101 Let go of your parents

LG101

Jesus said:
Who does not hate his father and her mother, like me,
can’t become a student of mine.
And whoever does not love his father and her mother, like me,
can’t become a student of mine.
Because my mother gave birth to me,
but my true mother gave birth to me.

 This logion is a continuation of logion 55. It also says:

Who doesn’t hate father and mother,
can’t become a student of mine

Here is added:

And whoever does not love his father and mother, like me,
can’t become a student of mine.

In the explanation for logion 55 it became clear that we can understand the word ‘hate’ as ‘let go’. And then it becomes understandable that you can let go of your parents and love them at the same time. That is what it was all about in Logion 55. So we can also understand that here.

Then that does not explain the meaning of the final sentences of this login:

Because my mother gave birth to me,
but my true mother gave birth to me.

That clearly goes a step further. For the meaning of that we must discover who or what is meant by the two mothers.

It is almost obvious to see the first mother as the biological mother, because he “gave birth to Jesus for death.” Death is a symbol word in Gnostics. That will therefore not be the intention.

This is about the image of ‘the mother’ that you can carry within yourself, but also the image of ‘the father’.

Becoming a free person, a Christ in the Gnostic language, means not only that you detach yourself from your parents in the practice of your life, but that you also have to let go of your internalized parents, the internalized images of your parents. Only then can you really build a free relationship, not only with your parents, but also with yourself.

Then a different kind of parenthood can arise within yourself. In a way, you become your own father and mother. That inner parenting of yourself is no longer connected with your real parents, but with something bigger in yourself, the royal autonomy that was spoken about in Thomas 2, the Christ in you. From that mature, free self-determination you can once again incorporate your actual parents into your feelings of love for your fellow man.

54 The empty consciousness and the inner observer

LG54

Jesus said:
Happy are the poor,
for you belong to the kingdom of heaven.

The statement “Happy are the poor” here of course concerns ‘the poor in spirit’, also mentioned in the New Testament. Those are people without illusion, or at least people who are not trapped in an illusion.

So that has nothing to do with material poverty.

We have already mentioned two forms of consciousness. In personal consciousness we experience ourselves as an individual between birth and death, with everything that goes with it. There is also another state of consciousness in which we experience our connection with all that is. That other state of consciousness is called the Christ consciousness in Gnostics, and in contemporary language the transpersonal consciousness. In that state of consciousness there is no attachment at all to what appears to consciousness.

We always have something of that open consciousness, even in everyday life. And that reveals itself in the fact that we can perceive ourselves, even our emotions.

Usually this will not be experienced as special, but it is still very remarkable that we can be angry and perceive that we are angry, that we can be happy and perceive that we are happy, and so on. There appears to be an inner observer within us who can perceive the state of our mind without being a participant in it, without being attached to it and, above all, without being identified with it.

It is already quite a step on the spiritual path when you realize that there is such a thing as an observer in you. Spiritual growth consists primarily of becoming more aware of the observer in you. You then acquire the ability to perceive yourself from inner freedom.

Sometimes you can immerse yourself fully in what you are doing in the here and now. You can also observe yourself in the position of the inner observer, especially the state of your mind.

The inner observer, also called the inner witness, can see all the movements of your mind without judgment, without merging into it and without fighting it. The inner observer can see that you are angry, without being angry yourself, or perceive that you are happy without being happy yourself. The observer sees that there is anger or happiness, but is completely free from it. That is why it is said that the consciousness of the inner observer is empty or with the symbol word in this logion: poor, poor in spirit. The inner observer is like a mirror that merely reflects, without itself being the reflected reality.

That state of consciousness is completely detached and is called empty or poor, but it is not without its own qualities. You can summarize those qualities of that consciousness under: free, trust, being and goodness.

Free

The inner observer is completely free. It is free, or, with a usual term, ‘freedom of mind’. The inner observer is the inner free. Free is the essence of the inner observer.

