Here's some writing on my experience of meditating on Hell.
The image of Hell has always loomed somewhat large in my life. From watching Bugs Bunny cartoons s a kid (Yosemite Sam went to Hell and me the Devil), to HBOs prison drama Oz, I've always been attracted to Hellish realms. I think I have a sense that there's spiritual gold to be found there.
This reached a crescendo a few years back when I engaged in a running dialogue with a fundamentalist Christian friend. She introduced me to literature critical of 'the New Age' from a Christian perspective. It was of a vastly better quality than I'd anticipated, comprising mostly of people who'd have very negative experiences around meditation or channelling (mostly channelling) which had been alleviated by calling on Jesus Christ.
I was further impressed at the theological rebuttal they had to the doctrine of Oneness. Essentially they saw it as a diabolical deception, if the Devil could convince us we are one with God through inducing a counterfeit spiritual experience, we then wouldn't think we needed the redemption of Jesus and we'd end up going to Hell. Now, I'm just amazed that someone had that thought!
I really wanted to engage with these ideas as fully as I could, so I would sit and meditate upon them. It was challenging, as if I wanted to contemplate any issue I would do so by first connecting to that place of Oneness. It was my foundation. Now however, the foundation itself was the thing I was being asked to question, but what do I stand on to do that? It's not easy.
What started to open up was a deeper sense of the fires of Hell and the presence of evil. An openness to the possibility I was deceived in everything I thought I knew by a malevolent force (I'd read Descartes Meditations when I was fifteen so I was familiar with this in principle). I meditated on this to the point that it infected my dreams, on several occasions I woke in the night to a waking dream of falling into Hell having fallen for Satan's deceptions. This was extremely scary as I thought I might actually be dying at these times (I think because I was bordering on an ego-death inherent in the expedience).
On the final occasion this happened I found myself in my bed having the feeling of being sucked into Hell. I would always fully resist this and attempt to pull myself back into fully waking consciousness (it did feel like something that was really happening). On this occasion I steadied myself enough to acknowledge that I would either face this or be running from it forever. I would take the chance that in entering into the experience I would die and actually go to Hell. I turned and faced the image fully and allowed myself to fall into it. I could see Satan on his throne and it felt like I was surrendering down at his feet.
As soon as I stopped resisting and fully embraced it the fire transformed into a classic mystical experience of an infinite ocean of love, from which I was not separate. That had been the true nature of the fire all along, my resistance to it had made it burn.
Whilst I still find Hell a deeply fruitful (and somewhat fearful) realm for contemplation, this experience did fundamentally shift my sense of hadephobia. It made meditating on Hell ultimately a positive experience.