Do you know what hell is? People seem most often to believe that hell consists of some form of physical pain being inflicted on the earthly body. Perhaps physical pain is the worst kind, or even only kind of pain that many people can imagine. However, most people who might believe in hell or an afterlife will also believe that the body dies and that it is the non-physical elements of people that live on in the afterlife. What are our non-physical elements? Our non-physical elements comprise, at the least, what is in our hearts and minds – what you feel, what you think, what you desire – from these stem all of our actions and words, our behavior and the reasons for how we treat others, the acts we choose to engage in in our lives and so on.

What do you love? What emotions do you cling to? Why? What emotions do you hate and want to flee from? Do you spend more time in ill-will, hating, disliking, criticizing, judging, psychologically or emotionally breaking down or destroying yourself or others than you spend in good will, loving, liking, complimenting, accepting, psychologically and emotionally building up or nurturing yourself and others? Now consider this; just imagine that once you die, you will be stuck for eternity in that ill-will or good will and in those negative or positive emotions that you carry inside you towards yourself and others…would you try to change yourself before you die?

Throughout my 20’s, I told myself, hell is here on earth and I am living in it – my emotional experiences were my agony and I strove in desperation to escape my agony. The emotions we choose to foster inside ourselves can be of heaven or of hell, and they can bring the agony of purgatory or the joy of heaven.

I had the following dream during a week when I was in the midst of what was the single-most horrible and traumatizing ordeal of my life to that point in time. Believe as you wish, but for me, this dream showed me without the slightest doubt a true and accurate dimension of hell and the emotions that lead one there:

Evil woman spirit
6 August, 2002 7:31 Tues.

Some hours ago I had a horrifying “dream.” It was more than a dream though; its emotions bore a depth that was intense with reality, more intense and profound, more penetrating, in fact, than emotions I experience in people in reality. It’s the worst, scariest dream I’ve had since the one I had right before Bitsy [my pet] died. Elements of it were too real and felt far too deliberate to merely have been a fabrication of my mind.

I was in the large spacious room of a new house, light with windows, happily occupying my mind contemplating what sort of rug to put in it. Maybe it happened as I was thinking to myself…I’m not sure—but I felt an evil woman present, and I mean once trouble started, I could hear and even more FEEL her, not see her. One second I’m blissfully contemplating interior decorations in a silver-colored room, the next second I am being sucked under the floor and feeling this evil woman. She was evil to the core and I felt a blood-thirsty hatred that she had for me inside her. THIS and the aggressiveness with which she was trying to bring me down to her hell and destroy me were the things that made this feel more real—usually dreams and those in them are more passive. This woman was actively, deliberately and passionately trying to destroy me, and she had great power at her disposal to do so and she was exerting it all on me.

I found myself, like 2-3 meters under the floor, like in some other world, like hell, and this woman was pulling, TRYING to pull me deeper and deeper. The hell were the emotions—horrifying emotions, maybe they were hers—I couldn’t bear them and I felt her pulling me in deeper, so in desperation and horror I immediately began saying out loud “GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD” and I said GOD louder and louder, focusing on God in my mind, maybe I was shouting by the end GOD GOD GOD. And I felt I was pulled up out of that hell and stood in the room again in shock and, I think, very angry at that woman. I left the room to a different part of the house to try to get away from her. But I felt her beginning to try to suck me back into her dimension of hell again and again. This time, also in anger at her, I began shouting GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD GOD. Somewhere in me I was worried neighbors or someone else might hear me. Again, also with my more aggressive shouting, she went away and I woke up, just barely. And, drifting off back to sleep, I could still feel her presence in my “dream-mind,” so I woke myself up as best I could and asked God to please don’t let me have anymore bad dreams tonight. And so I didn’t.

But I felt there was more to that dream than just being a dream, so before I began writing in here, I asked God to please protect me from that woman and all others like her. This dream scared the hell out of me. The horror and depth of the emotions in it defy description. I believe they were hers, and I felt that, in addition to being directed towards me, she lived in them. They are feelings I don’t wish to revisit, and I may not even be capable of revisiting them in order to even attempt to put them into descriptive words that you can feel. There are words though, they just don’t cause you to enter into the profound and extraordinary hell of what they really feel like: HATRED, FURY, ANGER, VENGENCE, BLOOD-LUST…this woman had some kind of power—she used it. She was power-hungry, blood-thirsty, murderous.

