“Heaven and Hell” – Article by Chris Davies
Heaven and Hell. Such a strong duality permeates our language, culture, and beliefs about the world. These notions are so rooted in time and space that we think of them as Other, outside of our world of possibilities.
But we have no further to go to Heaven than this moment. We need not wait any longer to dwell in the unconscious depths of Hell. We are always only in this moment. If life appeals to you at the moment, Heaven abounds. And if the current moment plainly sucks, we are in Hell.
Like the rays of sunshine, which become dilapidated along the ominous ripples of water’s surface, our presence, in reality, is distorted among duality, divisiveness, and a general not-being-here-ness. These feelings paradoxically arise out of the development of the self as separate.
In fact, in the separation, in the development of I, me, my reality, we take ourselves out of it all and become lost from the present moment. We look back on the past with revelry or distaste, imagining if things could have gone differently or if something could just go back to the way it was. The future is a fantastic time of dread and adventures, of conquering persistent procrastination and roiling in the guilt of what’s to come.
But the past and future, where we come and go, are finite. They, by definition, fade away to nothingness. That nothingness is this present moment, from which the alpha arises in ouroboros as the waxing omega. All is emptiness. Emptiness is this moment.
We can escape this moment very easily. It’s unconscious and ubiquitous. We sail along sinusoidal paths, oscillating between Heaven and Hell, happiness and suffering. Because this moment is so vast and all-encompassing, we forget it’s there in the first place. Like fish, we live and breathe in this moment, the emptiness permeating every part of us. And like fish, we swim upandown, upandown, looking for the water.
The water is here, in this moment. There is no escaping it; it is our home. An afterlife may exist. Our souls could pass through subtler and subtler stages of growth beyond all comprehension, going to dark depths and sublimating heights. But these are still stories we tell ourselves, as much as the stories we tell of separation from reality.
Regardless of what happens before or after we supposedly die, this moment as infinity washes through every time and place. Through normal and paranormal realms, physical and metaphysical worlds, micro and macroscopic universes, there is only Now. The All. Heaven and Hell may undoubtedly exist, but only as our own creations.
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