Trust

Confidence as a characteristic of the inner observer is the inner condition of a calm and unwavering certainty. It is not a dogmatic certainty, which consists of attachment to outer truths, but more a form of fearlessness, regardless of all circumstances. Trust knows no fear. The inner observer can still detect fear, or any other emotion, in your mind, but is not a participant in it yourself. Perhaps unlike what you would expect, fearless trust even allows you to make any emotional condition happen to you uncensored and perceive in yourself, including fear, but without being attached to it yourself. The inner observer himself is fearless, free from any movement of mind.

That free of the inner observer of his own movements of mind makes one free to choose whether or not to act accordingly. People are not dragged unintentionally by all sorts of emotions, but can freely decide, considering the emotional state of your mind, to sometimes and sometimes not to connect with such an emotion and to act accordingly.

To be

The being aspect is a kind of solid ground under your feet. It is a very characteristic experience that can make you say “I am”. There is the experience of pure and crystal clear ‘being’.

It is like walking on water. That is, the ground under your feet is not hard and immovable, but flowing, creating, happening – a stream of being. And it is precisely that mobility that is, very paradoxically, the solid ground under your feet. Because there is nothing more that you can go under. Logion 50 already says it is a movement and a rest. Life is a movement, like running water, like a rippling and sometimes even turbulent sea, but the calm security of the inner observer does not perish there, how intense the current, no matter how fierce the waves.

Christ, as a symbol of this inner observer, the Christ nature in a human, walks on the water, Matthew tells. Peter, the symbol of a human who first found apparent safety in ‘the boat’, as a symbol of dogmatic security, gets out of the boat and threatens to drown. But the Christ in himself knows how to save him.

Goodness

This is the experience of fundamental goodness. In this logion it is called “being happy,” often translated into Christian texts with “being blessed.”

That goodness is not a moral judgment about the events in reality, but a characteristic of the inner observer. The inner observer is no longer attached to what is observed, but it is precisely that detachment that makes the combative and unconditional submission to reality in the here and now possible.

Precisely because the inner observer is detached, it allows you to be touched conditionally and in total emotional openness in your heart by the events in the world.

So there is a remarkable duality: on the one hand the detached inner observer is in a state of untouchable goodness, on the other hand the inner observer can then censurelessly detect how the circumstances of life can touch the heart, and base the actions in the world on it .

In fact, the detachment of the inner observer can allow you to experience the pain and joy of your fellow creatures as your own pain and joy, without threatening or arousing desire. And you could also call that love.

Here, in this logion, the goodness, that happiness aspect, that is, the salvation of the inner observer, is emphasized. And that is not without significance.

The sense of goodness is an important indicator of unity with the Source. Even though the first three fundamental experiences of freedom, trust and being may be missing, the sense of goodness can also manifest itself. We also experience that sense of goodness when we are accidentally connected to the Source, when we walk in nature or listen to music. So it is extremely important to learn to recognize that feeling and to dare to trust it as a message from your soul that lets you know that this is what life is all about, what really matters to you.

That very special sense of goodness will usually present itself when you do something, when you are doing something.

It is a cosmic pat on the back
that tells you
that it’s good
you are who you are
and
[this] is what you have to do here on earth right now.

With that experience of goodness you are in the kingdom, in the here and now.

69 The willingness to be touched in your soul

LG69

69a
Jesus said:
Blessed are those who are touched in their souls.
Truly, they are the ones who got to know the father.

69b
Blessed are the hungry,
for the belly of those who desire
will be saturated.

Charity [relativeslove, #lit_trans], as is of course known, is a core theme of Christianity. But we know that through the ecclesiastical tradition mainly as a commandment, as a “Thou shalt”, or as a call to imitate. There is nothing wrong with that in itself. Marvellous acts of mercy have been performed following Jesus’ call for charity. And whoever makes the decision to put love into practice, following Jesus, even if that is only an intention, an intention, will discover by doing that there is true love in her or him, as a perhaps unexpected Inner power. That is the way of practical action.

Here, in this logion, it is emphasised that love is not just a moral commandment, no matter how valuable it is to imitate, but that love is at the root of reality. Love exists.

In Gnostics, we have two natures as human beings, personal nature and Christ nature – see the prologue to the Thomas gospel. Personal nature is our appearance in time, our temporary existence between birth and death. If our consciousness is only connected to personal nature, we can experience ourselves as separate from our fellow human beings. I am me and you are you.

