The IWALLK Essays - 14. This Beautiful Hell

William Blake

Since normalcy died back in March with the start of the Covid-19 pandemic in America, the strangest sense has been coming over me... 

Or, maybe it was set up by normalcy dying with the election of Donald Trump in 2016? Or, was everything normal until I walked out of a materialist life ruled over by everyone else's expectations for me, way back in 2011 when I started this blog? Whatever the case, the overwhelming feeling is: For some people, nothing ever really gets better and it never will. My life seems to be evidence of such a fate. 

I've been sharpening up my math skills lately and I re-learned the formulas for plotting standard deviation. It struck me suddenly that any series of events fits into that concept. Even when you examine lifetimes - from an admittedly subjective standpoint - being, that of your own experiences, a definite "falling into the curve" occurs. 

I want to be very clear about something... I am not complaining. I am not feeling sorry for myself. There is nothing to feel sorry for and nothing to complain about. Things ARE the way they ARE. Yet, there should be every possible attempt to evaluate the way things ARE. Why not? What else do we have to do?

Just as statistically some people suffer their whole lives and die miserably on one end of the curve, so must some other people be fortunate enough to find a constant satisfaction nearly every day and remain relatively happy until the end of their long, healthy lives. Of course most people's lives lie in between these extremes, with ups and downs; some, more ups, and some, more downs. 

I look at Paul McCartney as an example of a fairly charmed life. He was born handsome, creative, intelligent and extremely talented, at just the right time in history; ended up in the most famous band of all time (The Beatles), and is now considered the most successful musician in history. And to this day, he has never faded from immense popularity. Compare his life with a prepubescent Thai girl who is kidnapped or sold into sexual slavery, is seriously abused and then finally killed at 18 years old. What makes these two human beings so different? Well, just about everything! Only the mean curve connects them, as two sides of the human condition.

Theoretically, they are both "of equal value in the eyes of the Lord." But, they certainly aren't treated that way, theoretically, by the "Lord," presumably--Creator of the entire Universe. Christians claim that only through living life as prescribed by the intercessors and middlemen of Jesus Christ - the ministers, preachers, and priests, etc., whose "Authority" to interpret the Word as God's Holy Bible - will (or might not?) the human seeker have eternal life. 

These intercessors seem to have decided on their own that they be the world's self-appointed, minor Jesuses. Through them, you get to Jesus. But, Jesus himself said to Thomas,  “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me." [King James, John 14:6] Jesus didn't require you to utilize a minister as your interpreter. You were meant to communicate directly with Jesus through prayer, no men-in-robes necessary. But, like the buggy horses put out of business by Henry Ford's Model A, the intercessors between you and God, in this more open-minded age, are losing their energy to the new vehicle of self-aware, truth seeking. 

These used car salesmen of the spirit would have to distort their ideology pretty significantly to let the poor Thai girl get into heaven. They would need to manipulate and rationalize why she should be let in to the purity of heaven after, you know, what she's seen. But, she never went through them--the intercessors, never mind not going through Jesus either. No. I don't buy that it keeps you out of the next life. 

Even Paul McCartney, who once said none of the Beatles believed in God, might have a free pass to Paradise, on his deathbed he will of course realize that the Catholic priest who baptized him as a child was right all along! Or, at least, he knows the difference. Certainly, the Thai girl had no education, no choice in her religious practice or belief system. She didn't know Jesus from any other abusive man, or even what a "god" is. She probably had no idea that life was meant to be anything more than steady pain, punctuated by misery, followed eventually by death. Where does she go when she dies in a loving God's Universe? I mean, she's already been to hell? She was born there, thanks to God working in his "mysterious ways"? Surely the well-formed plans of men in robes have it all mapped out for her?

As a relatively pampered, first world, white-privileged, middle class American, former Protestant male, I've had several opportunities to get into heaven. I've come accidentally close on more than three occasions, and willfully close on a few others. 

My surgeon didn't beat around the bush when he gave me my new life expectancy. He was the guy who literally held and observed my beating heart in his hands. He said I had five-to fifteen years left. That surgery was exactly one year ago. I am seeing the glass of the "waters of life" as half empty now, but I also seem to be intentionally sipping a little off each time before the next measurement.

Being an over-thinker doesn't help. What is this spiritually passive aggressive need to very slowly commit suicide? Why has it afflicted me since I was in my preteens? Clearly, it is a mental illness of some kind. But frankly, compared to some people I know very well - and who can't see their own narcissism and sociopathy - it's a pretty mild case. 

