Religion

[Cara]

Hi! Growing up my parents were Christians.  They shoved the religion down my throat, but I never really bought into it.  I am figuring things out for myself now.  I have had a lot of anxiety about death, just because the church I grew up in basically brainwashed me into thinking hell was a real thing.  I know it isn’t now, but I still have anxiety over it for some reason.  Also,  why do you think some people have near death experiences and come back and then claim that they went to heaven or hell and came back to earth? Like that movie where the little boy said he went to heaven.  I know that everyone here is a lot more knowledgeable and far ahead on their journey with spirituality, meditation, enlightenment, etc.. so I realize this probably seems like a dumb question.

[Ether]

Maybe they are making it up? People know whats popular and know to profit from their words.

I dont know If heaven or hell are real, I never been there.

Maybe we are already living in heaven and screwing it up?

Heaven on earth, babyyyyy

[aurum]

5 minutes ago, Cara said:

 I have had a lot of anxiety about death, just because the church I grew up in basically brainwashed me into thinking hell was a real thing

I went through this as well. I freaked out for a long time thinking I was going to go to hell when I stopped following my religion because "omg but what if they're right???".

The thing that really helped me was just time. Anytime you go through a major shift in beliefs like you have, usually the old way of thinking sticks around for awhile before it falls away.

10 minutes ago, Cara said:

why do you think some people have near death experiences and come back and then claim that they went to heaven or hell and came back to earth?

Probably because they did have some non-physical experience. Spiritual truths aren't necessarily wrong, they're just not what you were taught in church.

[Toby]

I was raised more or less "Christian". Then I rejected it when I got more into spirituality. But then I reconnected with it and saw the truth in it mainly through listening to Adyashanti's audiobook "Resurrecting Jesus" and others like Leonard Jacobson, Bernadette Roberts or Meister Eckhart. It really helps to appreciate the christian approach and to clear up confusion around it.

[Arman]

1 hour ago, Cara said:

Also,  why do you think some people have near death experiences and come back and then claim that they went to heaven or hell and came back to earth?

Who knows, maybe they are being deluded by their minds, or maybe they actually experienced other realms?

Various metaphysical ideologies have mapped out different sectors of consciousness from celestial heights to dense and hellish depths. Most religions seem to agree that ones behaviors and actions in this lifetime determine where ones consciousness goes afterwards. This seems to be an impersonal energy dynamic thing and not one of judgement or morality. 

Maybe the idea is not so nonsensical. 

You're right to reject the nonsense that you were indoctrinated with, but it's not necessary to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The problem here is that religious doctrines have perverted cosmological insights with projections of our own animal nature: in this case it's primarily that of our own fear and guilt.

[Nahm]

@Cara There’s no end to imagination. The brain deceives the one, with it’s implication of twoness (duality) - like “heaven & hell”, for example. Of course there’s no heaven & hell, because there is only you, one. It’s pretty obvious, as you’ve never experienced anything to the contrary. 

[Prabhaker]

2 hours ago, Cara said:

come back and then claim that they went to heaven or hell and came back to earth?

Information that we have about heaven and hell is not something out of people's imaginations, but it has been communicated by souls through mediums. Those whose experiences have created misery for them will see nightmares and dreams of hell. Those whose experiences have brought them happiness will dream of heaven and will be happy in their dreams. But these are all dreamlike experiences.

So what we call heaven and hell are just deep dream lives. The intensity of the fire burning in hell can never be found in real life, though it is a very inconsistent fire. In scriptures, there are descriptions of the fires of hell, into which you are thrown without being burned. But one is never aware of this inconsistency – that if you were thrown into an intense fire you would not be able to withstand the heat; yet you are not in any way being burned. This inconsistency, that ”I am being burned in the fire,” that the fire is terrible, that the burning is unbearable and yet ”I am not burned at all,” is realized only after one is out of this dreamlike experience.

During that interval, there is no clear awareness of the duration of time. Because of this, Christianity has said that there is hell forever. This is said on the basis of the memory of those who have seen a very long dream. It was such a long dream that when they returned they had no memory of any relationship between this body and the previous one. That is why they said that hell is eternal and it is very difficult to get out of it. Good souls see happy dreams and evil souls see unhappy dreams. Only because of their dreams are they feeling unhappy and miserable.

It is only on such descriptions that concepts of heaven and hell have been evolved by all religions. The descriptions are different not because the places are different, but because the mental states of the individuals recalling the experiences are different. Therefore, when Christianity describes heaven, it will be different from what Hinduism will describe, because descriptions depend on different states of consciousness. 

Actually, every person will bring back a different story. It is more or less like when we all sleep in the same room and then get up and describe our dreams. We have slept in the same room; we are at the same place, but our dreams will be different. 

[Highest]

 Hell and heaven are states of mind. In the next incarnation, bad impressions  and good still live on with the mind, they have to be wiped out. Only a god-realized soul is liberated from this.

[Guest Quanty]

Those visions of hell or heaven or just a consequence of staying in the mind and want to make sense of things. Only EGOic human beings have this experiences, of not knowing what and why. 

[tsuki]

I was raised as an Atheist and I always asked various religious people these questions:

Why are you so sure that your God is the correct God?
What God would you believe in if you were born in the rain forest?
What if each time that you pray to the wrong God, you make the true God madder and madder at you?

At one point I realized that this advice may be applied to my atheistic upbringing and I started to question it as well.
This insight is what led me into spirituality.

I hope that this perspective will calm your mind @Cara. There is no need to fear hell. Fear itself is hell.

[Faceless]

6 hours ago, Cara said:

Also,  why do you think some people have near death experiences and come back and then claim that they went to heaven or hell

As soon as you recognize an experience it has already been projected from the past through the response of memory, knowledge, and past experience “thought” 

Edited May 13, 2018 by Faceless

[Truth Addict]

 

@Cara

I know this might sound hard, but this is the only way (imo): You will have to face your fear from 'Hell', know that fear is just a concept built upon illusion and belief, also another way to face this fear is to just accept it (fear of death, fear of Hell, fear of fear). Ask yourself, what is fear? Why should I fear anything at all? Contemplate this topic of fear, and Truth will reveal Itself to you.

Surrender my friend, let everything go, and go with the flow.

[NoSelfSelf]

@Mikael89 Spirituality and religion is the same thing pointing to the same thing

[How to be wise]

@Cara those are some great questions to inquire on. Can I really know that there is a hell or heaven after I die? Go inside yourself to find those answers.