What strikes me about the the idea of Purgatory is that it constitutes a metaphysical means to an end for the struggling soul upon the time of death; to purge itself of forgivable sin for the purpose of rising to Paradise. The venture from this upper region of damnation however comes at the divine price of vast and required commitment to effort, labor, time. The transcendence from Hell, via the laborious commitment to the terms of Purgatory, was famously expressed through Dante Alegheri’s ‘The Divine Comedy’, where author himself was lead by Virgil and then Camille, to climb an enormous spiral of stone toward its ‘end’, to Paradise above. It was however suggested by St. Augustine of Hippo that the metaphysical experience of laboring through Purgatory can be experienced while one is alive within the corporeal world. If it is so that the metaphysical experience of Purgatorium is feasibly possible during life, it must be made possible as via the human soul; this may be so as the soul allows access to, what is believed in catholic and christian doctrine, the regions of Damnation, Purgatory and Paradise. The doors to such experiences are splayed wide open upon death. Within life however, it seems that glimpses are possible. My grounds for this is supported from what I’ve read from Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, and Origin. My own experiences in both 2006 and 2007 constituted the best proof of the Human soul that I could have ever imagined.

Philosophically I consider the problem with ‘Being’, as considered by Rene’ Descartes, as Cartesian Dualism; the fact that human beings tend to divide all that they experience into a set of ‘self’ and ‘other’. Immanuel Kant examines invites this problem to an examination of the Ontological, and then eventually by Martin Heidegger, who refines this and proposed that the experience of Self and Other is imposed upon human beings as per order of Dasein. It’s been a personal struggle for me to be aware of myself as separated from other selves, and even from the world at large; everything seems to be, in my experiences, and in everyone else's I presume, an en-labled entity separate from myself. The result of this experience is a feeling of separation and non-integration of the world, despite that I am physically "there". I’ve met people in my past who have admitted to me that they experience the world as if it all was on the other side of a sheet of glass, or as if watching it on a tv screen. As analogy, Purgatory seems to be a fitting description of this ontological experience. Being neither here nor there, having not yet removing that barrier between one’s self and the world beyond them. A synthesis of self and other can be possible, but I wonder what labor and amount of time would be required in the mind and soul to accomplish this.