Pope Abolishes Hell. Marketing Department Freaks Out.

Everything has a marketing department. If you're a solopreneur, it's you. If you're the Catholic Church, it's The Vatican. Catholicism is the 'product' and the marketing department for that is The Vatican. It's kind of like 'Head Office' or 'Corporate'. Then, the churches are sort of like affiliate marketers. They follow the rules set by Corporate and teach people the message of Catholicism.

The thing is that the marketing department at Corporate has done really well with fear marketing when it's come to lead generation. Dr. Michael Bernard Beckwith has said that fear pushes you until a vision pulls you. Catholicism is certainly not short of visions, but most people are not there yet. They've not had a powerful enough connection with God to be pulled towards a spiritual vision, but they'll fill pews on a Sunday if it keeps them out of Hell. They'll confess their sins if it saves them from the eternal fires of damnation. They'll throw notes on a plate to save their souls from torment, but they won't voluntarily deprive themselves of their lusts and addictions purely because they aspire to a higher vision.

So, the current Pope is more a messenger of hope and love than fire and brimstone. He's pushing the 'vision' rather than the 'pain' and he just told the email list of the Catholic faith that the pain marketing message that's been pushed for over 2,000 years is kinda sorta not really a thing. The Vatican (note... The Vatican... not The Pope) immediately sought to correct this message, but it was already out. Now, as you'll see in this video, commentators are pointing out that the fire and brimstone hell never really existed as anything more than a bit of artistic marketing. So... what does this mean for you as an indiepreneur? 

What If Hell is Ego?

Oddly enough, for the last couple of years, I've been a little obsessed with the idea that there's no hell, outside of the human mind, and that the dark side of the ego is hell. I got this idea by, you know... reading the actual words in The Bible:

Revelation 12:7-12 

⁷ And war broke out in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon and his angels fought, ⁸ but they did not prevail, nor was a place found for them in heaven any longer. ⁹ So the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan, who deceives the whole world; he was cast to the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

See that? The bad guy and his friends weren't thrown to a place beneath us. They were thrown among us. My working hypothesis on this is that within each of us is light and dark, a higher self and an ego. It has been said that EGO stands for Edging God Out, and I think that's true of the shadowy side of it. There's some good in the ego - as there is (controversy alert) some good in the evil one, since he started out as God's very brightest angel. What caused him to fall was an addictive excess of ego. What causes us to fall is the same. 

My feeling is that hell is separation from The Divine. When you feel total isolation, as if nobody cares about you, and nobody is on your side, and you are not good enough, and nothing you ever do will ever count for anything... that is hell. In those moments, you forgot that you were created by The Divine (however you perceive that) and that you are here for a purpose. You are here to fulfil a destiny. Life is not happening to you, but through you. You are a powerful, inspired, manifester. Your Creator is with you always, no matter what you think or what you do. Your Creator is creating through you, when you align with your vision.

So, the marketing department of Catholicism may be freaking out that they just lost their fear marketing, but they shouldn't be too worried. The reality that hell is on earth has rarely been more obvious. Our task now is to fight... but not with anyone else. Our task is to fight the battle between heaven and hell that happens daily in our hearts and souls, and to evolve past needing the pain to push us. Let's finally allow the vision to pull us.