Quote:
“When I began to read the Gospel of Thomas, a list of a hundred and fourteen sayings that claims to reveal “the secret words of the living Jesus,” what I found stopped me in my tracks. According to saying 70, Jesus said, “If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.” Struck by these words, I thought, We’re not asked to believe this; it just happens to be true.”
- pg 23
Thoughts:
I have only recently understood the meaning of this saying, & even now only vaguely. I see it as an exhortation to heal & face the shadow, & having done so, to bring forth all that has been repressed deep inside. This is where the treasure lies.
Quote:
“We’d heard of secret gospels, but what we knew — or thought we knew — was like medieval mapmakers imagined beyond familiar continents, where they pictured dragons lurking in uncharted seas.”
- pg 28
Thoughts:
The unknown has always elicited fear in human beings.
Quote:
“Ever since the second century, Christian leaders calling themselves orthodox (“straight thinking”) have defined choice as heresy. The Greek term translated as “heresy” (hairesis) means exactly that: “choice”!”
- pg 31
Thoughts:
The freedom to choose one’s thoughts, beliefs, interpretations of one’s own experience - this is forbidden by dogmatic institutions. It’s also interesting to note that we make heretics of ourselves when we forbid ourselves to think freely for fear of deviating from belief systems that were handed down to us.
Quote:
“What I love about sources like The Gospel of Thomas is that they open up far more than a single path. Instead of telling us what to believe, they engage both head and heart, challenging us to “love your brother as your own life,” while deepening spiritual practice by discovering our own inner resources: “Knock upon yourself as on a door, and walk upon yourself as on a straight road. For if you walk on that road, you cannot get lost; and what you open for yourself will open.”
While urging us to seek a deep connection with reality, they encourage us to walk without a map, expecting turbulence and surprise: “Let the one who seeks not stop seeking until he finds; and when he finds, he will be troubled; when he is troubled, he shall be astonished.” And when asking where to start, we find another saying from the Gospel of Thomas: “Recognize what is before your eyes, and the mysteries will be revealed to you.”
- pg 33
Thoughts:
The journey to enlightenment is a journey inward. When we learn to follow the call of our own intuition, we will be led to the truth of our being. By getting to know ourselves, we get to know God. We are made in the image of God, & are thus marked with a divine imprint. We start with exactly where we are - whatever is coming up for us, however painful or ugly. It is usually the things we don’t want to look at that reveal to us the most profound insights. The mystery unfolds as we journey inward, daring to know ourselves as we truly are, without illusions & personas. The raw reality of our being is the divine spark that is one with God.
Quote:
“To my surprise, the sensation that the book caused helped release me from worrying about what others would say, since neither the praise nor the blame mattered as much as I had imagined they would — and mattered far less than finding my own voice.”
- pg 48
Thoughts:
Oh, to arrive at a place where neither praise nor blame matter as much as finding my own voice.
Quote:
“Why had I, or any of us, unthinkingly accepted what didn’t make sense, and contradicted our own experience?”
- pg 49
Thoughts:
I had outsourced my discernment and trusted others to tell me what’s true, & I had accepted their interpretations even if they contradicted my own experience.
Quote:
“…Paul pictured Eve as gullible and sinful, and admonished women to be silent, subordinate, and to have babies:
I do not allow any woman to teach or have authority over a man; she is to keep silent. For Adam was made first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was deceived, and became a transgressor. Yet woman will be saved through bearing children, provided they remain faithful in love and holiness, with modesty. (1 Timothy 2 : 12 - 15)
Other Christians, like the African convert Tertullian, indicted their “sisters in Christ” as Eve’s conspirators:
You are the devil’s gateway… you are she who persuaded him who the devil did not dare attack… Don’t you know that every one of you is an Eve? The sentence of God on your sex lives on in this age; the guilt, of necessity, lives on too. - Tertullian, On the Dress of Women
There’s nothing particularly Christian about misogyny, of course — some Jewish and Buddhist sources say such things, as do passages in the Koran. Yet… women in such cultures, religious or not, often internalize such attitudes early…”
- pg 55
Thoughts:
I have definitely internalized this misogyny, believing deep down that women are the inferior sex. I have for this reason been distrusting of my feminine attributes like my intuition & my expressiveness. These biblical passages have always bothered me, but I always sort of brushed passed them, assuming that I was wrong for being bothered, & that one day I would be enlightened enough to understand the truth of those seemingly sexist concepts.
