Neale Donald Walsh: What is Hell?
God's Response: It is the consequence of the worst possible outcome of your choices, decisions, and creations. It is the natural consequence of any thought which denies Me, or says no to Who You Are in relationship to Me. It is the pain you suffer through wrong thinking. Yet even the term "wrong thinking" is a misnomer, because there is no such thing as that which is wrong. Hell is the opposite of joy. It is unfulfillment. It is knowing Who and What You Are, and failing to experience that. It is being less. That is hell, and there is none greater for your soul. But hell does not exist as this place you have fantasized, where you burn in some everlasting fire, or exist in some state of everlasting torment. What purpose could I have in that? Even if I did hold the extraordinarily unGodly thought that you did not "deserve" heaven, why would I have a need to seek some kind of revenge, or punishment, for your failing? Wouldn't it be a simple matter for Me to just dispose of you? What vengeful part of me would require that I subject you to eternal suffering of a type and at a level beyond description? If you answer, the need for justice, would not a simple denial of communion with Me in heaven serve the ends of justice? Is the unending infliction of pain also required? I tell you there is no such experience after death as you have constructed in your fear-based theologies. Yet there is an experience of the soul so unhappy, so incomplete, so less than whole, so separated from God's greatest joy, that to your soul this would be hell. But I tell you I do not send you there, nor do I cause this experience to be visited upon you. You, yourself, create the experience, whenever and however you separate your Self from your own highest thought about you. You, yourself, create the experience, whenever you deny your Self; whenever you reject Who and What You Really Are. Yet even this experience is never eternal. It cannot be, for it is not My plan that you shall be separated from Me forever and ever. Indeed, such a thing is an impossibility - for to achieve such an event, not only would you have to deny Who You Are - I would have to as well. This I will never do. And so long as one of us holds the truth about you, the truth about you shall ultimately prevail.
Neale Donald Walsh: But if there is no hell, does that mean I can do what I want, act as I wish, commit any act, without fear of retribution?
God's Response: Is it fear that you need in order to be, do, and have what is intrinsically right? Must you be threatened in order to "be good"? And what is "being good"? Who gets to have the final say about that? Who sets the guidelines? Who makes the rules? I tell you this: You are your own rule-maker. You set the guidelines. And you decide how well you have done; how well you are doing. For you are the one who has decided Who and What You Really Are - and Who You Want to be. And you are the only one who can assess how well you're doing. No one else will judge you ever, for why, and how, could God judge God's own creation and call it bad? If I wanted you to be and do everything perfectly, I would have left you in the state of total perfection whence you came. The whole point of the process was for you to discover yourself, create your Self, as you truly are - and as you truly wish to be. Yet you could not be that unless you also had a choice to be something else. Should I therefore punish you for making a choice that I Myself have laid before you? If I did not want you to make the second choice, why would I create other than the first? This is a question you must ask yourself before you would assign Me the role of a condemning God. The direct answer to your question is, yes, you may do as you wish without fear of retribution. It may serve you, however, to be aware of consequences. Consequences are results. Natural outcomes. These are not at all the same as retributions, or punishments. Outcomes are simply that. They are what results from the natural application of natural laws. They are that which occurs, quite predictably, as a consequence of what has occurred. All physical life functions in accordance with natural laws. Once you remember these laws, and apply them, you have mastered life at the physical level. What seems like punishment to you - or what you would call evil, or bad luck - is nothing more than a natural law asserting itself.
