Heaven, Hell and Original Sin

I've read of Original Sin; where Adam and Eve ate the fruit they weren't supposed to eat and God subsequently cast them out of the Garden of Eden. I've also read how Lucifer was cast out of Heaven as a traitor of God and into Hell, deep beneath the Earth.

The stories mentioned above suggest three separate physical places. I wonder if this is so. Adam and Eve ate the forbidden fruit from the Tree of Knowledge. Up to that point, they were ignorant of needless things such as want, shame or guilt. This "want, shame and guilt" among other human feelings destroyed their ability to see the Garden of Eden any longer. The Tree of Knowledge was misnamed in the Bible. As not only did it not provide the true Knowledge that every human is searching for, it infected the human race with a false knowledge.

I thinks it's possible that we are still in the Garden of Eden, but that we are too ignorant or afflicted by this false knowledge to see Eden for what it is. Nature. Spirit pulls me towards nature and beauty. Spirit shows me examples of perfection everyday. It is from there we can learn just as much as is written in ancient texts.

Hell, literally translated, means "Without God." I believe that any human who does not believe in Spirit, by whatever name they choose, currently lives in Hell. Many people who subscribe to atheism make very bad choices, and live lives that they are unhappy with. They are filled with these wants and needs simply because the basic necessity of the human soul (Spirit) has been cast out and denied.

It is impossible for any human to be purified while still residing in the body. When our bodies finally die, our soul is led to the Underworld (known to some as Purgatory), where we must be cleansed. In this Underworld, we are stripped of our pride, ego and false knowledge. We are shown our life and how we lived it. We are shown our mistakes and how we affected others. Before we are free to leave the Underworld, we must accept the ignorant, pathetic wretch of a person we once were. We must learn from our lives here on Earth. We must be able to understand the lessons that God placed before us. When we can do that, we can then accept Spirit fully and return home to be one with Spirit.

This idea leads me to ponder that we are surrounded by Heaven and Hell every single day. And as we go through our lives and learn the lessons placed before us, we are afforded glimpses of both all the time.