Looking for Felicity
We are born into this world with no expectations, no hopes, no desires, except a certain hunger and the innate desire to survive – with perhaps a related fear. We are not conscious even of our own existence. As our brain becomes active, receiving, perceiving, we gradually become aware of ourselves and the plethora of the world around us, and our mindless innocence (the remnants of bliss?) begins to fade away, replaced with the first archons who will rule our lives from then on. Because of the archons, we will search in vain during the span of our earthly lives for happiness, repeatedly deluding ourselves into believing we've found it, only to realize, sooner or later, that we were wrong. It is, I believe, impossible for the human being, as we exist in this world, to find true felicity. And anyone who makes the claim that he is truly happy, is a liar living in one of those delusional states of denial. We can find love, but we can never find felicity, a term partly derived from, or akin to, fetus. Think about that; it is more than ironic.
Paulo Coelho in his novel of obsession, the Zahir, points out clearly that "the search for happiness is one of the great traps for human beings." He tells us that "We have developed certain values – money, power, aesthetics – which … prevent us from stopping and asking ourselves: Am I happy?" Paulo is telling it as it is, and bluntly, that there is no such thing as happiness.
We constantly, throughout our human lives, succumb to the archons. We cannot live without them because of those certain values that Coelho mentions. They are the archons of Yaldabaoth, the bastard son of Sophia, who stood idly by while his mother was defiled by them during her compassionate descent into the lower world (earth) to try to help her hubristic son. Eight archons repeatedly raped her and dishonored her, leaving her deflowered and debased, no longer the pure Wisdom of the All. They are named, from the original Latin or other etymology, Crudelis (cruelty), Lascivus (lust), Zelosus (jealousy), Invidia (envy), Gratac (greed), Ambire (ambition), Deceptus (deceit), and Sans-Grandis (self aggrandizement). Like cowardly vultures, waiting in the gloom were two more -- Tuom (doom) and Dauthi (death). I'll leave it up to you to decipher how these ten archons' names interact in today's world of money, power, and aesthetics – just a few of the specious substitutes for felicity.
Nevertheless, each of us, in our own way, spends a lifetime in the continuous futile search for felicity, never realizing that we will never succeed. Oh, we find the substitutes all right, and we revel in them like hogs in the mud, believing in our minds that we have found true happiness, yet aware somewhere in the depths of our souls that surely there is something missing. Johnson said, "Our own felicity we make or find." But even Solomon in his wisdom and wealth, realized late in his life that he had never found her, and he turned away from his god in favor of the goddess.
Our saving grace may be that if we search hard enough in this life, we may be rewarded in the next, and if we accept that in our earthly life, perhaps that knowledge is as close as we can come to true happiness for now. But what would our next life be like? Where would we be? What would we be?
Well, for sure, it could not be in the human form as we exist in this life; nor could it be in this same dimension on this earth, for we already know felicity is unattainable here. It could be found in the pleroma, perhaps, which seems to be a place for transcendent souls. The ancient Gnostics tell us in the Nag Hammadi texts that the pleroma is a place where gods and goddesses reside in realms or levels, and the attainment of gnosis in this life seems to tell us that such must be the case. But, to define pleroma, the Gnostics had to give it material substance so that we could comprehend it in our human minds. Carl Jung helps us to understand the reality of pleroma this way: "Pleroma is . . . nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about pleroma. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities."
It seems to me that in such a place where thinking and being cease, and all is eternal, that the souls privileged enough to reside there, without thought or form, could not help but collectively be Felicity herself.
VVV
Copyright (©2008) Albert Lloyd Williams
Paulo Coelho in his novel of obsession, the Zahir, points out clearly that "the search for happiness is one of the great traps for human beings." He tells us that "We have developed certain values – money, power, aesthetics – which … prevent us from stopping and asking ourselves: Am I happy?" Paulo is telling it as it is, and bluntly, that there is no such thing as happiness.
We constantly, throughout our human lives, succumb to the archons. We cannot live without them because of those certain values that Coelho mentions. They are the archons of Yaldabaoth, the bastard son of Sophia, who stood idly by while his mother was defiled by them during her compassionate descent into the lower world (earth) to try to help her hubristic son. Eight archons repeatedly raped her and dishonored her, leaving her deflowered and debased, no longer the pure Wisdom of the All. They are named, from the original Latin or other etymology, Crudelis (cruelty), Lascivus (lust), Zelosus (jealousy), Invidia (envy), Gratac (greed), Ambire (ambition), Deceptus (deceit), and Sans-Grandis (self aggrandizement). Like cowardly vultures, waiting in the gloom were two more -- Tuom (doom) and Dauthi (death). I'll leave it up to you to decipher how these ten archons' names interact in today's world of money, power, and aesthetics – just a few of the specious substitutes for felicity.
Nevertheless, each of us, in our own way, spends a lifetime in the continuous futile search for felicity, never realizing that we will never succeed. Oh, we find the substitutes all right, and we revel in them like hogs in the mud, believing in our minds that we have found true happiness, yet aware somewhere in the depths of our souls that surely there is something missing. Johnson said, "Our own felicity we make or find." But even Solomon in his wisdom and wealth, realized late in his life that he had never found her, and he turned away from his god in favor of the goddess.
Our saving grace may be that if we search hard enough in this life, we may be rewarded in the next, and if we accept that in our earthly life, perhaps that knowledge is as close as we can come to true happiness for now. But what would our next life be like? Where would we be? What would we be?
Well, for sure, it could not be in the human form as we exist in this life; nor could it be in this same dimension on this earth, for we already know felicity is unattainable here. It could be found in the pleroma, perhaps, which seems to be a place for transcendent souls. The ancient Gnostics tell us in the Nag Hammadi texts that the pleroma is a place where gods and goddesses reside in realms or levels, and the attainment of gnosis in this life seems to tell us that such must be the case. But, to define pleroma, the Gnostics had to give it material substance so that we could comprehend it in our human minds. Carl Jung helps us to understand the reality of pleroma this way: "Pleroma is . . . nothing and everything. It is quite fruitless to think about pleroma. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities."
It seems to me that in such a place where thinking and being cease, and all is eternal, that the souls privileged enough to reside there, without thought or form, could not help but collectively be Felicity herself.
VVV
Copyright (©2008) Albert Lloyd Williams
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