Christian Gnosticism (Jesus, priest, ritual, moral, punishment)

[soma]

A miracle occurs when a person is willing to shift his experience from the ego to pure consciousness. This Gnosticism is accomplished when one looks to Christ consciousness for guidance and finds one’s true self because the most fundamental error for human beings is misidentification of the ego. It loves to be identified, when we were born we were given a name for identification purposes, and we go through life thinking that we are who the name says we are. We also identify with our sex, race, religion, occupation, political party, possessions, where we live, social status, opinions and other things. We go through life never considering that we are more than our identity and that our ego is the main cause of our suffering in this life. When we experience ourselves as consciousness and realize that we are not our ego, we find that instantly and magically we transform our lives from effort and struggle to be somebody with the peace and satisfaction of just being alive.
Tranquility and peace present themselves, when the ego and its passions do not prevail because the ego can pervert the mind and shackle the consciousness, or it can show us the healthy effects of striving for a higher self. We don’t need a whip and bridle to curb the ego, but an incentive to force it into life so love takes the place of fear as the driving force. When the love for our body and mind expands beyond the ego and replaces aversion as the motive for our determination, our consciousness emerges from the gloom and refuses any longer to be suppressed, as it becomes the guiding light to attain a better life. It gives us an aim in life to free the mind, to know God and to realize that pure consciousness is the only cause, medium and effect in our lives. It gives us a motive that spurs us on to hack at the chains that get in our way, chains that bind the mind to pain and pleasure. Information and knowledge are the tools that assist in making a clear cut transformation so understanding, enlightenment and serenity can be achieved and kept in the mind because before Christ consciousness can be received the mind has to be spiritualized. The mind groans under the tyranny of an intellect that suppresses the energies of the body so energy needs to be cherished and tended to so we don’t develop the intellect at the expense of the soul, the effect would be neurosis. Christ cannot guide us if our mind is distracted with excessiveness because that causes spiritual blindness, which is to say, if we see Christ clearly without blurring or double vision, we will be full of his consciousness. Waiting for the coming of Christ is not merely the filling in of time, but a being filled with his consciousness with the divine gift of love.
Those who blend Christ consciousness into their lives have no need to preach the word because they are living the word. A person of this temperament will follow the letter and the spirit of the word as a matter of principle and not as policy. This person is moral for the sake of eternal value and not because there is a human law imposing a punishment to keep him honest. This portrayal of Christ consciousness demands intelligence because this theory can't be turned into a mechanical system and crammed into unimaginative minds because it is a spiritual awareness in the here and now. http://thinkunity.com

[Buttons*]

okay!

[gnostic]

I have one slight problem.

Originally Posted by soma

Those who blend Christ consciousness into their lives have no need to preach the word because they are living the word. A person of this temperament will follow the letter and the spirit of the word as a matter of principle and not as policy.

How can you "follow the letter and spirit of the word", if you are struggling to grasp the Gnostic texts found? A lot of it is pretty cryptic. Being a gnostic is no easy task. (Not that I think it should be easy.)

[Halcyon]

I agree with most of what soma has pasted, although i don't think it has much to do with Gnosticism, more to do with the Christ conciousness movement.

Originally Posted by gnostic

How can you "follow the letter and spirit of the word", if you are struggling to grasp the Gnostic texts found?
A lot of it is pretty cryptic. Being a gnostic is no easy task. (Not that I think it should be easy.)

I disagree, i have the innate feeling that 'the truth' is incredibly simple. Its something i've always felt to be true, and whenever i see man making things more complicated than it should be, my stomach knots up and i feel knowledge is being corrupted.

Thats how i view Gnostic texts, and with enough time spent on them, the texts open up the inner simplicity of their messages.

[Godfather89]

Actually, through a Gnostic Priest he told that its about simplicity. Simplicity is a message Jesus talked about when he tells us to fast from the world, in one of the many gospel of Thomas sayings. The World wants extravagant things, it wants complexity. When you fast from it Jesus wants you to be simplistic and humble -- I'm not saying being a simpleton just simplistic (E.g. Less is More -- Were you own less to spend more time with what you own and not be attached to what you own).