When I was a child growing up in the church, I always imagined spirit prison to be a place. In my mind's eye I visualized it as being separated from paradise by a big chasm.
I've since wondered where I got that impression. When I was old enough to be baptized, my parents went through the missionary discussions with our family for our FHE for a month or so. I remember vividly my dad drawing the plan of salvation, and with it the circle for the spirit world divided in two by a line that separated paradise and spirit prison.
It has to have been over a decade ago since this came out, but the
Brigham Young PH/Relief Society manual had a chapter on this subject. In it, BY described the spirit world like this -
"...The spirits that dwell in these tabernacles on this earth, when they leave them go directly into this world of spirits. What! A congregated mass of inhabitants there in spirit, mingling with each other, as they do here? Yes, brethren, they are there together, and if they associate together, and collect together, in clans and in societies as they do here, it is their privilege. No doubt they yet, more or less, see, hear, converse and have to do with each other, both good and bad. (my emphasis) If the Elders of Israel in these latter times go and preach to the spirits in prison, they associate with them, precisely as our Elders associate with the wicked in the flesh, when they go to preach to them (DBY, 378)."My return missionary friends and I discussed this chapter at length for weeks after the lesson was taught. It was interesting, and kind of exciting to us, to think of the conditions of the spirit world being like this one.
In effect, BY was playing off Milton in
Paradise Lost, where Satan says, "The mind is its own place and in itself, can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven."
Anyway, thought I'd throw some actual LDS teachings into the discussion for fun.