I agree in what I've read, what we hear from the experiences of others.  A hell is what our minds take us to if we have cultivated negative thoughts and actions.  It is, I believe based on our beliefs and subsequent actions. 

There would be many inconsistencies if hell were a single place that all who entered were condemned to for eternity.  The noble savage of the past, who did not know of God is but one example to the christian notion of hell. 

If freedom of will and choice is a key part of our existence, why would it only be key in the physical world?  It would serve no other purpose...

I believe God is synonomous with Pure Unconditional Love and All There Is. But I'll write in the Christian paradigm, more or less, problably less!

Hell is called eternal because God is eternal and this concept is believed to have come from God. Since eternal is an attribute of God, and Hell is His creation, or at least an attribute of His creation, then Hell is eternal by nature, it also not being an attribute of physical reality and its limitations.

Hell, being the condition one is in when one has distanced him or herself from God, will always exist as long as there is a choice not be close to God. Since it will, from our physical viewpoint, take an eternity for every human (and others) to evolve beyond the duality of God/Hell, then hell is/will be eternal according to our understanding in physical reality.

Our physical minds cannot grasp the length of time it will take for all of us to evolve, so the word eternal seems appropriate.

What is unclear in English translations of the New Testament is that in the Greek (Koine) used in the writing of the books of the NT, hell is described analogously as a burning garbage dump, not a literal place.

I don't like how Christians use hell as a fear tool to keep people in line. While it can describe the miserable condition of someone who is way out of touch with PUL, it isn't a state of permanent condemnation unless the individual concerned makes it that way (see article on Max's Hell on this website).

The further away from PUL we are, the more miserable we become. Is that a scary thought? Yes, it is. Beyond that, though, is brainwashing and mind control. By scaring people into believing that they will suffer endless torment for sin, the Churches do the very thing they profess to be teaching against: causing people to distance themselves from PUL/God/All There Is by introducing an inappropriate level of fear, which we know cannot coexist in the same place at the same time as Love.

God = Love (PUL)

Hell = no PUL/God

Fear is in opposition to Love. Hell is no Love. Fear = Hell.

Rob

Hi Rob-
Point well taken.  I recall an entity who was afraid to stop haunting someone because of fear that it would be sent to hell, as had been predicted by a local minister. I told it that there was no hell, and that God was infinitely loving - just go look in the Light. In that case the entity did and was immediately gone.

However, if you had been threatened to be destroyed by some exorcist whose vocabulary stopped at Hell, Satan, Hatred and Sin and never got quite as far as Love, then I can imagine how horriffic that might be. I get the feeling that a lot of scared spooks are still out there, trying to recover from Conventional Christian rhetoric.

dave

Berserk:

Because I visit the internet while at work, I have limited time to visit it. Therefore, I have a limited time to read all of everybody's posts. Therefore, I get a partial picture of what people believe.

It warms my heart to see that you believe the below.

Because I still see things through the filters of my ego based mind, rather than God's mind, I'm not certain, but my feeling is that God has set things up so all souls eventually come back to him. The fact of how all of us are actually divine and come from God, is one of the factors that would play a key role.

Some people might say that because of free will it is possible for beings to get completely lost.  My feeling is that there are certain limitations when it comes to free will. For example, anybody who opens his or herself to unconditional love, has no choice but to be moved by it. On a similar note, it may be that each soul has no choice but to eventually answer the divine calling that comes from within.

Conversley, if a spirit got stuck eternally in its own darkness, could you really call that free will? A mind caught up in its own perversions is hardly free.

My feeling is that the only way a soul can really be free is when they follow God's will, because any other kind of will is just limited, ego based, psychological conditioning.

If some souls do get stuck in their darkness to an extent where they can never get out of it, then I guess ending their existence would be the best thing to do. Darkness without hope isn't worth living through.

Quote:

Rob Roy:

I agree with what you wrote about love and fear. If you want to come closer to Christ consciousness, you'll do so by allowing love in your life, rather than fear. Fear can only get in the way.

As opposed to telling a person to fear God, fear Satan, it would be much better to tell them to love God and his children so much, that something negative could never effect them.