoil and unlock nutrients that would otherwise lie out of reach of shallower bedding plants.”

—Jeanette Winterson, “Writer, Reader, Words,” Art Objects: Essays on Ecstasy and Effrontery



Disclaimer: The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Key and Peele, Celine Dion, or Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

I am an American, which is a complex thing. I know how some of us act in the world, and sometimes that makes me cringe in shame. I want to tell the world, “We’re not all like that.” But that’s a complex thing, too, because sometimes, in some moments, there is something in the American psyche which makes many of us go from 1 to 60 on the boorish scale in less than a second. Where does that American rage and boorishness come from? It’s entitlement, of course. I think it’s mostly a white middle to upper class thing. But sometimes even that’s a complex thing, an exercise in finger-pointing that no one, it seems, is completely immune to.

Some of us try hard not to be like that. I’m fortunate that I came from the lower classes, didn’t grow up thinking the world and everything in it was mine by right. Doesn’t mean I don’t snap sometimes and go into boorish mode. I’m human. And I’m American. And I’m white. But I’m always deeply ashamed and apologetic afterwards, so I try really hard not to go there—so I can live more comfortably with myself if nothing else.

I’ve been thinking about my last trip to England, in 2004. I’d been aware for some time how badly some of us acted overseas. So much so that if anyone asked if I was American, I would sometimes lie and say I was Canadian. It’s possible some rare Canadians act boorishly overseas, but I think it’s got to be much, much rarer than with Americans.

On that 2004 trip, there were three of us middle-aged ladies traveling together, and inevitably, inevitably whenever we overheard someone whining or complaining or acting childish in general, that person had an American accent. We decided we would go out of our way to be the polar opposite in every dealing we had with locals. This was about a year after the bombing of Baghdad and Bush’s invasion of Iraq, so Americans were even more unpopular at the time. Most people were decent to us, especially when we poured on the charm offensive, or when we voiced our own deep opposition to what Bush had done, but some were barely polite.

As I pondered all this, it occurred to me that Donald Trump is the Ugly American Made Flesh. He is the ultimate of loud-mouthed, ill-informed, corrupt entitlement boors. He is all American sins made manifest, a tulpa created from the worst instincts of the worst aspects of the American psyche, a thought-form embodying the American shadow. We made this tulpa—even those of us who would rather pretend to be Canadian. We allowed him to be elected, even those of us who voted for someone else. The 2016 election was the very embodiment of American arrogance and rage. How could we expect to have better candidates when we were all pulling so hard against each other? When we were all sunk so deep in our own arrogance that screamed, “My way or no way at all”?

Donald Trump isn’t just the worst president in American history, he is a reckoning for the American psyche, a lesson I believe we have failed to learn. Oh yes, he may (or may not) be on the ropes now, and good people are working hard to block him and bring him down, but have we truly learned anything from the last terrible years? I can’t say that I see it. Greed and arrogance and entitlement and “my way or no way” still abound. Americans have never been particularly good at self-knowledge, deep examination of our own souls, or acknowledging and working with the shadow. We’re still in denial. I fear we have learned nothing.

The ugly American lives on.