He who connects his consciousness with his timeless core, called Christ nature in Gnostics, connects his self-awareness with all reality, with the Source of all being. Then, as said here, you got to know the father. Then there is also the self-evident sense of unity with all that is. Then the separation is lifted. Then charity is a matter of course, because then we will be touched in our soul by everything that happens around us. Then the pain and joy of our fellow man and other creatures is also our own pain and joy. You are me in a different form.

The reverse also applies: if we are willing to be touched in our soul by what is happening around us, then that willingness will bring us to the Source within ourselves. Because if we want to open ourselves emotionally to what is happening around us, that emotional openness will also make us feel an inner desire, a hunger as said here, in ourselves.

In every person lives an inner desire, a hunger, for wholeness, for the connection with the Source. That is a natural desire. We are born with it. If we close ourselves emotionally to the events around us, then we will also not be able to perceive that inner desire.

You cannot selectively close your emotional experiences. You can not only have fun experiences and close yourself to all others. Even if you only want to exclude one emotional experience, you can only do that by locking the entire gate of your soul. This is how the armored personality is created.

If we want to open ourselves emotionally, then that is only possible by allowing all experiences, without any exception, without censorship.

If we are prepared to do so, if we also want to and dare to experience the painful aspects of human existence, without arming ourselves against it with all kinds of judgments, we thereby also open the door of our soul to the experience of love.

A beautiful symbol of this is Mother Mary depicted with empty hands, and the palms of her hands facing forward. That is the moving symbol of the unconditional and unquestioning surrender to reality in its total fullness.

Then there is sympathy with our fellow creatures, in the literal sense of that word: “feeling together,” “sympathy.” (An image of Maria with empty hands can be found here.)

There is then not only sympathy with other people. If we dare to open our mind unconditionally, as in the image of Mother Mary, we will also be able to experience our own inner desire, the hunger for wholeness, in ourselves. That desire will lead us to the Christ nature within ourselves in oneness with the Source. That desire then becomes our inner spiritual guide.

Only in emotional openness can the Christ be born in you. That emotional openness is the mother of the Christ in you. Mother Mary is called ‘mother of sorrows’ for a reason. In her as a symbol, suffering has become legitimate as an inseparable part of life, in addition to the joy of life, also on the spiritual path of Gnostics.

So the gnostic does not promise you a release from suffering. On the contrary, to be able to experience the unity with the Source, this requires unconditional surrender of life in all its facets, represented in the open hands of mother Maria.

83 The unreality of the images

LG83

Jesus said:
People know the images,
but the light that is in them,
remains hidden in the image of the light of the father.
He will be unlocked,
but his image will merge with his light.

This is a warning. You may have believed in an image of God and you thought your image was God himself. That image is only an image; every image is a pretty good-looking counterfeit of something that actually exists.

If you believe in an image as if that image is the real existing self, then you put the real existing in the dark.

If you believe in ‘an image of the light of the father’, then, oh irony, the really existing light will be hidden by the belief in its image. And the light in you will also not be able to shine.

Well, that you can see. As was spoken of earlier.

The warning here is that you ‘must’ be prepared for a painful disappointment on the spiritual path of gnostics. All those beautiful images and stories to which you may have been so attached, in which you sincerely believed, will lose their reality content along the way. And that is the intention. The images and stories will fade in the light of reality, in your own surrender to the real thing.

In another way, those images and stories also regain a new meaning. They do not exist by themselves, but they have become a sign, a reference to something else that can be known in experience. And that is their right to exist, nothing more. But that makes sense. The map is not the journey, but a means to prepare for it. The recipe is not the meal, but teaches you what to do to reach your goal.

The gospel of Philip (67) says it this way:

The truth did not come naked into the world but dressed in symbols and images. The world cannot receive the truth in any other way.

There is rebirth and an image of rebirth. It is definitely necessary that one is born again by the image. What is the resurrection and its image? You need to stand up through the image. What is the bridal room and its image? It is necessary that one enters into the truth through the image – that is the restoration.

