Are all humans born in hell?
"Born Bad" - the ideal that paved life
"Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me."
Psalm 51:5, KJV
Honoring holy doctrine - humankind was conceived in sin. Born imperfect, prone to making mistakes,
Amidst our journey to self-actualization, the perplexity of fact vs. faith hinders a promised epiphany into heaven.
The notion that we were conceived in the hands of the creator, led by the creator himself and ultimately judged upon by the creator - leaves one with a maddening discomposure as to what our purpose really is. Making it infuriatingly difficult to leave on a clean slate, if you were born bad.
Then came rituals of baptism, communion, bathing in the Ganges, tsukubai, ghusl and countless others - to rid the conscious of vice.
To have evolved into critical thinkers of the modern century, one can't help but question the meaning of our existence. It is becoming harder to trust in an almighty power, when times are proving absent of such.
It doesn't matter where you come from, it matters where you're going
To get caught up in the mistakes of the past is to give in, to use those mistakes to channel a better life is to give back. To give back to those who came before you and pave a life for those who will come after you.
We all came from one, share the same home, and will one day leave it to another one. In the mean time, we are blessed with infinite possibilities to sustain and create a beautiful tomorrow while enjoying today.
If we fixate on a damned moment, we manifest a damned future.
We all share the same 24 hours, the same resources and the same opportunities - all that separates us is our mind, our attitude and our perspective. To want the best, means to work to be the best. The drive and passion that fuels us into making a life worth living.
For us all to be rooted in hell, means that we all give in to the wonder of heaven - and if its hell that where we come from, then we'll choose if its heaven that where we'll go.
Reincarnation and an infinite punishment in hell
We grow old abiding to a Godly life, only to be sentenced to a never-ending cycle of life and death.
With religious populations growing every day, conflicting thoughts on heaven result in radical uproar - the ironical opposite of living a godly life.
Ancient civilizations and recent ideologies have configured personal pathways into heaven. The Egyptians in balancing their good and bad deeds, Buddhists in reaching Nirvana, Muslims in martyrdom service to Allah, Christians in wholeheartedly relying on Jesus, and even in atheist's trying to quantify life - each coming together in walking a life closer to salvation.
As respective religions carry distinct predictions in the afterlife - Hinduism believes in the principle of Dharma - the eternal cosmic law of righteousness sanctioning liberation from worldly suffering.
Reincarnation, is the principle of rebirth in which a person’s soul or jiva, progresses through many births on its path to moksha, or liberation. Hindu Dharma preaches that while death may destroy the body, the jiva is immortal—it never dies. The jiva is intrinsically pure, but because of the layers of desires and ignorance of ‘I-ness’ and ‘my-ness,’ it goes through transmigration in the cycle of births and deaths, which is refered to as samsar.
At the time of death, the jiva takes on another body with respect to its karmas. Every karma performed produces a result which must be experienced either in this life or the next.
As long as the jiva is warped in maya (material illusion), it remains attached to material desires and is subject to the cycle of births and deaths.
According to the Purãnas, the jiva passes through 8,400,000 different births, which includes all of the phyla in the animal and plant kingdoms, before it attains a human form. Depending on our karmas, our jiva will regress into a lower life form due to base karmas or progress into a higher life form due to righteous karmas. A jiva’s birth into a human body is the highest and rarest of all births. In a human birth, the jiva’s main purpose is to worship God in order to achieve moksha and to free itself from maya and the cycle of births and deaths.
According to the Hindu shastras, moksha should be the ultimate goal of human life. Moksha is the liberation of the soul from maya, all material bondages, desires, and the cycle of birth and death.
The liberated jiva then resides in God’s/Bhagwan’s divine abode, Akshardham, where it eternally experiences the divine bliss of Bhagwan. In Akshardham, each jiva has an individual identity, as they have always had. In Akshardham, the jivas are eternal and countless, each different from one another. After a jiva leaves its mortal body, it attains a divine body by the grace of Bhagwan
Whilst believing in the awe of reincarnation, we cannot part the inevitable - where suffering and happiness inter-are. You cannot eradicate suffering and retain only happiness. That is like wanting only day and not night. When you suffer, you learn compasÂsion and understanding. But your suffering can also overwhelm you and harden your heart. When this happens, you cannot enjoy life or learn compassion. To suffer - to an extent - is therefore needed for us to truly evolve. We need to learn the art of taking good care of our suffering so we can learn the art of transforming it into a way of liberation - of turning an inescapable hell into heaven.
Finding the Silver Lining
If it were true, that we are all born in an predestined hell. A hell with our own demons, a hell with our own struggles, a hell with a numbingly irrelevance as to our presence - a hell that we created, and a hell that we can destroy - we are subject to finding a heaven amidst the hell.
So when the skies are cloudy and the water is murky, focus on finding the light - and if things are still unclear, find the light within yourself. The heaven amidst the hell.