Hell is Real
Scholars, philosophers, and theologians enjoy debating the existence of Hell.
Religious people promote the idea. They believe it has utility for controlling people’s bad behavior.
People hurt each other for selfish reasons because they believe they can get away with it.
Most religions and cultures invent a Hell as a catch-all insurance policy against getting-away-with-it while you were alive, hoping perhaps this will motivate a few people to “be good” to avoid eternal damnation.
As a concept, it’s become so burdened by legalese, endless, pointless debates on dogma, and philosophical mental masturbation that it no longer has enough emotional impact to scare people straight, assuming it ever did.
But you don’t need to be religious to see that Hell exists, right now, today.
Have you ever watched true crime dramas?
Perhaps you’ve read about the Manson murders in Helter Skelter?
Manifestations of Hell abound. We see it in our nightly news.
Does anyone think the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are living in Paradise?
Perhaps some astute commenter can share their victim narrative that justifies atrocities like that. It would reveal exactly how and why evil manifests.
Wherever you see evil, Hell is manifest for the victims.
Of course, this doesn’t fit our religious sensibilities about hell; mostly, we see hapless victims being crushed under the jackboot of avarice, invisibly due to apathy and stone-cold indifference.
In many ways, that makes it worse. The evil that men do isn’t confined to those who deserve it.
Evil Lurks Inside Each of Us
When most people observe manifest evil in the world, they solace themselves with the delusion that says:
I would never do that.
It’s a comforting lie.
One that allows us to keep our self-image of a good person, Saintly even, for those with delusions of righteousness.
I’ve peered into the evil in my own heart.
I looked at my life circumstances and asked myself, “How bad could bad get?”
The answer is below.
Before you pat yourself on the back and think you are better than me, or that you are incapable of such terrible thoughts, please consider this:
YOU ARE LYING TO YOURSELF!
If you don’t face the evil in your own heart, you will never be a force for good in the world.
Trigger Alert
Here is where everything gets difficult.
Really difficult.
What you are about to read will tear at your heart.
Brace yourself for pain, evil, the darkest of Dark.
Absorb this next section with an open heart, and you earn an A+ in Compassion.
You’ve been trigger warned.
1 in 10,000
My son is diagnosed with autism.
I once sat in an Individualized Education Program meeting where I was given a report detailing my son’s cognitive ability.
It was measured as less than the <0.01% percentile.
Let that sink in.
If you are a parent with aspirations for your child, you should feel that one easily.
I felt the deepest, darkest black hole in the entire universe consume my soul in that moment.
There was little pleasure in it.
In fact, I recall no pleasure at all.
Have you ever experienced 100% pain in every fiber of your Being?
It sucks.
Hard.
My son and I were the test subject for a cruel joke of an evil demon.
I was pissed off, and I wanted to do something about this mistake.
The Evil Demon
I chose to enter the black hole to confront the Evil Demon:
WHY THE FUCK DID YOU SEND ME A FUCKED-UP KID LIKE THAT?
I was decidedly unhappy.
The demon embraced his experiment with enthusiasm.
He felt my Qi transfer to him, sucking my life force for his consumption, like an emotional parasite, but worse.
Because he felt my presence an unexpected bonus, he told me what he did, believing it would be more painful that way — tastier, nourishing for him, but never fulfilling; that’s the demon’s paradox.
The evil of his intentions absorbed my anger and strengthened it. He was feeding on me.
Experiments to Maximize Suffering
He said,
“I created two Beings. I took the allocation of smarts for both of you, and for the lulz, I gave you all of it and left none for him.
Both conditions are rife with suffering, so both lives should generate enormous pain and rejection of life itself.
You will become a prideful and arrogant prick, in case you didn’t already notice that, and he will be toxically shamed believing his life isn’t worth living at all.
I have high hopes that you will turn completely evil.
I knew you would completely surrender life to me in a firestorm of anger and hate, and your Qi would feed me.
How do you feel about that?”
I was triggered.
The angry tirade of expletives from my anger and hatred burst forth, raging with intense searing fire.
That motherfucker was going to die, and I was going to kill him.
I was going to crush his soul — make him pay for doing this to ME.
I felt my Selfish Desire rise up, infused with heat and hate, and flood my Qi with power.
I took action.
I directed this fury toward him in a ferocious energy beam that would have melted an ice giant.