26 No love without openness to all that is

LG26

Jesus said:
You do see the splinter in the eye of your brother
but you don’t see the beam in your own eye.
If you remove the beam from your own eye,
then you will see clearly enough
to remove the splinter from the eye of your brother.

You can look at a fellow man with eyes of love. They invite the other person to come out, to show themselves.

You can also look at a fellow human being with a judgmental look. Is that one of us? Does it behave according to our own norms and values? Has it adjusted properly?

Love is: allowing a fellow person to be different from yourself. If you are not prepared to do this, you cannot see the human being in the other, nor can there be charity.

Love can only flourish in total openness to all that is. Only someone who makes peace with himself, stops fighting himself, can achieve this openness. That means in the practice of life that one disarms oneself, puts down one’s armor, and is prepared to be touched, also by pain and sorrow. In the free space that this openness creates, love will present itself as the ground of existence for itself and for other people.

We can experience a meeting with a fellow man on two different levels. The one level is that of the description of reality, within which all kinds of dogmas and rules tell how to behave in certain circumstances.

An example:

The Jewish and Palestinian women from Logion 5 are each other’s enemies at the level of the description. But the grief of a Palestinian mother who loses a child in that struggle is the same as the grief of a Jewish mother who loses a child. That is the other level, that of the soul. Whoever chooses the level of the soul sees the human in the sorrow of both mothers. By daring to see that and putting it above the doctrine, you yourself become human.

Another example:

Children who have died without baptism should not be buried in sacred earth, as explained in the explanation to Logion 6. If you look at your fellow man with that norm in mind, then that judgment is the bar in your own eye.

You see that those fellow people have failed because they did not baptise their child. You supposedly see the splinter in the eye of your brother. But you don’t see that it is a splinter from the bar in your own eye.

‘See the human being’ was said earlier in logion 5. Not the human being as he is according to the agreed images and norms, but the human being that you see if you dare to open the windows of your soul. If you can look at it that way, your soul will be moved by what you see. If you then act from that compassion, your actions will be an expression of true love.

At the level of the doctrine the Jewish and Palestinian women are each other’s enemies, and according to the doctrine the baptised child may not be buried in sacred earth. But the two women and the pastor put the touch of their heart above all agreements. They then act as a human being towards a fellow human being.

They have removed the beam in their eye.

And as a result, that alleged splinter suddenly disappeared in the eye of the other.

35 The betrayal of your own heart

LG35

Jesus said:
No one is able to house a strong man to invade and overpower,
unless he binds his hands,
then he will plunder the house.

Total ‘freeness’ reigns in your inner world. If you attach yourself to something in the world, you do it yourself. Attached or detached, to what is and what is not, you decide for yourself. That is your freeness, the freeness that is the hallmark of everyone’s inner world.

That is the starting point for understanding this logion.

Because it’s about attaching. And detach.

Incidentally, it is not necessarily wrong to attach yourself to something. Why should you not attach yourself to your loved one? There is nothing wrong with it when children attach themselves to their parents and parents to their children. You can even connect with freedom in moral values ​​and stand for that in the world. Attaching is part of life.

And of course, you can detach yourself again and we all know that this can be a very painful process, for example if you lose a loved one. That is why you may come across the view that it is better to never attach yourself to anything again. When you are completely detached, you know for sure that you will never suffer pain again. At least that’s what you think. But you have to pay a high price for that untouchability. You must stop your heart. And that has major consequences. Because you can’t love anymore.

Pain is the other side of love. There is pain because of the loss of a loved one, because that fellow person, yes, exactly, was a loved one. If you love someone you can suffer pain if you lose your fellow man. If you do not love someone, you will not suffer any pain if that person disappears from your life.

Do you want your life to be supported by love? Then be prepared to suffer pain.

Do you want a painless life, completely detached? Then make your heart cold so that you will never again run the risk of loving.

But whoever does that also loses his inner compass. A life without love is directionless. You must then surrender to an outer authority, which tells you what to do, so a Führer. And there are a lot of them, in shapes and sizes. They stand around you with impatience to take control of your life from you.

But how do Führers succeed in attaching people to him, apparently outside their will? No, they don’t do that outside of the will of those people. They entice those people to attach themselves to them and betray their own inner compass of love. How do they do that?

