THE FOG – Spiritual Immaturity
It is said that the victor writes history. In this case the Roman Catholic Church has written the history of Gnosticism. This is why much of what we know about Gnosticism has been written in error. The early Church Fathers wrongly believed and falsely stated that Gnosticism evolved during a time when early Christianity was going through a turbulent period. They further stated that after this turbulence passed Christian’s rejected Gnosticism. This is not only a great error but was intentionally misleading. The truth is Gnosticism evolved from the earliest roots of paganism throughout Europa. From the Druids to the Celts and Shamanic cultures everywhere.
We must be reminded that 1000’s of years before the Roman Catholic Church existed, the sacred keepers of Goddess energy and the Gaia principle did not self-identify as gnostic (gnostikoi). This name was given to them by their adversaries as a means to insult, discriminate and undermine the beauty of the Telestai. The Telestai were the shamanic masters of the early mystery schools. In this context telestai means those who have a “purpose”, and a “goal”. Similarly, the Cathars of the 12th century were also mocked for standing up to the institutional Roman church. The Roman Church named these Gnostic’s “Cathar” which meant “pure one”. Rome did this to mock the Gnostic’s. In a sense they were calling them “smarty pants” or “Holier than thou”. But local villagers recognized the goodness and charity of the Gnostic’s and the name stuck. What was meant to be a humiliation back fired and the Roman Catholic Church eventually resorted to the violence and murder of the inquisition to vanquish the Gnostic’s.
When Irenaeus of Lyons wrote “Against Heresies” he was responding to a well-developed gnostic spirituality. Gnosticism had become one of the oldest religious traditions in the world and therefore had the maturity to stand up to the new Christian movement. As a result people like Irenaeus of Lyons, and Origen of Alexandria became some of the most ferocious critics of Gnosticism. Gnosticism was not a collection of lost souls. They were a mature spiritual presence which threatened the naive Christian status quo of the day. Rather than unite with Gnosticism, Christian Church Fathers declared it a heresy and the rank and file followed. The Roman Church approached Gnosticism in this way because at its core Christianity is essentially materialistic and does not recognize the true nature of the material world. This explains why the Roman Church so violently defended against any philosophy which challenged its greed for power and domination. Consequently Gnosticism is difficult to protect in such an environment because it does not lend its power to aggression and domination. So when the Roman Church could not match itself in logic or debate with Gnostic’s it ultimately turned to the genocidal evil of the Inquisition. Unfortunately for Gnostic’s the mystery schools were decimated by the sword.
To fathom in any small way the scope of patriarchal evil you only have to look at one small part of history. In 1209 the military leader of the Papal army was Simon de Montfort, a French nobleman highly motivated by the Pope’s promise that he could keep the land of any heretics he killed. The Crusaders were accompanied by an official representative of the Pope, a French Cistercian monk named Arnaud Amalric. De Montfort demanded that the leaders of Beziers turn over the town’s Cathar heretics to him. They refused. The Crusaders attacked.
According to written accounts, as the attack began, a soldier asked Amalric how they would be able to tell which Beziers townspeople were Catholics and which were Cathars. Amalric answered “Kill them all. God will recognize his own.” De Montfort’s army killed virtually every man, woman and child in the town estimated to be as many as 20,000 people and burned Beziers to the ground. This all happened in the name of God’s earthly representative of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, Pope Innocent III. Amalric’s infamous quotation was updated during the Vietnam War, when the saying “Kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out” became popular among American Special Forces troops.
This type of mentality is still with us today as we fail to address global issues of ethnic cleansing, immigration and refugee protection, not to mention the homicide of Mother Earth. With this type of mentality it is easy to see why the current church abuses of pedophilia, sexual abuse, and the oppression of women, just to name a few, proliferate the Roman Catholic Church and organized religion in general.
I have already explained in previous entries how Gnosticism was declared anathema by the Roman Catholic Church and is still considered so today. So I will not repeat myself here except to say that after Constantine declared himself a Christian everything changed and the Inquisitions followed. The purpose of the Inquisitions was to violently cleanse the world of Gnostics by murdering them.
However, as we all know, you cannot kill and idea and today we see a resurgence of Gnosticism. With this resurgence we can all experience a great renascence within the human family with the birthing of Homo Spiritus. Conversely it is still paramount that we not follow the pretenders of Gnosticism who declare themselves sacred wannabe’s. In our contemporary world people are thirsting for a spirituality that quenches the soul. As a result many good intentioned New Ager’s profess a slight error of spirit which translates into a very important inaccuracy which will affect its entire trajectory. This trajectory has already taken on too much steam and must be corrected soon.