Quote:
“The anonymous author of another Nag Hammadi text, titled Testimony of Truth, noting that the Lord acts like a vindictive tyrant, jealous of his human creatures, after asking “What kind of God is this?” dares claim that the serpent, who seeks to liberate them, “is Christ”! Others read the story symbolically, suggesting that the story of Eve’s emerging from Adam’s body is meant to show how our soul, or psyche, may come to recognize divine wisdom hidden deep within us…
I found that reading the story of Adam and Eve as showing how the human psyche, ignorant of spirit, may wake up, in pain and joy, to the presence of the spirit, spoke to my own experience — even before I knew that spiritual awakening was possible.”
- pg 56-57
Thoughts:
It’s interesting that in the latter interpretation, Eve represents the awakening of the psyche to divine wisdom. Recognizing & embracing the divine feminine is the completion of the whole human experience. It has always been a troubling mystery to me that God did not want Adam & Eve to eat from the tree of knowledge. But how does this aspect of the story relate to the symbolism of Eve? The author seems to jump to a new point without completing her first thought on the tyrant god. To me, the character of God has always been of utmost importance, & it’s what I’ve sought to understand for many years. I have always felt God communicating with me, always with love, & yet I have not been able to reconcile the God I know with the god of the Bible, for reasons like this here - the Biblical god seems to me such a tyrant.
Quote:
“Only much later did I realize the truth: I’d rather feel guilty than helpless. For guilt, however painful, often masks a deeper agony, even more unbearable.”
- pg 67-68
Thoughts:
I had a sort of revelation about this quote this morning while I was meditating on my affirmations. “I now release the need to hold onto guilt,” I said in the affirmation recording I made the other day. & it hit me that I have clung to guilt as a sort of shield from this “more unbearable” thing - the fact that I have no control over the suffering of those I love. I have taken on guilt for my mom’s illness, for the struggles of my family members, etc. because it has been too painful to just watch it happen & feel powerless over it all.
Quote:
“Standing there, I seemed to see the whole scene embraced by a huge net made of ropes, with enormous spaces between the knots, through which we could be swept away at any moment, out of the world. I did not want to die, but desperately wanted to be anywhere but there; the pain was unbearable. Yet in that vision, or whatever it was, I felt that the intertwined knots were the connections with the people we loved, and that nothing else could have kept us in this world.”
- pg 89
Thoughts:
In unbearable suffering, the warmth of connection with others is as vital as a womb to an unborn child. We feel just as vulnerable as an infant, and we need just as much tender loving care. Love is what anchors us to reality at times when the pain feels unreal, & we cannot make sense of what is happening to us.
Quote:
“No one spoke to us of what happened, but I was surprised and moved to sense that some of them surely knew. On the dance floor, they surrounded us with unspoken care, acting on some protective instinct, like elephants who nudge the wounded into the center of the herd so that instead of falling behind, they keep moving along with the others.”
- pg 93
Thoughts:
We rely on the strength of others when we have none of our own. Others keep us in step with the rhythm of life so that we don’t sink down into oblivion.
Quote:
“The work of culture is to make suffering sufferable.”
- pg 95
Thoughts:
Culture, or community is the net that catches us when we fall into a state of suffering. If not for our loved ones, we may just plummet into a state of mind impossible to endure.
Quote:
“‘Your faith surely must have sustained you.’ What did they mean — a set of beliefs? Whatever most people mean by faith was never more remote than during times of mourning, when professions of faith in God sounded only like unintelligible noise, heard from the bottom of the sea.”
