Write By Example Of This Distinguishing Heaven, Earth, & Purgatory In City Of Angels Essay

In the film City of Angels, Seth is absolutely living in a state of purgatory as an angel. His charge is to watch over those who are near death and guide them on their journey to the afterlife. As such, until he transitions and becomes human, he does not truly inhabit earth or heaven. Seth exists in a realm that is suspended between heaven and earth. It is a dimension in which the angels’ inner knowing and connection to heaven and the celestial worlds is solid, yet their experience of the world and its multidimensional nature is nowhere near as enjoyable as it would be if they were to actually be in heaven. Purgatory is a bit of a limbo state in which individuals who move through it pass from one realm to the next—or otherwise transform themselves in some way—to prepare for the next stage of their evolutionary growth. The film does a masterful job of revealing how these dimensions, although they exist independently of each other, are all intertwined and overlap to form an interconnected web that creates, sustains, and renews all life in constant cycles. This complicates how we typically view the distinction between heaven and earth by introducing a third conditional phase of an individual’s soul growth. Standard belief, among those who profess that there is an afterlife or a heaven to which souls return, is that we take on an earthly body to experience life on earth, and then our soul transcends the body once more to return to heaven. By introducing a third dimension or realm which the soul passes through to reach heaven, the soul’s journey becomes more complex and multifaceted. Heaven and earth are no longer the only possible realms through which people’s memories and subconscious journey to reach resolution, healing, and peace.