Tara E

“You have been to hell, Ketut?"
He smiled. Of course he's been there.
What's it like in hell?"
Same like in heaven," he said.
He saw my confusion and tried to explain. "Universe is a circle, Liss."
He said. "To up, to down -- all same, at end."
I remembered an old Christian mystic notion: As above, so below.
I asked. "Then how can you tell the difference between heaven and hell?"
Because of how you go. Heaven, you go up, through seven happy places. Hell, you go down, through seven sad places. This is why it better for you to go up, Liss." He laughed.
Same-same," he said. "Same in end, so better to be happy in journey."
I said, "So, if heaven is love, then hell is.. "
Love, too," he said.
Ketut laughed again, "Always so difficult for young people to understand this!”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“He always perceives this world as outside himself, for this is crucial to his adjustment. He does not realize that he makes this world, for there is no world outside of him. Everything you perceive as the outside world is merely your attempt to maintain your ego identification. from: A Course In Miracles 12.III. 6.6 and 7.4
"Forgiveness is an earthly form of love" (W-pI.186.14:1). A Course In Miracles
"Remember always that you cannot be anywhere except in the Mind of God." ACIM Chap 9.VIII.5.3

ACIM Chapter 2, Section V
"The Function of the Miracle Worker"
Paragraphs 8-18
Commentary by Robert Perry
"The only solution lies in being willing to look within, upon our own defiled altar. There is a place in our mind that was created to be totally devoted to God, but we have defiled this place with other devotions. We need to be willing to walk into the church of our mind and witness the desecrations on this altar. Only then will we really see "the unequivocal fact that healing is necessary" (8:1). Are we willing to look on the unequivocal fact that we need healing? Only then will we open up "the real vision" (8:4), which will allow us to see past what our physical eyes see and gaze on the light of purity beyond.”
― Robert Perry, Path of Light: Stepping into Peace with A Course in Miracles

“A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Toska - noun /ˈtō-skə/ - Russian word roughly translated as sadness, melancholia, lugubriousness.

"No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deepest and most painful, it is a sensation of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases it may be the desire for somebody of something specific, nostalgia, love-sickness. At the lowest level it grades into ennui, boredom.”
― Vladimir Nabokov