In other words, it only torments me and the people who have to listen (or read) me rant about it. I have never met a highly intelligent human being who had less of a mental illness than I do now. Nevertheless, this seemingly voluntary negativity never fails to keep the water level in that glass pretty low. 

I have railed against wishful thinking and using optimism as a strategy for changing the world. Instead, I work to plan for the worst, while hoping for the best only whenever I am able to relax. It is only now that the end is nearer that I don't even understand what hope is good for anymore; not just with me, but in general. Hope isn't practical. Hope isn't a scheme for success. Hope is a recipe for disappointment. But how does one abandon hope? I'm learning. Perhaps abandoning hope is the final prerequisite to accepting hell. Remember the inscription at the gate of hell in Dante Alighieri's work, Inferno  “…lasciate ogne speranza, vow ch'intrate,” or "...abandon all hope ye who enter here." In fact, it seems that "hope" is very much a trendy kind of faith for atheists and agnostics. We are told by our atheistic brethren that they are sending "good vibes" when we are in trouble. No one stops and stares out into space to ponder just how many ways we continuously contradict our own personal and societal philosophies, singularly and collectively. That's what we do: contradict ourselves. That is the true human condition. So hope is not my answer. It is my hypocrisy.

Conversely, I have to admit that going in the other direction while still functioning in the world of hyper-sensitive society's wide denial of so much that society has inflicted upon itself, is just as stupid. Take it from me, being a "downer" about things all the time is not only a strategy for not impressing people (whilst pushing them away), but builds up a sort of negative patina in layers around the dwindling once shining silver core of one's objective--even when things actually are positive. Here is where I left off... left this world, experienced decades in a Faraway Place, then came back after two earth-hours.

I have tried several times here at the blog to self-psychoanalyze and/or theorize about why my own thinking is so different since that surgery where I left and came back last year. I mentioned that I had a death-like experience (see: "The IWALLK Essays - 7. Meaning in a Faraway Place") that formed whatever I am now. But I wonder sometimes... did I actually "come back"? How would I (or anyone else) know the difference? Cosmology speaks of the "Many Worlds" theory--where every decision splits off into countless alternative universes. Why can't this 2020 shit show be one of them? I think it might be; a special species of hell.

Red flags indicate just such a thing. They are not difficult to find, as you should know. In this universe a global pandemic that is not at all understood even after seven months of intense study is still growing, while America - erupting after 400 years of racism - teeters on the edge of a Second Civil War, and thereby threatens global geopolitics. Even the most powerful (if stupid) man in the world, the President of the United States, has become literally sick, because of his own pretentious hypocrisy. 

Of course, this is all occurring as, millions of species are lost, the oceans are turning into humanity's plastic dumps, and climate change twists and cancels out all predictability from our annual forecasts, threatening all future generations with ever-more destructive weather patterns and sea level rise...

And that is just the "outside" world!

We who didn't look for the difference need to admit to ourselves that everything we ever perceived around us has been limited by (1) our five electrochemical, gross-senses, (2) the material limitations of the human brain to process theses senses, while (3) "feeling" that there is more going on with the Universe than than our gross electrochemical senses can detect--that there are actually more than five senses. Even I agree that there is more than quantum observations of the behavior of leptons and quarks going on. "More Than This." Yes, among all the limitations of our certainty, leave some other things that are amazing and mystical. Physics and quantum mechanics hints at these things. Terence McKenna said that "physics is now to the left of psychology." That means that the most whacked out psychological theories are nothing compared to the bizarre action of nature at the quantum level.

Could it be that at the most precarious moment in surgery I did die. I mean permanently--like you read about? No return?

If I were a devil and was given the power to create the worst hell that could be imagined for the soul of Alex Wall, after life, here's what I would do...

The idea of eternal fire and brimstone is so passé. What you want is a slow, downward sloping curve of more and more intense sensations of failure and loss for as long as possible--in a place where the very concept of time breaks down--like post-Covid 21st Century earth! Do you get what I'm saying? You don't need eternity, if you are able to stretch the last moment between life and death long enough to convince someone that their soul has no business going on to its "eternal reward," you (the devil) win!

Run the graphic curve from today to the end of all things (at least as they are understood by the incomplete human mind). That allows for perfectly synching the arc of high and occasionally pleasant existence into the ultimate bottomless pit of pain and discouragement, and "hopefully" (says the devil) absolute hopelessness; perhaps eventually leading to soul-self-annihilation. 

