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Post by Soulgazer on Jul 3, 2014 5:08:13 GMT -5
What is "gnosis"? To be accurate, it means "experiential knowledge of God through the indwelling Christ", and in a very esoteric sense, very nearly everybody has it; I.e. if sticking pins in a babies eyes strikes you as very very wrong, and assuming that nobody has ever told you so, THAT is gnosis on a very basic level. So, what does even this tiny bit of gnosis tell us? It tells us that God does not approve of torturing babies. Why is this important? Because higher forms of gnosis bring us into deeper contact with the Christos within, revealing more and more about the Father.
(34) Beware that no one lead you astray saying Lo here or lo there! For the Son of Man is within you.
35) Follow after Him!
36) Those who seek Him will find Him. ~Gospel of Mary
John 17:3New American Standard Bible (NASB)
3 This is eternal life, that they may know(γινώσκωσι) You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.
From "Vincents word studies"
Might know (γινώσκωσι)
Might recognize or perceive. This is striking, that eternal life consists in knowledge, or rather the pursuit of knowledge, since the present tense marks a continuance, a progressive perception of God in Christ. That they might learn to know. Compare Joh 17:23; Joh 10:38; Jo1 5:20; Jo1 4:7, Jo1 4:8.
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Post by phantasman on Jul 3, 2014 9:59:47 GMT -5
I found this right in line with the thoughts I had this morning (in prayer).
I, once again, had my thoughts moved towards Eden and the serpent. We have a God saying if Adam ate he would die. We have a serpent saying if Adam ate he would "not" die.
In Secret John, Jesus tells John that he used the serpent to make Adam eat. Once Adam complied the serpent was cursed.
And he said, "Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death." -Thomas
Once again, we find that at the beginning, we use the physical to attempt to describe the spiritual. Who lied? If Christ teaches we will not die, is he following the words of (a creator) God or did he in fact use the serpent to save mankind? If we see a cursed animal scurrying the Earth, are we applying a physical view to see truth, or a spiritual one? The eye's deceive. For the prince of this Earth controls Earthly things, the physical. How easily led we are if we don't see the difference between the two.
It is the difference of defining Christ with the OT, or Christ defining the OT. It is the difference between defining the spirit with the physical, or defining the physical with the spirit. Intellect in physical is nothing. Intellect in spiritual is everything.
63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.-John 6
If we deny spiritual knowledge (the non Canon?,seeking truth from within) and use physical knowledge instead, we have recreated the Pharisees and priests and called it a church (of Christ).
My view anyways.
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Post by friendofsophia on Jul 4, 2014 15:49:42 GMT -5
This reminds me of the numerous 1980's GI Joe public service announcements from my childhood: "Now you know, and knowing is half the battle!". I think this little bit of wisdom from an unlikely source applies to Gnostic Christianity and goes with what you both have said. When faced with a decision (moral or otherwise) we are faced with the task of sifting through the countless "voices" from within us. Countless conflicting points of view, some from archons, some from just plain a-holes, but somewhere is the voice from our Spirit. It, at times, is a voice that shakes us up and even scares us a bit as it is a voice that often seems so alien from the illusory world and systems we far to often accept as real. However, on a deep level it is profoundly familiar and even comforting (i.e. the Comforter) since it give us a taste of who we are, from where we came, and what we truly want to do........and with it an insight into the loving nature of the true God: Gnosis!
Without Gnosis, our decisions are often no more than guessing at a multiple choice question from the various forces that rule us and whether we look back on it as a "good" or "bad" decision seems to depend highly on whether the archons were in a friendly type mood when they wrote the question. Yet Gnosis gives us freedom. It gives us a real choice.......yet there is still a choice to be made which requires faith. There is clearly a difference in having faith in that which you know from the most innermost and authentic aspect of yourself and faith in some external imposed doctrine or rule book.......yet faith is essential none the less. Even though we know something, we can still choose not to act based on that knowledge and we then soon forgot we knew anything at all......as forgetfulness seems to be the natural state of this world. Yet when we do choose to have faith and follow our Spirit, we embody Christ and bring Light into a world ruled by darkness.
The Eden myth, for me too, has been a source of spiritual growth. When I first discovered Gnosticism, I was put off a bit by the alternative takes on it....and on the concept of the demiurge as well. After all, despite how drawn I was to the rebellion and open mindedness of it (as well as knowing on a deep level there resided within it a spark of truth), there was still a lot of unconscious fear that it was going to actually piss off God. What if the Gnostics really were Satanists in disguise like the orthodoxy has always insisted? What if I was wrong? Yet the God I knew in my life and saw in the nature of Jesus was one of love, forgiveness, and grace.......not the type of god that would get all touchy about someone being inspired by the wrong myth!
Which brings us to my take on the garden. I have come to see the serpent as a projection of Eve rather than a completely separate figure. After all, Adam didn't see the serpent, only Eve. Also the serpent, like her, received an extra curse from the demiurge. Something that has always bothered me about the gnostic tale of Eve being raped by the archons (as in "Hypostasis of the Archons" and "Apocryphon of John") was that the Spirit seemed to leave her in her time of greatest need. Yet perhaps this speaks to the way we are all raped by the world (as in Exegesis on the Soul) and we forget about our Spirit and identify instead with our flesh which is under their control. Yet our Spirit doesn't leave us, she is deep within us and is projected out in ways to wake us back up.
Perhaps Eve had repressed the memory of her rape, perhaps she was trying to follow the archon's rules in hope that they would be gentle next time, perhaps she had started to think her oppressors really had her best intentions in mind.......yet something deep within her knew this was bullshit. This knowledge seemed foreign and frightening like a serpent.....but yet undeniably wise. She chose not only to eat of this Gnosis herself but to also share it with Adam out of love. In my humble opinion, I see this version of the myth as a beautiful poetic expression of Eve being inspired by the Holy Spirit and choosing to bravely act as a Christ. Of course as the story goes, they soon forget much of what they had known. They identify with the body once again and, fearing the punishment of the demiurge, they point the blame at others (for something they know deep down they were right to do). I think we can all relate to this on some level. That's why we look to the story of Jesus, who persevered and held on to that Gnosis and lived based on it, despite all the archons did to try to get him to forget!
That's my take on it anyway.
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