I am shy. I don’t talk a lot in the company of people and I don’t normally stand up for myself in public situations and I let people treat me as their conscience will allow. Many people don’t understand shyness in general, or why I am quiet and I have constantly been told I should change, which I do not like. Today I was able to articulate one cause for my shyness:

I was waiting at the bus stop on my way to visit someone. As the bus was approaching the bus stop, it appeared that the bus driver was not going to stop to pick me up, although it was obvious I was standing there waiting for her bus. Sometimes the bus drivers here do that, giving you the feeling that they don’t want to pick you up and that you are burdening them by “making” them pick you up. I think if you would not stick out your hand to flag them down, they would drive right past you – in fact, on a rare occasion, they have been known to drive right past you even when you try to flag them down.

Since the bus driver today did not want to pick me up, I realized she must be in a foul mood. The feeling I got from her lingered in me after I got on the bus. As the bus approached the stop I was going to get off at, I pushed the button which lets the driver know I wanted to get off there, however, as it was, someone had already pushed the button. I personally don’t normally make this mistake, but it is nonetheless a regular occurrence that someone may push the button after it has already been pushed – normally nobody notices or cares. However, this bus driver not only noticed, she scolded me. She just spoke out loud to me in a stern, annoyed tone telling me that if the button has already been pushed, I don’t have to push it again. Inside of me I was stung once again by the cold harsh feeling of living in this country.

As I got off the bus, I felt so bad. I thought to myself, “What did she get out of that? Did it make her feel better? Did trying to make me feel bad make her feel better?” After getting off the bus, I began walking. Having completely forgotten about where I was going and what I was doing there, in my mind I began trying to understand the usefulness in her behavior and I suddenly became aware of how feelings linger in me after I have an interaction with a person. This is one reason why I am shy and I don’t like to interact with people, if it can be avoided.

I realize that it is incidents like this that bring much of the emotional stress I experience to my daily life. The feelings from interactions I have with people linger in me and I ponder the incident long after it has occurred. I ponder my part in it, I ponder the other person’s behavior and I ponder their words, I ponder the feelings I felt from them – and I ponder these things because their feelings linger in me, like a bitter aftertaste on the tongue. This is why I don’t like to leave home or be among people. This is why I prefer my solitude and I keep myself safe from people in my home.

*Finland-280505

One evening I sat in my room reflecting on life. As I replayed events and experiences in my mind, it appeared to me as if I had suffered inordinately in my life, either as a direct or indirect consequence of my concern and sensitivity for others, of my honesty and the respect and the consideration with which I treat others, in a nutshell, for my commitment to my own integrity and to a strong moral conscience and sensitivity to others’ feelings. It followed from these thoughts that I began to feel angry as I pondered the individuals who had wronged me and caused me such suffering, those who have little integrity or have become deaf to the soft-spoken voice of their conscience. “How grossly unfair this world is,” I thought. Those individuals were clearly no worse off for their foul behavior, in fact, overall, they were better off than I was. What’s to keep anyone from becoming consumed with his or her own selfishness and indulging in lies and deceit themselves to manage better in this world??

The reality goes against everything I have ever heard in Christianity, where it is the good and moral who prosper, and, in the past when I would fall into this train of thought, I would take issue with God, who I perceived to be punishing “the good” and prospering “the bad” and just overall discouraging everything good that can be expressed in human behavior. This time, however, I turned to my angels and asked “What do you say to the one who has a strong conscience, a virtuous and fair heart, living and relating with others from a basis of noble principles and integrity, but who finds him or herself constantly suffering or falling prey in life to others who are morally bankrupt, unscrupulous or without integrity. What do you say to the one who, no matter what is done to him (or her), he has not the heart to be as all others who wrong him, forsaking his integrity and principles in order to facilitate and ease life in this world?”

And my angels responded without hesitation:

That you do right by others and by your conscience does not mean you will prosper or gain favor with others. Therefore do right, not for gain or to be treated better, only do right because it is good and right, and make that your core and reason.

You are responsible for yourself and for your own actions, regardless of what others do, and you alone shall reap their consequences when the day comes. Do right by others and retain your clean conscience and peace of mind. Do right for right’s sake, not to gain favor or to avoid suffering. Only this is a commitment to what is good.

Thou art indeed just, Lord, if I contend
With Thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners’ ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavour end?

Wert thou my enemy, O thou my friend,
How wouldst thou worse, I wonder, than thou dost
Defeat, thwart me? Oh, the sots and thralls of lust
Do in spare hours more thrive than I that spend,
Sir, life upon thy cause. See, banks and brakes
Now leavèd how thick! lacèd they are again
With fretty chervil, look, and fresh wind shakes
Them; birds build – but not I build; no, but strain,
Time’s eunuch, and not breed one work that wakes.
Mine, O thou lord of life, send my roots rain.

- Gerard Manley Hopkins