- pg 98
Thoughts:
What is faith? I have asked myself this question many times over the years. What is the kind of faith that can sustain a person through unspeakable suffering? It must be experiential. Convincing yourself that you believe in stories that don’t make rational sense, or that you agree to moral edicts that offend your soul will not bear you up when the weight of suffering comes crashing down on you. These flimsy, surface beliefs are a luxury afforded only to those who have not had to put their “faith” to the test. When the rubber meets the road, we need something real, something substantial, something that ignites the fire within us so that we don’t get snuffed out by the cold in the dark night of the soul. A faith like this can only be kindled from within, & must be grounded on some sort of encounter with the transcendent so that we may be lifted up above the unbearable circumstances.
Quote:
“Suffering feels like punishment, as cultural anthropologists observe; no doubt that’s one reason why people still tell the story of Adam and Eve, which interprets suffering that way.”
- pg 101
Thoughts:
We question the nature of reality, why we’re here, where we came from. Of course we do - we are inquisitive beings. In our quest to understand why the world was created with certain laws, we project our own nature and reasoning onto our Creator, naturally attributing our concept of justice to the laws of creation. Why would a person be afflicted with such a horrific experience as the loss of a child, sudden loss of faculties, genocide, etc.? He or she, or an entire race of people, must have done something to deserve it. We cannot fathom a “good” God who would allow such things without cause.
Quote:
“Was the guilt that weighed like a stone on my grief a legacy of Western culture, a hangover from ancient folktales? Do such stories articulate unconsciously held attitudes that may affect us long after we’ve rationally dismissed them? What startled me more than anything else was how my own emotions could pour into scenarios told in stories I didn’t believe in. Yet guilt also seems to shadow people who have no use for religion: the very word we use for disease, “illness,” derives from the Old English term “evilness.”
- pg 102
Thoughts:
Is guilt inherent in human nature? What purpose does it serve? Is this the significance & power of the Christ story - the absolution of guilt? How does it work? It seems that for some people, it does. Are there other ways to absolve oneself of guilt? Can we simply forgive ourselves? Did Christ come at a time when humanity just wasn’t ready to let go of guilt - & thus serve as an example (a “way”)?
Quote:
“Meanwhile, the work I’d chosen also felt like a kind of yoga, a practice of focus and discovery that can show how countless people throughout the ages contend with questions of meaning — perhaps even a way of spinning straw into gold, like Rumpelstiltskin.”
- pg 105
Thoughts:
I love this analogy of spinning straw into gold. We are such magnificent, creative beings - we can take almost any material in our lives & somehow spin it into something meaningful & beautiful. Even if life really does have no inherent meaning, as some claim, we can still give it meaning of our own. & maybe that’s the ultimate meaning.
Quote:
“What surprised me was to see that biblical stories reserve anger, especially righteous anger that motivates killing, as the special prerogative of the Lord himself. The Bible’s Exodus stories, for example, praise the Lord for destroying the entire Egyptian army “in his fury”. Later, when the Lord’s “anger burns hot” against his own people, he resolves to kill them, too…
Summoning the Levites, Moses shouts out orders: “Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: ‘Put your sword on your side, each of you! Go back and forth… throughout the camp, and each of you, kill your brother, your friend, and your neighbor.’ After the Levites go on a rampage through the camp and mercilessly slaughter three thousand of their own people, Moses praises them for having “served the Lord.” Then he announces that since each one of them has killed his own brothers and sons, ‘you have… brought a blessing upon yourselves this day.’”
- pg 144
Thoughts:
In my eyes, there is no justification for this hateful violence.
Quote:
“Yet now I realized that for millennia, people had bushwhacked through rough emotional terrain partly by envisioning Satan - or, in the case of those who worshipped traditional Greek gods, the gods themselves - as invisible antagonists.
