"You're in hell already, mate," John Barstow told me one April evening in 1998.
It was in Victoria Station, London. We'd met for a quick drink before boarding Friday evening trains for the weekend.
"Let’s say that heaven and hell do not exist," I mumbled. "Except as - metaphors."
"Crap," he said wisely.
This was some years ago - and I had been a full-time writer of plays since university; then something happened. My emotional life exploded, while my creative urge imploded. I wanted to have nothing to do with feelings and with the writing of such.
Barstow said, "You've just committed suicide. And that's a mortal sin, mate."
I just been through three years of emotional hell - this won't be any worse; in fact, it might pull me back to life. I told him, inwardly - I feel divorced.
"You can change your mind," he said.
However, to write or not to write was no longer my question.
Meanings of hell
When I was a boy in London, one of my philosophy teachers, old Mr Khambatta did try and teach me some practical sense. Khambatta said, "Hell is created on many levels but is energised by fear. Fear and its opposite -- love -- are at the bottom of our actions; and reactions. Fear feeds competition."
His approach and language was calculated to keep the attention of a boy in his teens.
"Don't give me the crap about competition building strong vibrant souls," Khambatta continued. "Systems of competition in school breed psychosis, build empires based on slavery and exaggerate a misguided sense of separation."
As I insisted on learning lessons the hard way, it was much, much later that I realised these things:
Truth is: there is no one special on this planet, save the one spirit behind it all.
Anyone being "special" or doing anything "special" is channeling the one spirit behind it all. This is why enlightened souls have such humility: they just know the truth; they did not do anything except realise they were vessels. The one life is infinitely creative, limited only by the clarity of each vessel through which it has to come.
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