gnosticwill's Blog

Here is something I really like -a poem by Rudyard Kipling which a friend and teacher sent me some years ago. At the time I found it interesting but hard to understand, so I put it aside until recently.

Now I have a new approach to how I apply efforts to investigate and experience… It’s simple common sense really – I don’t accept everything as it first appears but I question, and make efforts to go deeper to understand the hidden meaning, which I have found is often in plain sight.

I strongly believe  that this effort to search for the truth of things is the single most important attitude I have in my search for inner knowledge….

If

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too;

If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,

Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,

Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,

And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise.

If you can dream – and not make dreams your master;

If you can think – and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to broken,

And stoop and build ‘em up with wornout tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings – nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,

If all men count with you, but none too much;

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run -

Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,

And – which is more – you’ll be a Man my son!

By Rudyard Kipling

 

Earlier this week I had some terrible news about an ex-workmate, a 15 you old boy who was an apprentice with a friend of mine. I had worked with him a few times earlier this year, and liked him a lot. I felt a little protective of him, as he seemed quite innocent despite having had a hard life, and I thought that one day he would be a good man, when he matures.

If my intuition was working, I was not paying any attention. The poor boy was caught interfering with his 4 year old sister, apparently this had been going on for some time, the sister is an identical twin and there is a brother who is 9. All of them have been interfered with. 

When I heard this I felt sick and had to stop what I was doing and really concentrate just to keep listening to the conversation. While I was gathering myself the boys on my worksite had started joking – this made me feel even worse… (I have a lot of thinking to do about the nature of humour). 

I could not stop thinking about it and wondered how a 15 year old boy could learn such behaviour? And how he came to be in such an horrific state? And what must have been done to him? 

I started to think about how we all have the same potential, and wondered if given the same circumstances I imagine this poor boy has suffered, could I or anyone else have ended up the same, even at such an early age? 

In trying to understand how he came to such a place I thought about how I was at 15 years of age, hating the world with a big chip on my shoulder, fighting against everything and blaming my family and my upbringing. Having no concept of personal responsibility or how my actions affect the people around me. 

It seems too easy to simply judge him and dismiss him as evil, as different from me, as different from normal people…  

It reminded me of something I read in the “The Flight of the Feathered Serpent” something that Jesus said to the Disciples “do not judge, so that you are not judged, because with the same judgement you will be judged. All that is given to you to see outside is only a reflection of what lies in your heart, the world and men are what you are”.

So I started to look within, to make efforts to understand what lies in my heart. One of the first things I saw is that I continually judge others – the closer the person the more harsh the judgement. In this way I have been doing myself so much harm on a lot of different levels. I noticed how I feed a lot of negativity and pride. I noticed that the pride stops me from hearing what other people say so I devalue their words and cut myself off from so much that could help me. The belief that I know more, am smarter have studied harder – it’s so empty and limits the whole of my life.  

How lucky I am to have come across Gnosis to have learned about self observation - to have the tools that give back the responsibility for how I think, feel and act. 

Even though this is not really about me, I have learned something valuable … now comes the hard part -facing with courage the truth of what is within and making the necessary changes. What a shame I had to discover something so terrible in a work mate to see something so harmful in myself…

It is time for people to move past their beliefs. To say, “I believe,” is the same as saying, “I do not know from personal experience, but I have chosen some arbitrary story or explanation.” Unfortunately most people stop there and solidify their beliefs in their mind. They stick with their beliefs, defend them and close their mind to other possibilities. But Masters insist that we can “know”.

Michael Skowronski

While reading my favorite book “The Flight of the Feathered Serpent” I came across something beautiful that spoke to me about sex and where it fits in the spiritual path.

Here is an excerpt from the book.

It’s a beautiful poem and I get so much from it, every time I read it, that I feel the need to share…

Like much of this book it needs a lot of study, quiet thought and meditation to really get the most from.

I find that the longing to know, the longing to understand, is an important key, and through that longing many answers have and will continue to come… 

 
            “God gave the sun the earth as wife and blessed that love when he created the moon.

In this way he also created you, woman, to pour His life over human love.

And so that in the pleasure of loving the soul finds the path of return to where there is always today, where there is no tomorrow.

For just as life goes to death for love, so does love re-emerge from death where there is an awakened heart that knows how to contain it in its love and in its death.

With each kiss a bit of the soul dies when forgetting what life is in love.

And, likewise, with each kiss, it can revive the soul of the one who knows how to die.

Oh, paradox of creation!

In each breath of love there is a sigh which is eternity.

And each caress the fire of death and resurrection also burns.

Raise the simple and plain love to the highest summits!

And let loving and kissing be a prayer of life to the most intimate being which is the truth and is God.

For it is not you who loves but the love of the Father who lives within you.

Yours will be His most powerful blessing if in each kiss you give and receive you sanctify His name, keeping his presence in your most intimate yearnings.

And in your love, look first for the kingdom of God and his justice too, for everything else, even the privilege of being, will be given to you as well.

And don’t be afraid to love, lest be afraid of those who could turn your love into prejudice or evil.

Make your union a serene path towards the heavens.

While you carry his presence in your hearts, you will truly be loving God above all things as well as loving one another.

And in the instant of your supreme happiness, you will be one with Him and His creation.”

from The Flight of the Feathered Serpent.

or listen to Belzebuub talk about Alchemy and why we need it for our spiritual work http://www.belzebuub.com/node/465

Over the years I have studied several martial arts and come across many concepts that are very Spiritual.

It seems to me the root of Martial Arts is a Spiritual one. 

