The Secret to Getting Out of Hell

One television show that I enjoy watching is the Ghost Whisperer. If you’ve never seen it or heard of it before, it is a show starring Jennifer Love Hewitt as Melinda Gordon, a woman who can see ghosts. In the show, people who die fail to crossover and end up stuck on Earth. Melinda helps these Earth bound spirits, as she calls them, resolve their issues so they can be at peace. The show always makes me cry. I don’t really know why. It just does.

One episode of the show really touched me. The owner of a mortuary was being tortured by his past. The man had fallen on hard times and when his furnace broke he was unable to get it fixed. To save his business, he told families that he cremated the bodies of their loved ones but in reality he dumped them into a pond in the woods. The ghosts of those people were trapped on Earth because of their anger over what he did to them.

When we meet the mortician in the show he is dying of cancer and is terrified. He can feel the presence of the ghosts waiting for him to die so they can punish him for what he did. Eventually, he does die and as he expected the ghosts start torturing him.

He makes his way to Melinda who doesn’t understand why he didn’t cross over. He informs her that some people told him he couldn’t and that they wanted him to join them. It sounds very mysterious and sinister until Melinda confronts the entities who blocked him and made them explain their actions.

In reality, they didn’t tell the man that he couldn’t cross over into the light. That was a decision he made on his own. They explained that every being who dies looks into the light and sees themselves reflected there. Sometimes all they can see are the bad things that they did in life which makes them feel they are not worthy enough to go into the light so they end up staying on Earth.

When the man looked into the light, all he could see was what he did to those ghosts in the pond. And when those ghosts who were dumped in the pond looked into the light, all they could see was shame about their circumstances. That shame led them all to hold back from crossing over and resting in peace.

This episode really resonated with me because I’ve manifested this exact type of situation in my own life. I am not perfect. I have done some crazy things in my life and I have had crazy things happen to me which have made me feel very ashamed. This shame has stumped my growth as a person which in turn made it difficult for me to bring about the success that I want in life.

Due to my involvement with the Christian religion, I came to believe that Source (or God in their terminology) was a judgmental, vengeful being with OCD. If you didn’t do what he said then you were toast. You would be eternally punished for disobeying the word of God.

The message got lodged in my subconscious and every failure that I experienced, every bad thing that happened to me, got filtered through the belief that because I was not doing what God wanted I was a bad person and instead of obtaining the success I wanted in life, I was being punished with failure.

Fast forward years later, I’m not a Christian anymore but I still carry around remnants of that belief system in my psyche. The morning after I watched that episode of Ghost Whisperer I felt the need to reflect on the things I was grateful for in my life. During my journaling, I realized that God/Source was not judging me. I was judging me. I was the one who said I was unworthy to go into the light. I was like that mortician in show. I looked into the light and only saw the bad things reflected there and ran away.

But this went beyond my spiritual life. Though I craved a better life, I still believed that I didn’t deserve one because of my past. And in hindsight I see where this belief has caused me to sabotage my own success. I felt I had to “pay” for the sins of my past before I became worthy of the future I wanted.

The problem with this thinking was I was never going to get out of jail. Every new “offense”, however slight, just added more time to my sentence. If I hadn’t gotten off this train when I did, I probably would have ridden it until the day I died.

So how did I manage to get off this train to nowhere? Well, I first had to divest myself of the bogus ideology about God/Source that that had been fed to me since I was child. I had to understand that the true nature of Source is supportive and loving not damning and spiteful. This was a big one for me because, as I said before, for a long time I believed God/Source was judgmental and vengeful and who was punishing me for everything I ever did wrong. Once I got past this insanity, everything else just kind of fell in place.

I also had to come to terms with the fact that I was human and thus subject to making lots and lots of mistakes and that it was OKAY to make lots and lots of mistakes. No matter how hard I try I can’t know everything. I have to do the best with what I’m working with at the time. Sometimes that leads me to making gigantic mistakes. There is really nothing I can do about that except learn from the experience.

Once I figured that out, I forgave myself for all the mistakes I had made and will ever make in my life and then gave myself permission to pursue my dreams.

Now I know I’m making this sound a lot easier than it really is. It took me weeks just to become comfortable with the idea that it was okay for me to not be in hell anymore. I still struggle with feelings of non-worthiness that cause me to trip and fall on my face. There are days when I have to actually remind myself that the universe is not out to get me like some relentless bounty hunter trying to drag me back to jail.

But one thing that has helped keep me on track was to realize that it’s a process. As Abraham-Hicks says, “A belief is just a thought you keep thinking.” When those crazy thoughts come up, I just exchange them for something more empowering.

If you find yourself getting in the way of your own success, examine your thoughts to see if maybe you have put yourself in jail. Then take steps to let yourself out. As I’ve noted before, life is supposed to feel good and it is much too short to spend suffering over a past you can’t change anyway.

(photo credit: thx icanhazcheezburger)

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