Latex_horse and I have corresponded about this before, and concur with your thoughts on Helheim. My feeling is that we are here to advance. If we begin our journey in Midgard, if we have decided that we've reached our rock bottom and need to make a change in our lives and be free of the destructive habit that keeps us there, then that is where we stay until we are ready to advance.

Midgard is where we are when we've reached bottom and we acknowledge to ourselves and to our fellows that we are ready to take the steps that we need to take to let go of PMO and find better ways to deal with stress and with situations and people that push our buttons.

At it's core, this game is group therapy. When we go to any kind of support group there is not a punitive system of demerits or of making people sit in the back or whatever if they mess up. There is accountability and self-accountability. And when we mess up we tell our brother Vikings what happened, and we go on. And when we see others mess up, we reach out and we acknowledge their struggle. That's part of progress, of advancing, of rising: We don't keep the secrets anymore. This addiction shrivels up when the light of Truth shines on it. It dies when we and our brother Vikings treat each other with compassion and with self-compassion - we all know what it's like; the urges, the furtiveness, the hiding, and all the other games we play when we're uncomfortable or hurting or whatever, and we turn to PMO for relief.

And if we come here and find even more punishment it can become depressing. There have been players stuck in the ninth circle of Helheim for more than a year and I think it's because once they slip down to "before the beginning of the path" they lose hope and energy, and the feeling of doing something positive. Being in Helheim is like being in debt or in negative numbers; a person thinks "I have to work twice as hard just to get to zero, just to get to where I started! What's the point in all this futility?"