My old Karate Club, Golden Cobra has a little history of Martial Arts which, every student learns, it go’s something like – in 70-543 BC and Indian Buddhist monk called Bodhidharma travelled to China to teach Zen Buddhism.  When he arrived after travelling across India and china Bodhidharma saw that the monks were incapable of withstanding the severe physical and mental discipline required. He introduced some breathing exercises and forms based on animal movements…  From there it moved into Japan… 

The Japanese have many single words which describe the Spiritual; in English we use many sentences to describe the same thing…

Zanshin which, I first learned about while practicing Aikido. It is also very important in Karate and Iaido or the art of drawing the Japanese Sward.

Zanshin means to do each thing completely. Doing this does not mean to stick and hold. Sometimes, in sitting, you find yourself lost in a thought and then you wake up and cut the thought; then you find yourself going back to check if you've cut that thought. But that thought is gone and you are only trying to find a definition of yourself, you are only trying to become someone who has “cut the thought.” Instead, when you wake up from the thought, that's it. What now? Zanshin then means, a mind of continual readiness, like a mirror ready to reflect whatever is shown to it.

In the martial arts, Zanshin means having no break in our activity, because there is no time to take back a stride or block and fix it. It also means going beyond technique, because we cannot force the situation to conform to the technique. The angle of the strike and the force of the strike must be adjusted immediately to the energy of the partner.

In practice we must go beyond strategies of defense and hesitation. We must open up to the energy of the senses/mind itself as it expresses itself as seeing, hearing, touching, tasting, smelling and thinking. Penetrating into this energy, we must go beyond all barriers.

Another word is Mushin which again I came across in Aikido…

Mushin: Literally "no mind." A state of cognitive awareness characterized by the absence of discursive thought. A state of mind in which the mind acts/reacts without hypostatization of concepts. Mushin is often erroneously taken to be a state of mere spontaneity. Although spontaneity is a feature of Mushin, it is not straightforwardly identical with it. It might be said that when in a state of Mushin, one is free to use concepts and distinctions without being used by them.

In modern Gnosticism we Practice bringing our attention the the present moment not letting any thought or feeling distract us from the experience of the moment. this seems very close to Zanshin.

We also strive to experience the world as it is objectively free from the machinations of the mind free from its drives tis desires... it could be Mushin.

what do you think?

The feathered serpent must fly. When you know what the flight of the feathered serpent is, you will know what to do. Until then…make it clear that the message of the immortals vibrates throughout the centuries.

WAKE UP! KNOW YOURSELF!

The mysterious impulse which focuses your attention upon these manuscripts is nothing but the echo of the cry which has awakened the immortal essence of your own blood. And by invoking the glorious forces of life, simultaneously you have evoked the sinister forces of death.

The former and the latter are yourself, so do not fear.

Confront them, know them, subdue them.

Your destiny is to be master of both.

And even though you often believe you have lost the path which takes you to the awakening, you will never be alone. And your losing the way is nothing but a testing ground in which your alert intelligence attempts shy steps along all tracks, shaking off the lethargy of everything that is mortal.

It is necessary that you obtain experience.

Never ask anybody “What do I have to do?” because that is the most fatal question of all. If you ask a fool, one who is asleep, you will be inviting him to drag you into a dream and with it you will fall into a double foolishness and it will be twice as difficult to wake up again. And if you ask your question to a wise one, an awakened one, you will perceive how useless it is, because an awakened one will always answer:

“Do what you feel is best. If you put your heart in it, always acting in a state of alertness, you will gain a great experience”.

In the end you will make out of solitude and silence you most precious companions, immersing with them into the depths of yourself. You will gradually be astounded at the horror of your ‘dream’ which is your human slavery. And, by the same token your strength to fight back for your freedom will increase.

Not everyone chooses this path which takes you to the very heart of things.

If you have evoked your friends, you have also put your worst enemies on guard. The one and the other will appear within you, and in front of you, in a thousand different forms, and you will often confuse them during your first steps. Your friends will not always be the most charming or pleasant because they will deprive you of everything you regard as stable.

Then your jealous enemies, smirking, will display in front of your inner vision thousands of possibilities to elevate you to your actual condition. If you give in and bite the poisoned fruit which they offer, you will become tied up with the triple chains of illusion and of sleep that always takes over those who are naïve and do not know the value of experience and opposition.

Soon, however, you will know your friends in the infinite silence that you will throw yourself into, longing and thirsting for words of truth. It is then that you will feel that ‘something’ flowing, rough or smooth, depending on the circumstances, and the mere fact of feeling it will show you that you are on the path to the complete awakening.

Because that word that something is you yourself the Master the Creator.

From The Flight of the Feathered Serpent by Armando Cosani

In my personal search for truth I have tried many things, read many books, attended many lectures and all of it – both the good and the bad – eventually led me to one thing…

“Gnosis”

There I was given the tools that allowed me to start to find the truth for myself; it’s that longing which is important, combined with the sincere efforts to understand…

Here is another little poem which points to something – but for it to have value each of us has to unravel it ourselves.

Nothing worthwhile comes easily.

This is worth the effort…

“Don’t doubt of the doubt, and doubt.

But doubt with faith, and even doubt about faith.

For isn’t doubt inertia in the slope of faith towards darkness,

And strength in the impulse to reach comprehension?

Do not doubt, and however, doubt

Of everything you believe to be true

For doubt is also true,

In itself and for itself.

Doubting of doubt

And doubting with faith and of faith,

You will see what is illusory of doubt and faith

Collapsing at your feet…

And rising majestically before your eyes

Doubt made truth”

From the Flight of the Feathered Serpent.