If God always forgives, how can there be a hell?
If God always forgives and there’s always a new tomorrow how can there be a hell?
That was the question my 14 year old self asked my minister one night during the course of my confirmation preparations.
Disbelief
While I do not remember his answer, I very vividly remember my visceral reaction of disbelief coursing through my body and mind.
What he told me made absolutely no sense and so I abandoned God.
Well, that is, of course not until after the confirmation where I wore the beautiful dress my aunt the seamstress had made, together with my new white shoes and my mothers bijoux clip-on buckles, one of which I lost although my mother had repeatedly pounded into me to take good care of them.
Though I retraced every step I had taken that day, that buckle remained lost.
I however did not. Although it would take me many many years until I was ready to wake up to the ever loving, all encompassing God I now know.
Near death experience
I suspect it was my near death experience at the age of 11 that unknowingly diverted me out of organised religion and into spirituality and a deep personal relationship with the Divine Mother of All.
Having had an experience of oneness and love unlike any other, during those moments where I floated in peaceful bliss outside of my body following an accident, the hateful, vengeful God I was being presented with in my Lutheran church was not something I recognised.
So I closed my mind to it and went about my way.
Higher Self
It wasn’t until one dark and fateful night in 2009, where I was on my hands and knees in my bathroom wailing, pleading with God to take me out of my misery that I had an instant of complete clarity realising that while I was on the floor crying my eyes out, begging whatever higher power there was to relieve me of the pain and misery I felt, there was another I observing.
Another I completely untouched and unfazed by what was seemingly going on. An I completely at peace through it all calling me home, waiting for me to be ready to welcome it in.
In that moment part of me woke and I made it my commitment to open myself up to that peaceful I. I made my choice for love.
Choosing Love
That night and for weeks after I went to bed with my iPod (oh yes – those were the days of iPod and hardly any Social Media), earplugs and Marianne Williamson reading her book A Return to Love in my ears wanting to strengthen that I within me that knew nothing but peace and love. I wanted my sleeping self to awaken and I wanted to do it by consistently choosing love.
I had everything
Now, from a worldly point of view I had absolutely nothing to be miserable about. I had everything.
An amazing apartment in central Copenhagen.
A very well paying job with wonderful colleagues.
Great friends and an active social life.
I travelled, I shopped, I wined and dined.
My material and physical life was “perfect” but my spiritual life was non-existent.
Breakdown equals breakthrough
It is usually at the most trying times of our lives that we become the most willing to seek out so-called “alternative solutions” and so being in that situation I became steadfast in my commitment to love as the driver for my life.
I still wasn’t ready to recognise it, whatever it was, as God though.
In those early days I would set 5 alarms on my phone to go off at random times during the day and whenever the alarm sounded I would simply say “I choose love”. With that simple choice I began my long walk home. To God. The kind, loving, compassionate Source God is.
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.
A Course in Miracles brought me home
Eventually I would find my way to A Course in Miracles upon which Marianne Williamson’s book A Return to Love was based.
Initially I was thrown way off by its usage of Christian terminology because the only God, Jesus and Holy Spirit I knew at that time came from religion.
But no matter how many times I threw it aside, it kept calling me. I would begin the lessons of the workbook many times only to fall off wagon and begin again. The textbook never made any sense to me, in fact the words seemed to be written in a different language.
None the less I persisted and without the ancient wisdom of A Course in Miracles I would not be where I am today. It guided me home to the place I had never left but could not see because of the hell I had created. To the eternal love that shines within each and everyone of us. To God.
Much much later that I would discover how Jesus or Yeshua as he goes by with me, together with his wife and eternal life partner Mary Magdalene taught only one thing, that Love is the Way and that removing the obstacles and blocks towards seeing yourself as that Love so that you may experience total peace and happiness is what life is all about.
There is no sin, no guilt, no shame and no sacrifice.
Only Love.
A gateway to the deeper mysteries
To me A Course in Miracles is not only a way home it is also an amazing gateway to the deeper, hidden mysteries. For both the millions if not billions of religious followers struggling with the dogma and doctrine of organised religion, as well as the spiritual seekers having long since abandoned religion because of its rigid teachings.
Whether you are one or the other let me assure you that there IS another way. A Way of Love. A Way of Love that Yeshua and Mary Magdalene taught together and continues to teach us even beyond their physical form. The shift they set in motion more than 2000 years ago is continuing and on-going and you are a part of it.
Today ACIM is an ingrained part of my daily spiritual practice and continues to blow my mind. It’s led me farther and deeper into the ancient teachings and mysteries than I ever imagined possible and has opened me up further and wider to the experience of love and peace in this world. The experience of oneness and unity.
If God always forgives and there’s always a new tomorrow, how can there be a hell?
Truth is there can’t.
What my 14 year old knew instinctively to be wrong was the truth.
God is not an old man with human feelings and emotions. God is Love. God is Unity. God is Complete. I mean that literally. God is the loving Source of all that is. Everything was created as a loving extension of that Source.
Being Love God knows nothing else.
That, however, does not mean that you cannot experience hell…
“Nothing made by a child of God is without power”.
– A Course in Miracles
Hell can seem very real because you are a powerful creator. Being created as your creator nothing you create is ever without power. Hell exists in every human mind in whatever form you decide until the moment you decide it is time set yourself free. To liberate yourself of the self inflicted restraints. The moment when you are ready to awaken. To Rise. To remember who and what you are in truth and begin your journey home.
Love is The Way.
Choose Love
In order to set yourself free you must choose love. Consistently and repeatedly. It is not the work for those faint at heart and requires not only your willingness, but your commitment, dedication, persistence and consistence.
In order to set yourself free you must go into dark places and shine a light. You must be willing to forgive, let go and surrender. Be willing to love even when you do not want to, in fact most of all when you do not want to.
Once you begin this journey, the course is set. There is no turning back. Nothing will ever be the same, nor would you want it to. Your whole life will change radically. For the better.
But at first it won’t seem like it.
At first everything will seem to be chaos. You will experience many dark nights of the soul. You have descended into hell in order to uplift it. To transform fear to love, darkness to light, spirit to matter. You will bring heaven to earth and become the embodied divine being you are.
If you are ready choose love.
Choose love.
I love you.
xo, Mariaestela
Want more?
If you’re curious about A Course in Miracles, here’s a Beginners Guide I created for you.
If you want to dive deeper into the ancient teachings of A Course in Miracles, click here.