Purgatory or Not!

gigpdo wrote:Did I really go to purgatory all those years ago,all those years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday,24 years is a long time ago but it is still imprinted somewhere in my mind,I am very conscious of it and what it meant to me back then,it was 1993 and I consciously left my body behind intent on seeing my best mate who had died 5 days earlier.

His name was Eddie,he was 33 years old and had 3 children to 2 wives,he run a business and was my boss,he was also a hopeless alcoholic and womaniser,but he was a good and kind hearted person,he just liked booze and sex,in that order!
I was in hospital when he died,he rolled his motor vehicle end over end and he was killed instantly, he was also rolling drunk and luckily on a little used back road.

I was distraught,I signed myself out of hospital just so I could attend his funeral,I delivered the eulogy to over 400 people,and 6 days earlier I had over 450 micro stitches inside my cervical spine,I was a real mess,not just the loss of my best friend but the surgery and stress was unimaginable.

That night I grabbed a bottle of rum and decided to drink myself to sleep,it didn't take much,one mouthful really,I had his photo on my chest just laying on my bed thinking about him,suddenly I was shooting through space,away from the earth at unbelievable speed,I was still in the etheric,in our universe, and I ended up on a type of dirt island in space,it was dirt with red brick buildings,it felt absolutely negative,there was an overwhelming feeling of hopelessness about the situation,it was so sad,it felt like I was in a place totally devoid of any life, it was as though all the vitality and goodness had been sucked out of me just by being there,I was thinking very fast and then from a red dull brick building a person was walking toward me,it was my mate Eddie, we buried him 12 hours earlier and here he was floating toward me,we communicated telepathically, I asked what had happened in the accident,he said the accelerator jammed,he crashed and ended up where we were,a different voice told me it was a place I knew as purgatory.
Eddie told me he could not go on any further,he was not allowed to go forward,he seemed very confused about why he was there,but he said he had to stay there for awhile,then I had the distinct impression in my mind that he was unclean,or not pure enough to continue on.

Then it was morning and I woke up on my bed,still with his photo clutched to my chest,right over my heart.
Yes I am sure it was purgatory, and it was both our belief that as we were brought up as Christians that purgatory was part of that belief!

gigpdo wrote:Thanks for the reply KP,yes purgatory is a made up word,but my mate Ed was catholic and I protestant,but neither of us practiced our religion,and oddly enough our parents religion,we were what we were by birthright,it was what I was taught until aged 16 then I stopped going to church immediately much to my Mothers chagrin.

But sadly most kids are corrupted from birth,all of us are "victims of life's circumstances", I think that's a Joe Walsh LP album title,lol,hahaha, but we are brought up a certain way,to a certain standard.

But I knew Eddie was stuck,it was so sad,his death devastated me,and I think I was given one last glimpse,because I asked for it.

gigpdo wrote:He believed in drinking,we all did,but he had it bad,were we could stop and sleep he would continue,hard triple bourbon shots,he was married twice,both his wives were not only beautiful but very tolerant of his affairs,he would pick women up 4 or 5 nights a week,he was a charmer,a ladies man.
His kids were catholic and going through confirmation aged 7 or 8,it was a very mechanical process,to keep the families of the kids happy.
No he never to my knowledge thought about death,he only said he wanted to try everything once,and he tried hard too,his father was killed in 1980 in a head on with a semi trailer,killed instantly,Ed was 20 yrs old,he said once to me,if I die I want to go quick like his father,he got his wish sadly.

gigpdo wrote:Sadly,yes that is the word I wanted to use,sadly fits the circumstances of his death nicely!
He left behind a beautiful 4 yr old daughter to his 2nd wife,and a 13 yr old daughter and 11 yr old son to his first wife,because of alcohol, because he liked a drink!
When a person decides to be a member of a family unit,or start a family,and not a single person,to get a couple of kids to clothe,feed and put a roof over their heads is giving up the single/selfish life as I call it,( from my own experience )
When you stop being single you cannot get married and have a family and still lead the single mans life,you have different responsibilities when you stop being single?
The sad part is the after effect,his death through drinking caused his families to suffer through alcohol abuse,that is very very sad indeed.

Allan Kardec wrote:The duration of punishment is subordinate to the rehabilitation of the guilty spirit. No predetermined amount of time is pronounced for punishment of the spirit. What the Law requires in order to terminate the spirit's suffering is repentance and reparation - in short, a serious and effective improvement, a sincere return to good. The spirit, thus, controls its own destiny. Its obstinacy in wrongdoing prolongs its suffering; likewise, its efforts to do good lessen or abbreviate its suffering. With the length of suffering dependent upon a change of attitude, the guilty spirit that doesn't repent and never improves, suffers, so to say, forever. For that consciousness, then, there is an eternity of punishment. This suffering must be understood in the relative sense and not in the absolute. A condition inherent to the inferiority of certain spirits is that they can't see an end to their situation, and they believe they must suffer forever. But when their souls open to repentance, God permits them to glimpse a ray of hope.

Certainly, this principle confirms more to the justice of God than the Church's dogma of eternal punishment. According to this view, Providence disciplines while the guilty one persists in wrongdoing, and bestows grace when the guilty one returns to the path of good. Who could have imagined that theory? Could we have been the ones? No. The spirits teach it and give evidence supporting it through the examples they provide to us daily. The spirits, then, don't deny future punishment; in fact, they come to describe their own suffering. This portrayal is more convincing than the thought of perpetual flames, because everything in it is perfectly logical. The spirits' examples make it plainly clear that this situation is a natural consequence of things. Even the inquisitive philosopher is better able to accept it, because nothing in it contradicts reason.