The New Age movement embraces Gnosticism and the need for transformation and wakefulness. This is wonderful. But here is where the error is made. A New Ager will say “we are divine and can find divinity within”. This part is true. But here is where we can get off course. This gets translate to mean that we are Divine. One and the same with God. Gnosticism makes the following distinction. “We are all individual thoughts of God”. Initially this may not sound that different, but if not corrected in the beginning, over time this trajectory will lead to the persecutions by the proverbial sheep in wolves clothing. If we are all individual thoughts of God, we do not become God. We become one with God in divine mind (nous). This is a subtle difference which will manifest itself in very distinct ways as we grow in gnosis. For instance, if you and I share a thought or belief we are like minded. You do not become me, nor do I become you. However our thinking is one and the same. We become one in our mind. In other words we share individual thoughts from the One who is God.
Remember the devil is in the details. If we get this small distinction wrong at the beginning, then our trajectory will be off course and when we arrive at the destination of our life we will not be at the center. In other words we will not be centered and in complete unity with the One. This is why our soul will follow the path of reincarnation. To suggest that “We are Divine and a God” is actual very different than saying, “We are one in the divine mind of God”.
Today we are seeing the result of an incorrect trajectory in the abuses of a salvationist church. As we awaken to the abuses of church and state the truth of years of sexual abuses within religious faith communities is epidemic. Over the years the secrecy of sexual abuse by clergy has created what we now call “abuse bonding”. This occurs when the victim becomes attached to their abusers. This is very evident as we study the centuries of generational abuse within the Christian church created by Constantine, Irenaeus, Origen and those who followed such as Saint Augustine who propagated a disregard for children through the dogma of original sin. Can you imagine how much abuse was created by Augustine’s doctrine of original sin? How many people have carried forth this teaching into the modern age and how many children have been abused due to the sexual immaturity of patriarchal societies?
By the same token how many people have been abused over the centuries due to church infallibility proliferated on the basis of magical thinking or old fashioned cultish brainwashing? For instance today we have many people who still support their abusers by showing up at Mass every Sunday. They are told that if they believe in magical thinking as projected by the ritual of transubstantiation then what a priest does can be over looked because he is not the focus. The Eucharist is the focus. This is the great lie which has kept the Roman Catholic Church in business for millennium. For without this central teaching supported by the doctrine of original sin then the faithful would have revolted long ago. From the ritual of the Eucharist and the doctrine of original sin all other ruthless dogmas take root in the church of the illogical mind. In truth Jesus did not come to give us the Eucharist. He came to give us his teachings and wisdom. He taught us that we need to create healthy boundaries and not to transgress them. This is illustrated by the washing of the feet which is an important teaching that took place at the last supper. Unfortunately this sacred act is somehow relegated into the shadows of obscurity. In my opinion this act is much more important than the breaking of bread. What is so extraordinary about sitting at a table and breaking bread? There is nothing new in that. But imagine the impact of washing the feet of your guest before you share in a celebratory meal. Now that is truly epic and heroic!
Once the truth is set free from the sleight of hand known as abuse bonding it can be seen for what it is. Then and only then will the ecclesiastical perpetrators who have been protected by the miter of church hierarchy will be held accountable. Three simple things must occur for this to happen.
- Heed the wake-up call of gnosis and renounce superstition and spiritually immature magical thinking cloaked in cultic rituals and destructive dogmas.
- Respond to the wakeup call of gnosis by rejecting a salvationism which glorifies pain and martyrdom as a method to control the masses creating separation from the One
- Resume a balanced identification beyond a single self- deity rooted in an outdated patriarch and embrace an all-encompassing multi-deity within the diversity of the Magna Mater.
Deification of the Magna Mater
If we are all individual thoughts of the One, we ultimately share in God’s DNA and wisdom. Therefore we must return to the source of all life. This return must begin with embracing the Magna Mater or Goddess energy. It is probably safe to say that regardless of who you are or what your religious belief systems are somewhere along the line you must accept that all life depends on Mother Earth for its survival.
Magna Mater comes from the Latin which means great mother. She may have evolved from a statue found at Catalhoyuk in Anatolia, dated to the 6th millennium BC and identified as a mother goddess. In Phrygian art of the 8th century BC, a Phrygian rock-cut shrine, dated to the first half of the 6th century BC, is an endorsement to the “Mother of the mountain”. She is ancient Phrygia’s only known goddess and was probably the highest deity of the Phrygian state.
Once we acknowledge the three above mentioned statements under the luminary discourse discerned as the deification of the Magna Mater, we will return to the correct trajectory of divine progress. We will be revitalized within by correcting a belief system that places the responsibility for the fulfillment of humanity outside of itself.