Recalling that a vision of Satan, menacing and dangerous, had appeared in my dream the night before our son’s open-heart surgery, I realized that although I didn’t believe in him, the figure often called “the old enemy” nevertheless lived in my imagination, shaped by ancient cultural traditions, catalyzed by crisis. And although at the time I did not practice prayer, in that dream I’d spoken the words “Jesus Christ,” involuntarily crying out a powerful name to ward off a threatening presence, as Christians have done for thousands of years. So even if Satan is a figment of the imagination, he’s the shape imagination has given to some of our most immediate experiences — in my case, fear of our child’s death, and desperate hope.”
- pg 146
Thoughts:
Satan and Christ as archetypes. Satan as our worst fear, our nemesis, the force that acts against our good. Christ as the redeemer, the savior, the force that lifts us up to our highest potential.
Quote:
“As I see it, the priests who arranged the present composition of the Hebrew Bible, starting with the first creation story, effectively set up what philosophers call “the problem of evil.” For if we believe that an all-powerful God created a “very good” world, what happened to it? While the Buddha declared as his first noble truth that “all life is suffering,” Jewish and Christian theologians, on the contrary, speak of “the problem of suffering,” as if suffering and death were not intrinsic elements of nature but alien intruders on an originally perfect creation. And although Western culture offers a range of conflicting traditions, from Homer’s Iliad to the poem of Job, most biblical stories insist that the divine source is good — that, in Einstein’s witty phrase, “The Lord may be subtle, but he is not malicious.” Maybe we need to believe that: even the Book of Job, in its present form, ends with the folktale’s happy ending. So we’re stuck with this problem, and left with no answers.
- pg 151
Thoughts:
The problem of evil… What if it’s less insidious than that? What if it is all one, & all perfect as it is? Of course, this perspective could only be achieved from a transcendent viewpoint, & could possibly be leaving out a whole lot. I may have a very different understanding of the “problem of evil” if I were to encounter it in the same way as those in Nazi prison camps did. Still, it’s interesting to consider another possible worldview - one in which there is no evil, no nemesis out to steal our souls & drag us down into eternal torment. One in which life & death and joy and suffering are all one & the same. All parts of a magnificent whole.1
Quote:
“Above all, exploring stories of Satan shows that what we imagine is enormously consequential… I’m convinced that we cannot interpret our own experience, much less that of our culture, without simultaneously engaging both imagination and rationality.”
- pg 162-163
Thoughts:
Imagination is vital to interpreting our world. This is why humans have always used myths & stories to navigate reality. We cannot interpret the metaphysical through rationality alone. Rationality is only one lens with which to view the world, & it is insufficient for a complete understanding of the human experience. Where rationality falls short, myth & story come in and complete the picture.
Quote:
“For while scholars of literature like to say that we use stories to “think with,” we also use them to “feel with” - that is, to find words for what otherwise we could not say.”
- pg 108
Thoughts:
There are some experiences which can only be articulated in the form of story.
Quote:
“For those who find suffering inevitable - in other words, for any of us who can’t dodge and pretend it’s not there - acknowledging what actually happens is necessary, even if it takes decades, as it has for me. How then, to go on living, without giving in to despair? I recalled lines from Wallace Stevens: ‘After the final no, there comes a yes / And on this yes, the future world depends. / No was the night. Yes is this present sun.”
- pg 175
Thoughts:
Our “no”, in other words, our denial of experiences we would wish had never happened, only plunges us into further despair. Repression only creates uglier manifestations of the ugly we would rather not see. When we finally accept our suffering, we are free to alchemize it, & it is from this very substance that we create our “future world” - a world far more authentic & variegated with the nuances of our experience as we interpret them.