He absorbed my initial volley and laughed.
The Choice
He said,
That’s not good enough. I want more. Let me give you a choice.
I would prefer you live to continue to torturing yourself and your son.
You probably didn’t realize this, but when he looks at you, hoping to feel love, connection and warmth, instead he sees contempt in your eyes, it sends him the message he’s broken, defective, a complete reject unworthy of Life.
The world would be better off if he were gone.
It’s toxic shame, the worst, most painful sense of personal disgust imaginable.
He feels lower than low when you do that, and you do it hundreds of times a day.
Every day.
Day in, day out.
Torture, and toxic, searing pain.
I love it!
I absorb that pain, revel in it. It’s bliss, on steroids. And what’s better, the more you do it, the stronger I get, and the pain gets worse and worse.
The Power and the Glory are Mine!!!
Ahhh. That felt wonderful, just thinking about it, but I said I would offer you a choice, so here it is:
If you want, I can destroy your son, make it like he was never born. I can extinguish him from existence if you like. I can even remove the memories so it never even happened.
It would end your pain. That’s what you want, right?
That’s why you’re here!
With him gone, you won’t have anything to disturb your mind.
You will be able to leave this place in peace and have the life you were previously entitled to — you know, 2.4 kids and all.
What is your choice?
I thought about that.
In my angry state, it wasn’t a difficult choice.
Is my personal happiness more important than my son’s life?
I chose.
It was the right choice for ME.
I said, “Fuck yeah, take away this pain. Erase his defective ass and hit the fucking reset button.”
The demon dutifully complied, and my son, and everything he represents was gone.
The demon paused, and looked at me, and asked, “How do you feel?”
I checked my feelings and noted, “Good. Relieved, my burden is gone. Thank you.”
He said,
Congratulations! You just committed cold-blooded murder!
And you chose it!
You wanted him to die — and you got your wish.
Your heart is twisted with Selfish Desire, and you harnessed it to commit an egregious, unforgivable act.
You‘ve proven you’re an able apprentice.
I said, “Why can I still remember? You said you would erase the memories.”
He replied, “I erased everyone else’s memory of him, so he has no existence outside of your mind.
But I can’t remove the heart stain of Your Choices entirely, so you must live with it.”
I said, “If I’d known that was the deal, I wouldn’t have made that choice.”
He laughed,
You can’t lie to me. You would have made the same choice either way.
You’re just upset that your desires weren’t satiated.
And why would you trust a demon anyway?
Pray I don’t alter the deal further.
Feeling the betrayal, I exploded again.
This time, he was going down!
My adrenals opened, and every fiber of my being rose up for one final assault.
One decisive battle.
I sustained this hatred, beaming it intensely at him, channeling all my frustrations and waves of anger until it reached a fever pitch, and I could no longer do battle.
My Qi ran out.
He won.
He glowed with a red aura while he absorbed my Qi, bathing in it, reveling in the power I surrendered to him.
As I lay there spent, in crushed defeat, I thought, perhaps, it was over.
And end to suffering.
But no.
Then he gives me one more fact to chew on:
I’m trapped in Saṃsāra.
I need to go back and do it all over again in my next life.
And the next one, and the next one.
Endlessly.
Now, my failure was complete.
Hell is Inside, not Outside
When my heart felt the Evil Demon, I sensed his hotline to Hell.
In that moment, I realized Hell need not be a physical location.
True Hell — the worst place to exist — lies buried in the deepest region of the human heart, and you need not wait for death to experience it.
Cruelty of the Demon
Cruelty is an advanced achievement on the Dark path, synthesizing indifference (absence of love) and malice (evil intention).
I find the feeling so painful, so toxic, I know it only to know it; I never linger there.
I hope you don’t see it in your heart.
Evil lurks in the shadows.
Scrolls of the Dark Arts for Scholars
Dark Arts Instruction Manuals:
One: The Prince, by Niccolò Machiavelli. Amoral statecraft.
Two: The Art of War, by Sun Tzu, Statecraft and organized violence.
Three: The 48 Laws of Power, by Robert Greene, who probably thought this was good literature.
Read them for knowledge, not instruction.
Unless you read them as a “What-Not-to-Do-Manual.” Then, they become virtuous.
Funny how that works.
I don’t want to leave you feeling down and dark.
Relax a moment with this video. You will feel better.