The whole reason for the true Gnostics known as the Telestai to exist was to lead humanity in the mysteries of life. Its goal was to avoid controlling and manipulative behaviours which entrap the soul in the prison of the lower self. They were in opposition to a culture which thwarted balance and prevented humanity from reaching their full potential. This is in direct contrast to theocracy and the dominator complex which now rules the world. The mission of the Telestai was to teach, enlighten, and guide human potential towards the common good so it can rest within the Divine Mind of the One.
The early Gnostics or Telestai refrained from assuming any role in politics because their intention was not to change society but to produce enlightened individuals who could create a society which did not depend on established external organizations. This is a very different world view than what we choose to align ourselves with today. The Telestai took the high road, which if followed, can create a society of self-actualized adjustment not base on power and control, but rather based on an equality which does not stoop to the hubris of intimidation and violence.
The earliest gnostic systems promoted human potential. But once it was appropriated by Jewish and Christian doctrine a dualistic view of God developed know as Salvationism. The God of Salvationism was schizophrenic in that it proclaimed himself (male) as loving but also jealous, vengeful, and violent. This change in trajectory happened in the 5th century BC when some Gnostic’s were assimilated by the Persian cosmology of duality. When true Gnostics demonstrated the absurdity of the Persian view which captivated Judaism and Christianity they paid a very heavy price with their lives and the persecution of well-established mystery schools. This persecution has been happening for centuries. However the time for Gnosticism to step forward has returned in light of the current state of world affairs. For as we have stated, you cannot kill an idea. This is why Gnosticism is making a resurgence under the watchful eye of the Sophia Mythos. Today we know Sophia as the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock. As we learn the teachings of the Magna Mater through the Gaia hypothesis our consciousness will be elevated to a supreme Gnostic awareness. This awareness asserts that we must throw off the yoke of a schizophrenic God of control and compulsion to experience the loving embrace of a liberating God of infinite human potential.
The God of Christians and Jews is schizophrenic because he represents both good and evil. This is the Demiurge who is both loving and violently abusive at the same time. The power of good and evil is always doing battle and no one wins. This is why abusing bonding can so easily captivate its audience. This has been the model which humanity has chosen to follow since Zoroastrianism.
However a true Gnostic cosmology states there is no struggle between good and evil. There are only degrees of error along a continuum. This means hate and love are connected and do not battle. They simply represent humanity at different ends of the spectrum. Therefore our goal is to awaken to evil so we can move along the continuum to embrace love. This means waking up to human potential. The systems of social management we endure today only exist to enslave us to the next shinny thing. As a result the destructive human trajectory which has been orbiting the planet for centuries is bringing us closer and closer to mass suicide through war, greed and climate change. The reality is if we continue to pursue the next shiny thing we will never wake up any further along the continuum of love. In fact we will probably deviate further down the continuum towards hate and the incarnation of evil. But this does not have to happen. If we stop believing in this kind of salvationistic dualism we can transcend the artificial boundaries of both church and state and evolve upwards along the continuum of wakefulness, love and gnosis.
This is why Gnosticism is ultimately the only cosmology which can save the human species. It is the only spiritual discipline which can replace the victim and perpetrator bond which has been so strongly entrenched within our collective and individual minds. To put it bluntly the only thing which continues to hold us back is spiritual immaturity. Gnosis is no secret. It is free to anyone who truly desires it. But many are still not ready to hear the evidence and will rebel at the truth. This has happened to Gnostics throughout history. This is why throughout history there have always been Gnostics like Simon Magus, Valentinius, Galileo Galilei, Carl Gustav Jung, Albert Einstein, the Buddha and Jesus the Christ, who spoke the truth with no guarantee.
To find our way home we must pass through levels of awakening. If Homo Spiritus does not expand within the mind of God, the Patriarchal religions of the world will only continue to spread their unique brands of death and destruction. Once salvationist religions are exposed for what they are we will discover the profound difference between a spiritual novice and the spiritually immature. The immature person refuses to look within and therefore remains lost in the destructive patterns of the past. In contrast, the spiritual novice is open to the future and possesses the motivation to look within and rises to the occasion. On rising, the novice who continues on their mission can cross the threshold of the enlightened. This is a living example of the continuum of life within a Gnostic matrix. Gnosticism is not a religion or philosophy. It is a way of life which can lead the soul home. For if we do nothing, the suppressive salvationist religions of the world will fulfill their apocalyptic destiny.
Humans being are not machines. We are organic. When we speak of personal growth we are affirming something within which needs to grow. Growth is organic. Whether a person, flower or the Magna Mater. Once we understand that personal growth is organic we will comprehend that all life needs to be nurtured and loved to flourish. If you truly want to heal the past you only need to change your experience in the present moment. You can accomplish this by devoting time to your own personal growth. Then you will witness your relationship with both the past and the present mature and transform. This is the mature spirituality of Telestai and the promise of the healing energy of Gnosis.
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