Quote:
“Jesus says: If those who lead you say to you, ‘The kingdom is in the sky,’ then the birds will get there first. If they say, ‘It is in the sea,’ then the fish will get there first. Rather, the kingdom of God is within you, and outside of you. When you come to know yourselves then… you will know that you are the children of God.‘” (The Gospel of Thomas)
- pg 176
Thoughts:
I find it interesting that he uses the birds & the fish in their own habitats as an analogy here for the way we seek the kingdom in places in which we are not created to thrive. The birds will find the kingdom of heaven in the sky because the sky is the place designed for them to fly in, and the fish will find it in the sea because they are made to swim in water. We must each seek the kingdom within ourselves, as it is only to be found on our own individual inward path. Our ears will hear only the words meant to fall on them with resounding meaning. Only the seeds for which the soil of our souls are prepared will take root and grow to full bloom within us. This is why it is useless, & frustrating, to seek truth within an organization or a religion that does not speak to us in a language our soul understands. We are like birds trying to fly in the sea. I tried for many, many years, to conform to the Christian myth but my soul could not mold itself into the contours of that design. My ears heard the words but did not understand. As it happens, there are other words, in other worlds, to which my ears are attuned with precision.
Quote:
“What we’re looking for may not be anything supernatural, as we usually understand what we call “spiritual.” Instead, as one saying in Thomas suggest, we may find what we’re seeking right where we are: “Jesus says: ‘Recognize what is before your eyes, and the mysteries will be revealed to you.’ Like Emily Dickenson’s poems, such sayings remain opaque as stone to anyone who has not experienced anything like what they describe; but those who have find that they open secret doors within us.”
- pg 178
Thoughts:
Or, we could say that the supernatural is actually found in the natural, seemingly mundane elements of life. What is “supernatural” anyway? It is only a thing perceived in its transcendent essence. If all things were to be immediately revealed to us in their true form, unfiltered by biases, conditioning, limiting beliefs, we would be overwhelmed by the “supernatural” quality of it all.2
Quote:
“But instead of envisioning the Lord Zeus speaking in thunder, as Greeks did, or Israel’s God, as Jewish and Christian poets and prophets did, this poem personifies thunder - bronte”, a feminine word in Greek - as a feminine power. Speaking in paradox, her voice confounds those who expect clarity, and frustrates those who need certainty…
The Poem: Thunder, Complete Mind
*I am the first and the last. I am the one who is honored, and the one scorned; I am the whore and the holy one… I am the incomprehensible silence, and… the voice of many sounds, the word in many forms; I am the utterance of my name… Do not cast anyone out, or turn anyone away… I am the one who remains, and the one who dissolves; I am she who exists in all fear, and strength in trembling. I am she who cries out… I am cast forth on the face of the earth… I am the sister of my husband, and he is my offspring… but he is the one who gave birth to me… I am the incomprehensible silence and the thought often remembered… I am the one who has been hated everywhere, and who has been loved everywhere. I am the one they call Life, and you have called Death. I am the one whose image is great in Egypt, and the one who has no image among the barbarians… I prepare the bread and my mind within; I am the knowing of my name. ”
- pg 179-180
Thoughts:
This poem confounds me & excites me at the same time. To think this feminine power exists in me. I am seeing most clearly in myself now the strength in trembling. I have trembled my way into finding my voice & standing my ground as a sovereign being, & it has felt all the while as though my flesh were melting off of my body and exposing the most vulnerable being imaginable.3 Yet, I have found within myself an unexpected strength even through this terrifying process. It has in fact required me to find strength within myself which I did not know existed.
I also find it interesting that the poem refers to a people, barbarians, who “have no image among them” of this feminine power. I have read in a commentary that these barbarians are believed to be the ancient Jews. There is no feminine power represented in the Jewish or Christian mythology. There has got to be something to that…
Quote:
“If you seek with everything you have, you shall come to know the good that is within you; and you will know yourself as one who comes from the God who truly exists.” (From Allogenes, or “The Stranger” in Greek)
Thoughts:
Seek with all you have. & in your seeking you will find yourself. This seems to be the message that the Orthodox Christians are most uncomfortable with: that the answers are within, the power is within, & that we are already one with God if we can only believe it.