To this end, the Führer must first “tie hands” with those people, says this logion.

What do they do then, the Führer, to persuade a person to give up their inner compass and become a will-less tool in someone else’s hands?

This requires a ‘higher case’.

Let me give an example.

In the year 2003 there was an interview on television with the Hitler secretary. The interviewer asked her: “But didn’t you feel sorry for all those Jewish people?”

Her answer was surprising: “Yes, of course,” she said, “but I thought I should sacrifice pity for a higher cause.”

Another example.

Adolf Eichmann, the cold organizer of the Jewish “Endlösung,” told a journalist how he had once been looking at a concentration camp. There, a Jewish mother had lifted her child behind an iron fence to show it to Eichmann in a demonstrative way. Eichmann told how he started shaking all over his body and almost collapsed. He decided never to watch again and continued to do his executioner remotely, loyal to his Führer.

It is therefore special that these two people were touched in their hearts by the fate of their fellow human beings.
In this way we are all constantly called by our own heart. What are you doing then? The secretary and Eichmann, decided to betray that concern and “sacrifice” it to “a higher cause.” They had their hands tied.
Yes, then your house will be looted, says this logion, so that all your talents will be in the service of that supposed “higher cause.” You have become an impersonal, literally unloving tool in the hands of a Führer.
In this way, even in the service of an institution that preaches love, you can become an inquisitor who puts fellow people on the stake. Because the preached love of an institution is not the love of the heart.
So that’s how you can seduce someone into betraying their own heart. By holding out to them an illusion of a “higher cause” and thus moving them freely to extinguish the fire of love in their own hearts, thus detaching themselves from their own compassion. Yes, that will make you ice cold. Then you can commit the most heinous atrocities.
And don’t think that such a thing only happened in Nazi Germany. Where else then? This is what the next logion is about.

[mva_r] free and dome seem to contradict eachother

36 The willingness to be touched in your heart

LG36

Jesus said:
do not worry
from the morning to the evening
and from the evening to the morning
with which you will dress.

This logion is about a very special attitude to life. What is it like?

First there is the judgmentless seeing, without all kinds of fixed thoughts about good and evil, about us and them.

Then there is the willingness to be touched in your heart.

Your actions in the world result from that concern.

If you are that way in life, and even if you only intend to be that way in life, a loving power will present itself to you. But above all you will gain the experience of ‘fullness’, as it is called in Gnostics, the feeling of leading a fulfilled life. The meaning of existence is not a thought. Life makes sense for you when your actions in the world go together with the experience of meaning. Or, to put it briefly: Life makes sense if you feel like it.

But suppose you acted today from the touch of your heart. You have given meaning to your life. Then there is the danger, and that is what this logion is about, that you think: Now I know what the meaning of my life is, namely that I always ……. (fill in as you please). And then tomorrow you will try to repeat the meaning of today by acting exactly the same way. But then your heart is no longer your inner compass, but your memory.

And that is exactly the same soul movement as when you turn yourself in to an external authority, as discussed in the previous logion. You only surrender to the truth of yesterday.

If you want to live in a way that rewards you with the inner experience of meaning, be prepared to open the windows of your soul every day. If you live like that, your intended attitude to life, you will be able to experience that the power in you that we spoke about earlier is not only becoming more loving, but also very creative. Then, as your actions in the world result from the touch of your heart, and thus from the connection with the source within yourself, you co-creator of life on earth, again and again.

Tomorrow another day awaits, a new heaven, a new earth. But above all: a new heart. At least if you are willing to open the windows of your soul every morning.

22 Make the two one

LG22

The eyes of Jesus fell on children who were fed.
He said to his students:
These children who are being suckled
are like those who enter the kingdom.

They said to him:
Should we be like these children,
to enter into the kingdom?

Jesus said to them:
When you have made the two one,
when you make the inside as the outside
and the outside as the inside
and the top and bottom,
and when you make the male and the female one,
so that the masculine is no longer masculine
and the feminine not feminine,
if you make eyes instead of an eye,
and a hand where there is a hand
and a foot where there is a foot,
and an image where there is an image
then you will enter into the kingdom.

