Heaven and Hell

This is a strange post for me because I do not believe in organized religion, and while I want to believe that there was a Christ, I do not believe a great deal of what I've read in any bible. I was raised Catholic and went to Catholic school for several years, so I am familiar with the general premise of the religion. I don't hold religion against anyone, but I do not feel the personal need to believe in order to be "saved".

So then, how can I say without a single speck of hesitation or doubt whatsoever that I believe heaven and hell exist? Because...I have experienced both firsthand and these experiences are more real to me than the hands with which I type these words. It is more concretely inbeded in my psyche than 99.9% of the experiences I've ever had. I am not asking anyone else to believe. I am not hoping to persuade anyone. I am not seeking approval. I am simply sharing my experience. I also can not quantify it. I do not know how it works, or why it is so. This is where my own personal faith comes in. I still believe re-incarnation is a possibility. I believe that God performs what we call "miracles" every moment of every day. That we see them as "miracles" is only because our perspective is very narrow. God knows. One day I will know again and with that I am satisfied.

Heaven:
I was 16 years old. I had had a 2 hour phone call right before bed with my best friend Paul over religion and all things existential. That night while I dreamt I experienced Heaven. It was a reddish hue expanse that was infinite...limitless. In it I felt pure bliss, pure happiness, complete acceptance and absolute love. There was no me in this experience. There was just a never-ending sense of oneness and completeness. There was no beginning, no end, no place or non place, no here, or there. Just a sense of being.

I woke up from this dream, like out of the thickest fog. 100 times more powerful than any anesthesia or drug. I didn't know who I was, what I was, where I was, what things themselves where. Every single aspect of reality was 100% new to me. I very, very slowly started to acclimate myself. I remember as I stepped into the shower to start my day I cried in devastating agony. I remember throwing the shampoo on the tub floor in a fit of absolute rage. I was so angry to be alive.

I've tried many times to duplicate that feeling, to feel that same connectedness. Meditation, drugs, true love, the birth of my children, everything, and nothing on earth, no experience has ever been close to what I've felt...except maybe one kind-of (to be discussed later).

Hell:
I was about 20 years old. Nothing memorable or noteworthy happened that night before. In a dream that night I was in a very dark cavernous place. I could sense what felt like a male presence laughing or mocking me. The presence was enjoying my misery. I have no specific sense of time or space, but I did know myself. I was there as I am here now and while nothing was psychically happening to me, every conceivable wrong was being cursed upon me. Every fear, anxiety, every insecurity and secret angst was being realized. My deepest pains, sorrows, regrets, every hurt, every suffering was being brought out and made to be again... and all at once. Panic does not even begin to explain my reaction. I was horrified beyond words and thoughts, because I knew without a shadow of doubt that this was never to end. This thing was going to keep torturing me and nothing and no one was going to stop it. Somehow I screamed in real life and woke Rob (my boyfriend) and myself up. My entire body jumped across the bed to him, to his arms and I was never so glad to be alive. I had never felt so much evil and so broken, helpless and hopeless as I had been then. I struggled to catch my breath and could barely explain to him as I sobbed uncontrollably what had happened.

I've since had many experiences of hopelessness. I've fought and still fight my fair share of demons (within myself) and have experienced many dark times. But no one and nothing has come close to the sheer terror of this experience. This entity was the exact polar opposite of the previous one, more or less.

The thing that has always stuck me as odd is that in "heaven" I had no sense of male or female, no he, she, they, them, me, nothing. Where in "hell" there was a distinct separateness and there was the feeling of a very specific entity, which felt masculine, but it is hard to say not having seen anyone or anything. It's still very hard to put into concrete words these experiences, especially because they are still so personal and real to me. It's taken me over 20 years to open up and accept these experiences as a distinct part of my own reality. I can't say I have a real sense of what to do with them though... as of yet.