Quote:
“With so many people offering different “revelations,” someone asked, how do we know which to trust? That question pushed me further: Why trust any? Why had I, or any of us, looked to “authorities” to validate our sense of what’s true - whether what “the Bible says,” as Billy Graham loved to claim, or what he or any other religious leaders say?”
- pg 191
Thoughts:
This has been my question for many years. So many speak with the conviction of a god, with absolute certainty of their own beliefs. How do we know who to believe? Maybe that’s not even the right question. Maybe the question is, “how is it that they believe with such conviction?” & “what is it mine to believe with the same conviction?”
Quote:
“I am the thought that lives in the light. I live in everyone, and I delve into them all… I move in every creature… I am the invisible one in all beings… I am a voice speaking softly… I am the real voice… the voice from the invisible thought… It is a mystery… I cry out in everyone… I hid myself in everyone, and revealed myself within them, and every mind seeking me longs for me… I am she who gradually brought forth everything… I am the image of the invisible spirit… The mother, the light… the virgin… the womb, and the voice… I put breath within all beings.” (From Trimorphic Protennoia)
- pg 199
Thoughts:
Creation speaks. I find it interesting that she uses past tense to say “I hid myself in everyone, and revealed myself within them”. She is outside of time. She is the breath of our breath, soul of our soul. She brings forth everything “gradually”, & this is a concept I’ve been exploring lately - that feminine power is gradual, like moving water which both erodes and nourishes the earth around it.
Quote:
“As the Gospel of Truth tells it, what separates all beings, including ourselves, from God is not sin. Instead, what frustrates our longing to know our source is its transcendence, and our own limited capacity for understanding.”
- pg 200
Thoughts:
Again, we are already one with God - if we can only believe it. And in the same way that the tree unimpeded by competition, lack of light, etc. will naturally bring forth its fruit4, so we will believe this truth once we have shed our superstitions and self-coercion into limiting beliefs.
Quote:
“The Gospel of Truth, then, is all about relationships - how, when we come to know ourselves, simultaneously we come to know God. Implicit in this relationship is the paradox of gnosis - not intellectual knowledge, but knowledge of the heart.”
- pg 202
Thoughts:
God is the truth within, the glittering light of reality, untarnished by the lies of the world. Our spirits are already one with God. It is only a matter of shedding the layers of illusion that obstruct our inward vision to see who we truly are.
Quote:
“…this is myth as Plato told it: imagination revealing the deeper truths of human experience. So… if indeed these things have happened to each one of us, then we can see that this mythical story has real consequences.” -pg 203
Thoughts:
Mythical stories are rarely, if ever, frivolous. They are necessary for navigating life and giving it meaning. They are consequential in that they speak to realities in a way that no other method of communication can. They are not for entertainment but for instruction and guidance.
Quote:
“Instead of seeing suffering as punishment, or somehow “good for you,” this author sees it rather as Buddhists do, as an essential element of human existence, yet one that may have the potential to break us open out of who we are. My own experience of the “nightmare” - the agony of feeling isolated, vulnerable, and terrified - has shown that only awareness of that sense of interconnection restores equanimity, even joy.”
- pg 204-205
Thoughts:
Suffering is a door that contains behind it treasures you will not find anywhere else.
Quote:
“Once… when Heinz saw me in anguish after we received our child’s crushing diagnosis, he said something to me I often recall: ‘Everyone’s life has something like this in it.’ Angry, I snapped back; ‘No, not this - not a child with a terminal illness!’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘not this, but something like this.’ Much later, I came to realize how much truth there is in what he said. Even now, writing about what’s so deeply personal, I’m aware that anything I say can speak to you only as it resonates through what you have experienced yourself; yet even within those limits, we may experience mutual recognition.”
- pg 208
Thoughts:
Suffering is a great equalizer in humanity. When we can connect with another soul on the level of suffering, that connection leaves an indelible mark on both souls.
Footnotes
Footnotes
-
“If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson ↩