See where I'm going now? I wish I could think, and not overthink. Indeed, hope is just wishful thinking, but it relies on the number of facts. If the facts are ultimately positive, there was always hope. If the facts are ultimately negative, there was always hopelessness. Hell may be many things, but I think it could include the ultimate subtraction of facts, slowly, over any amount of "time"--through actual experience. What better way to stain the soul with hopelessness and complete the loss of all dignity and will power.

When hope is permanently gone--as the hypothetical devil, having achieved my objective for Alex Wall's situation? I win. And *I* lose. Perfect!

It started with the notion that Alex would choose to come back to one of the available earths from almost dying at surgery to (at least as he thought) "make a difference." He would have one last hoorah and travel around the globe promoting the establishment of the Next Age. But, hark, there is no way to travel now around the nations of this world, especially for Americans, because of America's profound and extreme ignorance (from leaders to individual citizens) in dealing with Covid-19.  How incredibly disappointing.

It took a long time to try to recover from surgery and I am not even now recovered, for many different reasons. Additionally, in June, the closest member of my family suddenly attacked me viscously and under false pretenses to remove me for caring for my mom who I have lived with since surgery. This attack is something I defended myself against, while nobody knew, and even "won," in a relativistic way. But the victory was hollow. I lost a summer, and gained another subspecies of PTSD. There's another point for the devil!

The ratcheting down of my joy for life began with this June attack. During that 90 days of this otherwise beautiful summer, I contemplated and fantasized about suicide many times--day dreaming of it was a daily ritual. I had several panic attacks which has never happened to me before and I had no idea that they would pass. I was not able to work at my consulting job, and became unable to sleep more than a few hours each night, if at all. 

I had been looking forward to a summer working and writing in Maine's natural beauty, tending our little garden, planning my Final IWALLK Journey and enjoying my third shot at life. 

But again, instead, wishful thinking and hope led to disappointment... I have no place at all for hope anymore. As mentioned above, non-emotionally expressing the fact of my heart's natural deterioration to other human beings? I just get a "No way, dude, you'll live to be 100! My Aunt Velma had the same condition, and..." How I fucking hate that so very, very much! The only thing more useless than relying on my own hope is listening to someone else's hope for me. It is it's own kind of nauseation. To unintelligent humans "hope" plays the role of medicine; medicine for other people. 

What I don't want is a remaining lifetime of diminishing hope while ignorant people try to force it upon me. That may be selfish of me, but I'm not sure it hurts anyone else for me to just want to be left the fuck alone in that regard? I guess we'll see. Positivity doesn't happen on it's own. It must be motivated, moved by someone's will.

Once the good intentioned people are in their own little hells maybe they won't have time for tormenting me? Right? But that's what the devil wants Alex Wall to think! Ha! (Okay, done with the third person thing.) That is what he wants me to think, even now. I thought it was all over, when in fact, it has only begun. I can't even claim to be schizophrenic! Somehow I did not pass the test that would let me walk along the positive side of the number line. It's a number line--that's all it should be. Theoretically anything on the right side can be reflected on the left side? But somehow it just isn't. Going down, is going down. Hard to see it as anything else.

Contrary to the way this all sounds, it is a strange and confusing kind of damnation. The beauty I no longer have access to appreciating shines ever more brilliantly in nature's glorious ramparts, as my hope fails more and more completely. Perfect torment. I watch the rest of the people enjoy the sun, and blue skies, the puffy clouds and orange sunsets. They are letting the little things go. But these natural wonders are no longer there for me. I feel nothing, more and more reliably. But I do still see them and appreciate their grandeur; very much so.

For now, this is all a thought experiment. Einstein imagined what it would be like to ride on a photon of light, and thereby better discerned Relativity. The sinking of the soul is just a concept, until it becomes "real." 

If I did end up in hell and the only expectation that Reality has is a test for me is to realize it, I think I have passed my first test. 

So, maybe this world is hell and this hell is my only heaven. Maybe the devil is the only God here. Maybe there are no friends or relatives with me. Maybe they are simply demons. And maybe demons are simply the parts of my mind where the vestiges of hope still cling--trying but failing to be personalities. Maybe the bottomless pit is filled with passing seasons and beautiful sunsets that get more beautiful with each descending step. 

I have decided something though. If I must be here, so here shall I rule!

It is all my hell after all. You folks (the real you) inhabit that other universe I died in last year. So you won't mind if I take over, will you? 

Don't you remember Lucifer's grand statement in Paradise Lost? For now...

"It is better to reign in hell than serve in heaven."