On the Other Side of Hell lies Paradise

On the other side of hell lies paradise.  From very early on we've been told there was something wrong with us, something not right in the world.  We were taught to believe that our world needed fixing, that we needed fixing.  We learned that if things weren't perfect, it was our fault, as our natural state is that of perfection.  Try as we might we've never found that perfection we so desperately sought, so we went to battle with our suffering, to battle with ourselves.  We believed suffering did not exist in a perfect world.  

A perfect world does not exist either.  In all our efforts to cultivate perfection, all we've managed to do is struggle against what is really happening, only prolonging our suffering about what might happen or what happened before.  The foundation of our struggle is rooted in our feeling of being wrong compiled with the guilt and shame of being imperfect.  Perfection does exist but only the Divine realm.  The core of  our being is divinely perfect.  The rest of us is a holy mess. The force that runs the world is Divine order.  All else is chaos.

Instead of splitting ourselves into a lower self that has a higher self  it must emulate, we should just befriend our lower self.  Our divine Self doesn't need any help.  Our "bad side," our "lower self," our imperfect humanness needs our attention, our support, our love.   If we push away the parts that hurt, we will never heal and never be whole.  Until we are able to plunge through the ugliness at the surface, we will never find the jewels down below.

We tend to panic when suffering knocks at the door.  We lock the doors, draw the drapes  and batten down the hatches.  Suffering doesn't need an unlocked door, an open window or clear passageway.  Suffering is found where hope and fear are battling it out.  If we have the hope something will happen,  rest assured we also have the fear it won't.  Hope and fear won't go away anymore than suffering will, but when we begin to accept them as part of our human imperfection in an imperfect world, our divine perfection embraces them, loves them, absorbs them.  Hence, no battle, no fixing, no panic.. just acceptance, just love, just celebration.  And on the other side of hell lies paradise.