THE THREE LEVELS OF PERSONAL HELL
Spiraling endlessly through a vast, opaque vicinity teetering between the balance of reality and the unconscious mind, one finds itself falling. The soul bound body travels from absolute perceptibility towards the unknown. Actuality is discounted and the pursuit of eternity is found unwillingly. The enduring descent ceases and one’s surroundings is taken into account. Deep, profound darkness engrosses one’s sight, eerie silence consumes one’s hearing, and shivers are sent up and down one’s spine. The new setting is distant, emotionless, and dismal. When one looses spirit, love, or contact with the world this new scene of despair becomes home, one’s personal hell. Rejection, hate, and hopelessness are all catalyst for this journey to the inferno. Escape is wearisome and often painful, but the expedition through one’s self is necessary. As one tears away from society and conscious realism, down through the depths of hell they trek.
It is evident throughout any society or culture that acceptance is quintessential to a healthy self. To belong as a human in any medium is to say one has worth, importance, or unique quality. Throughout this pursuit rejection looms. The failed attempt to display one’s value incites the first stage of personal hell. One feels abandoned and wisps down the indistinct tunnel leading towards hell.
The darkness dematerializes and light floods the space. People occupy this stage hell, people one is familiar with, cares for, and loves. Life ensues and the compatibility between hell’s occupants is apparent. Laughter is heard, conversation commences, and visible affection is unmistakably noticeable. One travels this new world excited and filled with hope only to be crushed by rejection once again. None of the occupants converse with or acknowledge one’s presence. Disheartened and cast down, one is condemned to aimless wanderings. Life continues, filled with joy and love, but one is incapable of joining. Escape is bleak, but possible. Acceptance is the only counter to rejection and until one is able to accept some rejection and move on, they are doomed to a life of vagrancy. The real victor receives rejection, but still believes in one’s self worth and individuality.
Traveling deeper still into one’s psyche a darker more painful level of hell may be found. Hatred is an incendiary that sometimes engulfs one’s mind. It acts like poison, infecting each part of one’s self. One is consumed by it, possessing one’s thoughts, actions, and reactions. Hatred is the most dangerous stimulus for it causes deliberate harm and sorrow. Once hate becomes an obsession and begins to govern one’s actions, hell’s gates reopen.
Thrust back down the lightless tunnel, one feels as if the aura has changed. The surroundings are threatening as flames dance up and down the walls. An uncomfortable heat is emitted from the ground and shrieks of pain become audible. One walks further down the tunnel and each sense is overwhelmed by afflictive means. The tunnel ends and reveals an immense underground venue. Once again, the area is populated by familiar friends and family, but this level of hell exploits its inhabitants. The people are being brutally abused, both physically and emotionally all in accordance to treatment administered by oneself. Each malicious thought or action fueled by hate, designated for those people who contested with oneself, were now being preformed on the people one loves. Overcome with misery, one’s emotional state is off balance. The hate was promised to opposing adversaries, not loved ones. To survive this level of hell one must acquit all persons, learn to forgive, and dissolve all grudges. One must notice the pain of his loved ones in order to feel the pain one’s hate caused. Those who envision the consequences of one’s actions and act to avoid all negative connotations will victoriously survive the inferno.
The final level of personal hell brings us beyond physicalness, beyond senses, and beyond any human interaction. Hopelessness seeps through one’s outer being and into the shallow expanse of a damaged soul. The first two levels of personal hell encompass this disconnected development. Rejection ignites the fiery flames of hell, hatred adds fuel to the inferno, while hopelessness lies among the soul’s burnt ashes. The first two levels will damage parts of the human psyche and humble oneself, while hopelessness exhibits each personal fault, exemplifies it, then projects it slowly until the soul is completely dismantled. Failure works as a catalyst for one’s voyage into personal hell. As one sets forth, with the potential to succeed, but unwillingly collapses under the weight of loss, frustration assumes control. With frustration comes the acceptance of failure and the ideology of inadequacy. The deeper this belief grows, the stronger the roots will become, resulting in the third level of personal hell.
Falling past the sounds of laughter and conversation, past the flames of antagonizing antipathy, one finds its new surrounding distant. The ground is cold and uncomfortably firm. There is complete darkness, except for a dim light beaming on oneself. The room is filled with cobwebs, broken pieces of furniture, scattered newspapers headlining each shattered dream. The dim light follows one self, as to perpetually exemplify and keep one’s failures in light. Liberation from this level of personal hell seems unattainable. One must forget the past, seek improved progress, change, and hope for a more desirable future. To find success scaling this arduous mountain, one must hope beyond hope that freedom is possible. Once hope is attained hell’s grip will be triumphantly overpowered.
It is sometimes effortless to fall victim to one’s personal hell. With our culture’s pressure to personify perfection each day, failure can menacingly overshadow any success. The true testament to one’s life does not end with the admittance to hell, but how one’s mind conquered the evil and rectified the circumstances. Mahatma Gandhi once said, “You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.” This quote explains the immense power the human mind possesses. Although, sin, pain, violence, evil, rejection, hatred, and hopelessness run rampant in the world today, our minds retain the ability to vanquish all adversity.
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