Hell is not as has been said other people, hell is our own memory which burning in we all too often seek salvation from in the former. Paradise is always the other, but the other is not always paradisiacal. It is through the other that what we are becomes manifest as they draw out from us the motives, impulses, and ideas and desires that before lay stagnant at the core of our being’s dark pool of promise. They may well be our judgement, but they are neither our jail nor jailer, memory is, memories of what manifested as milk bottles sparkled on the pink cheek of dawn to eyes the ecstasies of alcohol or lust had already exhausted. Our fantasies of what we think we would most like to be and so convince ourselves we are, are phantoms that turn on us like vengeful ghosts or dissolve in our repudiation as what we are stands, not harsh as such but just there, in the mirror of the other. Often it is the memories of such imaginings that most condemn though there are those who find in them their redemption- which of course is nonsense as lies which at their essence these illusions are can never redeem. Suffering in itself does not redeem either, only the sufferings that arise from embracing the truth can have that effect.
Theophan.