St. John, Apostle of Jesus wrote:So I say, when once the spirit and body separate, it is for all eternity, and the spirit then becomes of itself, a thing apart, controlled entirely and exclusively by laws governing the spirit body. With the spirit's entry into the spirit world, comes the soul, still enclosed in that spirit body, and to an extent controlled by that body, which latter is also, in certain particulars controlled by the soul. The spirit body has not, of itself, the power to determine its own location or destiny, as regards place, for the law of attraction which operates in this particular, operates upon the soul, and the condition of the soul determines the location of itself, and as the spirit body is the covering of the soul, it must go where this law of attraction decrees the soul shall abide.

While the mind and the mental faculties and the senses have their seat in the spirit body, yet the law that I speak of does not operate upon these faculties, as is apparent to every spirit which he knows from observation, as well as from experience, that the combined power of all these faculties cannot move a spirit body one step in the way of progress, unless such faculties have, in their influence upon the soul, caused its condition to change; and in the matter of mere mental or moral advancement this can be done.

So, I repeat, the condition of the soul determines the locality as well as the appearance of the spirit body, and this law of attraction is so exact, that in its operations, there is no opportunity for chance to interpose, and place the spirit body in a location which is not its, by reason of the operation of this law.

So that when the spirit body enters the spirit world it must go to and occupy the place which its enclosed soul condition determines that it shall occupy. No interposition of spirit friends or love of parent or husband or child can prevent this destiny, although for a time, until the soul has really had an awakening as to its condition of severance from the mortal life, these relations or friends may retain the spirit body near the place of its entrance into the spirit life, even though that place be one of more beautiful surroundings and happiness than the one to which it is destined. But this situation does not last long, for the law works, and as the soul comes into full consciousness, it hears the call and must obey.

And thus you see, friends and loved ones in spirit life meet with love and kindness and consolation, the newly arrived spirit, but the parting must come, and every soul must find its home according as its own qualities have determined. And yet the consolation mentioned is a real one, for in many instances, if it were not so, the lonely spirit would experience fear and bewilderment and all the unspeakable sensations of being deserted.

Then there comes a time, when every soul must stand alone, and in its weakness or strength realize that no other soul can bear its sorrow or take from its burdens or enter into its sufferings, And thus is realized the saying that each soul is its own keeper and alone responsible for its own condition.

Of course in many cases the loving friends may visit that soul in its place of existence and offer consolation and help and encouragement and instruction, but in some cases this cannot be, for as this soul is then laid bare to itself, all its deformities, and sins and evil qualities come before it, and thus throws around it a wall, as it were, that prevents the good friends and loving ones from appearing to it.

And thus again comes into operation the great law of attraction for while these more elevated friends, cannot come to that soul, yet other spirits of like souls and qualities may become its associates, and render such assistance as the blind can lead the blind in their movings about.

And I wish here to say, notwithstanding what some of you spiritualistic teachers have said, for the soul has its location as well as its condition.

The above condition that I have described is the destiny of some souls shortly after becoming spirits, and it is a deplorable one, and you may think that such souls are deserted by the loving influences of God's ministering spirits, and left all alone in the dreary places of their habitations. But such is not the case, for while they are deprived of the presence, to them, of the higher spirits, yet the influences of love and compassion are flowing from these spirits, and at sometime will be felt by the lonely ones, and as these influences are felt the poor souls commences to have an awakening which gradually causes the wall of their seclusion to disappear until at sometime, the higher spirits find that they can manifest their presence to these unfortunate ones.

And, besides, this, every spirit, no matter how fallen, has a work to do, even though it may appear insignificant, and among these spirits of similar conditions, some are a little more progressed than others, and by reason of a law which causes the more progressed to help the lesser, the latter are frequently helped from their low estate.

Now what I have last written applies of course to the spirits who are wicked and vile and without any soul development in the way of goodness, but a similar principle enters into the conditions of all the spirits in the earth plane, although the higher they are in that plane the greater opportunities they have for receiving help and progressing.

Jesus wrote:Man is his own bookkeeper. And in his memory are recorded all the thoughts and deeds of his earth life that are not in accord with the harmony of God's Will, which is expressed or manifested by His Laws. The judgment is not the thing of a day or a time, but is never ceasing so long as there exists that upon which it can operate and it diminishes, in proportion as the cause of inharmony disappears. The judgment day is every day, both in the earth life of man and in life as a spirit, where the law of compensation is still working. In the spirit world, time is not known, and every breathing is a part of eternity; and with every breathing, so long as the law requires, comes the judgment, continued and unsatisfied, until man, as a spirit, reaches that condition of harmony whereby the law no longer demands a judgment of him.

Heightend-Awareness wrote:A previous employer asked me once, "do you believe that hell is on earth and we live in it?" to entertain him I replied,"yes, it all depends on how comfortable you make it for yourself that would dictate your outcome." Many years later I realised what it was that I had said. That we create our own realities through our thoughts, actions and intentions.

mac wrote:Passing over - corporeal death - and survival in the so called afterlife were conflated  (by former-member gigpdo) with the churchianity-based notion of purgatory.

The member was later excluded from this website because of troll-like behavior - he revelled in stirring the pot and appeared insincere.

Heightend-Awareness wrote:

mac wrote:Passing over - corporeal death - and survival in the so called afterlife were conflated  (by former-member gigpdo) with the churchianity-based notion of purgatory.

The member was later excluded from this website because of troll-like behavior - he revelled in stirring the pot and appeared insincere.

Thanks for the history lesson mac.