OK so anyone who's been following my journey over the past several months, knows that I have really latched onto the Gnostic mythologies/backstory WRT the Romanization of what is known today as "Christianity" (and what was left out of the spirituality that was actually practiced, on the ground, during the so-called "Christian" times).
So I've been reading extensively, mostly the ancient texts and some of the commentaries on same, as well as some of the blogs and discussion forums that are out there on the topic. Problem is, most of the blogs are run by Gnostic clergy, and the discussion boards are populated with Gnostic believers.
And this is a problem why you ask? Notice the capitalization of the word Gnostic. That uppercase "G" means the difference between spirituality and religion. Institutionalized religion. The funny hats and long robes, the stupid rituals, the whole nine yards. So initially that really put me off, from considering it as a "path", even though I felt drawn to it (as witness the dualism discussion I engaged here, and in at least one other forum, in an attempt to dissuade myself from falling down the rabbit hole again).
Through all my reading, and in between the talk of altars and vestments and rituals (yuckyuckyuckyuckyyuckypoopoo), there was an undercurrent thread of "G/gnosticism is an experiential religion --- gnosis is the act of knowing yourself." Yeah, isn't that what
the Quakers said too?!?
Not exactly. There are accounts, even though they are few and far between, on the "ecclesiastical" discussion boards (trust me, these people have nothing to do with Ecclesiastes), people who practiced "by themselves", and they discussed what each of them did. The thing that struck me was how every one of them did something different, based on who/where they were, and what their lives were like.
It was definitely a DIY attitude: Don't like a prayer? Change its words to suit your liking! (Well. I don't know how many of them went that far. But I'm getting ahead of my story.) Some prayed, some meditated, some had altars and candles and shrines and the whole nine yards (just for one person), others went outside and sat under a tree. The churchy folk (I don't mean to be snarky, it's just easier to type "churchy" than it is to type ecclesiastical) have a tendency to believe a little too literally in their own mythologies, as I mentioned in the
dualism discussion. Not to my personal taste, but OK, if you need to believe in Sky Buddy and a personal Jebus to get you through your rituals and up the ordination ladder in your church, go ahead. Not useful for me, but OK.
So, I mentioned that I brought up the dualism argument in another forum (the PT which I can't link to here), and somebody pointed out (as was mentioned in the documentary for Harpur's
The Pagan Christ, that early Gnostic (note the uppercase G) "christians" actually practiced a form of mystery religion, that you had to be initiated into, before you could be considered to "be" Gnostic. Nowadays, they still baptize people. (Dunno if they dunk the suckers or not, I never looked into that, as I definitely will not be availing myself of any "ecclesiastical" services any time soon.) Point, my point is, after the early Gnostic was initiated, as part of continuing their spiritual path of gnosis, they had to write a gospel, explaining how they understood their own gnosis.
Where the churchy folk miss the boat is, they take these individual gnostic gospels, and they build institutions around them. When really, in all likelihood, they were narratives that were first meant to help the authors writing them, achieve the gnosis. "Know thyself" does not mean "I'm gonna write a book and make a cold killing in cash and travel all over the world and get ordained bishop of my own church!" (Are you listening Freke and Gandy?) At least it didn't mean that back in the day, when the non-canonical books were actually being penned. In my opinion. But the gospels were still necessary, for the individual who was writing it. Though each one was tailor-made for/by the author, they by and large drew on the core mythologies, yes centering around dualism. So these individual, non-churchy folk were taking modern texts, mixing and matching them, and configuring them to suit their own needs.
My needs, as outlined in the dualism thread, are self-analysis. It's not for nothing Jung was a gnostic (although his followers have turned out pretty churchy and institutional themselves, unfortunately). The dualism of prayer for the average G/gnostic involves them reaching out to something higher than themselves, some "other", some dualism that they choose to believe is other than themselves.
As I stated in the earlier thread, I believe the dualism they are actually trying to resolve is the dualism of the human mind, the logical (left) brain versus the creative intuitive (right) brain. So I have been thinking (with my left brain har de har har), what is the best way to engage the right brain? Meditation, or even, prayer. With some caveats.
I definitely didn't want to go down the road of
"prayer" that I was used to from before. And I couldn't stomach some of the literalist-seeming "Gnostic" prayers that are posted here, there, and everywhere on the Internet. Can you guess what's coming? That's right, I hacked together my own. Don't like the Jebus language? Gone! Gendered, knowable god, in a prayer that's supposed to venerate something that is neither? Change this, excise that, and good to go! The only concession I made to personification was retaining "Sophia", but really, that's only "Wisdom" in Greek, so it's not really a personification. But it kind of ended up being one. But I'm getting ahead of my story.
So I hacked together this thing, for want of a better word, and I actually attempted it. I read somewhere that the churchy folk recommend you take at least a month to get used to it, get comfortable with the rote repetition, etcetera. So I found a prayer-bead-counter online to help me keep track, opened up another window with my personalized gnostic prayer list, figuratively cracked my knuckles, and said to myself, "OK guys, time to put your gnosis where your mouth is --- "experiential religion"? Bring it, boys, let's see what she's got."
This post is probably going to be truncated. To be continued.......
