Hell is Praying and Heaven is Bullshitting. Every now and then, one finds oneself in a cosmic struggle between two truths that have a hard time being seen at once. I've been in one of those for a few years, and thought I would try to describe what I see from my current position.
A story to help illustrate it: I was talking with a good friend of mine a few years ago, and he described a feeling that he was stuck in a pit, trying to get out, and asking others for help, and kept getting back this message to the effect of "you're doing this to yourself. we can't help you until you decide to stop doing it to yourself." There was a sense that he was unworthy of even being considered for help without somehow changing first.
And I said: yeah. I see you in the pit. And on behalf of the universe, *we are doing what we can* to help you out of the pit, without you needing to fix yourself first. You are not unworthy. And also, our capacity is very limited right now—including that some people themselves are still confused about all this. And so to the extent that you CAN help yourself out of your pits, even a little, that helps bridge the gap and helps us help you. But if we knew how, we would meet you fully, exactly where you are, without demanding anything.
This view of mine was hard-won, having spent years struggling with a similar issue only to suddenly have this insight where I GOT that the kosmos contained a force that fully wanted to meet me where I was at, and I could tell that it did because *I was a participant in that force*—I could feel its will flow through me, in my desire to meet others where they were at. (And sometimes parts of me are others to other parts of me.).
And yet, over the years, both before and after this insight, I have tasted the other side of it. I've gotten glimmers of the truth in C.S. Lewis's “the doors of hell are locked on the inside.” I've felt strain and struggle suddenly shift into eternal boundless perfection—perfection that, when I look in the rearview mirror, was there the whole time, through the struggle. I've lost count of how many times I've arrived in such a place. And there was truth to “nobody else could do it for me”, truth that it involved letting go of my grievances without trying to sort them all out first, and truth that that loving presence was always there holding me and supporting me and rooting for me.
There's truth to this, but when we go back and connect it to my friends’ story: what the fuck? Something has gotten confused. You can *obviously* be helped, in many ways, some of which have never been conceived of by anybody ever. Even if you only think that conveying the message of the need for someone to choose their way out can help, and nothing material can... if the message is not getting through clearly, there are literally infinite possible ways to rephrase it or to convey it through not just word but example or gesture. I have definitely been helped, and I have no reason to think that the amount that I've been helped is somehow the perfect maximum theoretically possible (even if it was as much as was possible at the time).
A stance that says "there is nothing I can do to help you with your suffering", no matter how noble and righteous and it presents itself, is its own hell. It’s a stance of victimhood. And it’s bullshit. It’s failing to own your own limitations: *I* have run out of ideas, or patience to keep talking with you. *I* cannot maintain my own groundedness while meeting you in your pit. *I* do not have a rope long enough to reach you, but I would if I could. And I can’t promise I’ll be back with a longer rope, but I sure hope someone can.
And I feel like many times I have been offered the choice to step out of the hell of overt grievance and into this other more subtle hell, that leaves me feeling forever alienated in relation to people I see as choosing to recreate their grievance hells. Hell, sometimes I’ve even tried to take the option, but it didn’t stick for me.
Hell’s Prayer—“help me, show me I am worthy without me having to change”—kept coming back and demanding an answer. “It always does, and is never satisfied,” Heaven’s Bullshit will warn you. And there’s wisdom there. And yet. There’s also a skill issue. I can tell that there is a more satisfying answer to Hell’s Prayer than that, and I am not giving up on finding it. One that still doesn't require letting Hell hold you hostage. There is a better Heaven, without this bullshit.
As you can see: I have found my way to a stance that can at least hold that there is wisdom in both of these views, even if I can’t integrate them. The tension exists internally to me. As you can also see: I tend to find myself playing out the pole of Hell’s Prayer, in thinking about the topic or in relating to others.
This sucks! It sucks to find myself bound to taking a stand for “no, I will not let go of this, I will simply complain until the day I die or the day someone says ‘yes, your complaint is valid’ and manages to say it so clearly and fully and honestly and tangibly... that I can put that complaint to rest.” But the only other option I see from here is to adopt Heaven’s Bullshit, and… well, for me that isn’t even really an option at this point.
It would be nice to integrate this tension internally, to sort it all out in myself and be able to meet the Bright People of Heaven and rather than complain and demand they change in order to drag me out of my pit, to calmly and patiently offer “it seems like you’re confused here, and you’re suffering unnecessarily because of it”. But I fear that if I did, they would say “see, you sorted this out yourself, as I always told you you had to” and would only get the message to persist in their confusion.
And yet. Their pits may be comfier than mine, but I will not give up in my search for suitable ladders. I will rest though, on the path.
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