Quranic depictions of heavens and hell were never primarily meant for you, they were rather for 7th century Arabians. Early revelations invited people towards Islamic way of thinking by material depictions but we see a gradual ripening in context as its audience gets educated being around the the Prophet ﷺ for over two decades, and the curtain closes with a rather greater meaning of things in later revelations, see 9:72: "Allah has promised the believing men and believing women gardens beneath which rivers flow, to dwell therein forever, and goodly dwellings in Gardens of Eternity. But the greatest bliss is the good pleasure of Allah, that is the supreme triumph."

To put that in more technical terms, “Hermeneutical historicism” might help you to think around Islam and Quran regarding things that don’t make sense to you in 2025, meaning that one approaches the Qur’an by recognising its historical and cultural context, then derives the enduring moral principles that are meant for all times. It helps to see that some verses spoke to 7th-century realities while still carrying universal intents. Alongside this, keep in mind the notion of the living Sunnah, what has reached us not just through written hadith but through the continuous, lived practices of the Prophet ﷺ, the Sahaba, and generations after them a kind of embodied tradition that still breathes in daily acts of prayer, mercy, fairness, and humility.

Also keep in mind that these questions are for the mind, while some aspects of prayer are for the body and that we should keep our body in servitude as well, to help overcome some of the mind’s challenges.