Again such a typical misunderstanding. Jesus says you have to become like children being suckled. And the students literally understand that comment and wonder how that is possible. But of course that’s not the point. This image of a child on the mother’s breast is a symbol. But of what?

It clearly has to do with what follows: to make the two one, or to break the dualities.

People tend to divide reality into good and evil, friend and foe, men and women, heaven and earth, matter and spirit. Everything they experience is interpreted in those dualities. And a value judgment is almost always attached to this. One half of reality is good, the other is bad. But with that you lose sight of the totality, the unity of everything. It makes you blind.

Blindness arises when you look at reality through the eyes of your own value judgments. Your own judgment about the divided reality is the proverbial bar in your own eye. By despising one half of reality, and glorifying the other half, you lose sight of the wholeness of reality, including wholeness of yourself. So you not only become blind to the reality outside of you, but also to the reality within you.

Your value judgment about divided reality lends a veil to everything behind which real reality is hidden. You see the interpretation, the judgment, not the real, whole reality. If you let go of the attachment to that value judgment about reality, that veil falls away. Therefore you also restore yourself to your original unity.

On the one hand everything is the same, a hand is still a hand, a foot is still a foot, and at the same time everything is completely different, totally new. It is as if you are only now seeing everything for the first time.

For a child everything is one. His food, breast milk, is one. There is no duality in that breast milk yet.

The mother breast in this logion is of course also a symbol, and here depicts the cosmic mother breast, “the Source of all being.” The cosmic Source of all being knows no dualities, that is, dualities are not part of reality. Dualities are judgments about reality imposed by humans afterwards, but are not part of reality itself.

For the one life that flows from the cosmic mother’s breast, the text from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip (10) applies:

Light and darkness, life and death, right and left are brothers of each other. They cannot be separated from each other. For that reason, neither the good nor the bad are bad and life is not just life and death is not just dead.

Therefore everyone will be dissolved to its origin.

The “origin” in this text of Philip to which we will be dissolved is depicted in this logion in the mother’s breast. If we are ‘dissolved’ from duality, we can again feed on that cosmic mother’s breast that feeds all life, all life and not just that one half of duality.

58 Realized Insight

LG58

Jesus said:
Happy the person who suffered
and found life

Happy the person who suffered? What should we do with that?

It must also have been a surprisingly strange statement for the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus, shockingly defamatory. Suffering was a punishment from Yahweh on sin, right? Hadn’t Moses been clear about that? In the Deuteronomy Bible Book, he says that Yahweh rules life as a judge. Whoever follows him will be rewarded, whoever does not will be punished. And later Bible books are not unclear that all the calamities that strike the Jewish people time and time again are a justified punishment for disobeying Yahweh. Thus the prophet Ezekiel says on behalf of Yahweh:

I will not spare you nor pity you, but I will repay you for your walk, your abominations will come upon you, and you will know that I am the Lord.

And the prophet Hosea adds, also speaking on behalf of Yahweh:

Samaria has to pay because it has rebelled against his God. They will fall by the sword, their little children will be crushed, their pregnant women will be ripped open.

Jesus leaves this vengeful view and emphatically breaks [with] it. The New Testament tells that he mixes with lepers and other outcasts. With this he shows that nobody is excluded from the charity he calls for. Nobody, really nobody. Every person is a neighbour.

Jesus’ answer to human suffering is not an accusing finger, but mercy without judgment. That is perhaps the most characteristic difference between Jesus and the Old Testament.

This logion fits in with Jesus’ revolutionary new attitude towards suffering, and adds something to it. It shows that the willingness to accept suffering without judgment as part of life, makes you a whole person, “a living” in the symbolism of Gnosis.

In the previous logion we already talked about the illusion of enlightenment. You can form an image of what it is like to be enlightened and then rebuild yourself to fit into that image. Such an illusion about being enlightened can contain the idea that as an enlightened person you will no longer suffer, that you will then be above that. A release from suffering is not the commitment of gnostics. With that thought, with that idealised image of the enlightened, you place yourself outside your own wholeness as a person, outside of life, and, even more so, outside of Source.

Whoever wants to become a whole person, and as a whole person wants to coincide with Source, will have to embrace reality as a whole, with all the trimmings, without reservation.

This is called surrender. Surrender is unconditional.

Because, what is always at stake in the Thomas gospel is wholeness as a person. That wholeness cannot be achieved by amputating oneself in any way whatsoever. Not even by wanting to change reality.

Suffering is an inescapable part of being human. It is the other side of love. For example, we suffer for the loss of a loved one because we love our fellow human beings. Unconditional love can only exist in combination with the unconditional willingness to experience the pain that life sometimes inflicts on us.

Only that surrender will be able to bring man the deepest possible joy of life. If one wants that joy, one must also include suffering. Strangely enough, love and joy of life do not exclude suffering, but on the contrary. The three of them form the depth of reality.

That in order to become a whole person one should embrace reality as a whole is a point of view that often evokes protest. Because it is understood that everything should be okay. That is not at all what is meant here. That you should agree with everything is a mental judgment, not a surrender. Surrender also means letting go of that conception. Only then can you make reality appear to you as it is, in all its infinite diversity, without excluding anything from it.

Then you have found life. Then there is a willingness to be touched in the heart without conditions.

This unconditional willingness to be touched can very well result in a strong inner protest about a certain situation or course of action. You can also experience approval, for example in the form of a happiness experience. Protest and approval of the heart then form the inner guidelines for human action, and not the judgments imposed from outside. Such a protest or a consent from the heart is not a mental judgment. They are the result of emotional openness. Those experiences are the messengers of the soul, see Logion 65.

It’s something you have to deal with, act upon. Those are the assignments that are handed to you by life itself.

In the Christian tradition, suffering has unfortunately fallen under the spell/charm of sin and martyrdom. The suffering of Christ in particular has become dominated by penance.

One can also read the story about the descent of Christ on earth with the willingness to accept suffering in a different way. Not as a historical reality, but as a meaningful myth. Then that story is also about the acceptance of suffering as part of reality. The otherwise so mysterious silence of Jesus in his condemnation to the death on the cross suddenly becomes very meaningful. That silence acquires the meaning of the unconditional surrender to life as a gateway to the resurrection from spiritual death.

71 Realized Insight

LG71

Jesus said:
I will overthrow this house
and nobody will be able to rebuild it.

The house, that is gnostic symbolism for the inner being of man.
What values ​​and norms are there in your house? That of an outer world, that of hearing, that of some powerful institution that thinks it has a lease of truth?
That outer world in you must first be broken down to make room for something else. But that other one was actually already there. It has always been there. But maybe you didn’t know that yet, or you forgot. It was only hidden behind the values ​​and norms of hearing say.
But once you have uncovered that hidden in yourself and have come to know it, it cannot go wrong, because it is the reality in yourself.
And once you have learned to distinguish that reality in yourself from the empty appearance, then the appearance world has lost its hold on you forever.

Releasing the empty appearance changes your consciousness, and no return is possible. That is meant by “and nobody will be able to rebuild it.” No institution, political or religious, will be able to exercise power over your inner house once you have seen the empty appearance for what it is: nothing. This is called realized insight. The insight has become reality, not just an arbitrary opinion or thought.

This meaning can also be found in the text of Mark 14:58:

We have heard him say: “I will demolish that temple made by human hands and build up another one in three days that is not made by human hands.”

Three is the symbol of the wholeness, the wholeness of man who coincides with himself.

A beautiful text about this from the Gospel of Truth, from the Nag Hammadi scriptures:

As long as ignorance
filled them with fear and confusion,
and left them unbalanced, uncertain
and divided,

There were many illusions that
chased them,
and empty delusions,
as if they were sunk in a deep sleep,
the victim of nasty dreams.
(…)

Until the moment that they
who are experiencing all this,
awaken.

Then they see who have experienced all these confusions,
suddenly: nothing.
Because it was nothing,
just delusions.

So they throw ignorance far away,
just as they shook off sleep
they do not consider important,
neither do they consider these visions
as reality.

But they leave them behind
like a nocturnal dream.

Everyone acted as if they were asleep,
during the time that he was ignorant,
and so he gets up again,
as if he wakes up.
Joy for the person who discovers himself
and wakes up!