The Mystery of Being Alive
Paulo Coelho, in his most recent Warrior of the Light issue, listed an Inventory of Normality , which includes 47 items about what society considers to be normal behavior in everyday life these days. As he points out, all of these situations are absurd, but two in particular caught my eye, for they profoundly illustrate how utterly lacking we are in our search for knowledge about 1) who we really are and why – a search that should be the primary goal in life of each and every one of us – and how we are conditioned (actually brainwashed) by the patriarchy to 2) believe that our own personal religion is the unconditional, inalienable, Truth – and that you are dead wrong about yours.
The first item that struck me this way was this one: 9] Comparing objects like cars, houses and clothes, and defining life according to these comparisons instead of really trying to find out the true reason for being alive.
In my essay Looking for Felicity on this blog, Paulo explains that this same situation occurs in our search for happiness: "We have developed certain values – money, power, aesthetics – which … prevent us from stopping and asking ourselves: Am I happy?" Of course the answer is no, but we blindly forge right on ahead, lying to ourselves, unaware that we might all be about to fall off a cliff only to drown in the raging sea like an endless column of lemmings. He expands the issue here to include the search for the meaning of life.
So it appears that we are never truly happy, nor do we care whether we ever learn the truth about being alive – the ultimate mystery – because we measure the satisfaction of our lives in shallow, thoughtless, hubristic ways. It's just too much of an effort to try to figure it all out. Could it be that acquiring such knowledge, though, might be the key to actually finding felicity? There are many in this world, who have active, inquisitive, thoughtful, minds who think it is. But the masses couldn't care less. It's all about possession, appearance, and dominance – the sustenance of the archons.
So the question becomes, how do we convince the masses that we need to change our values and our ways? The easy way out is to tell us we don't have to change: that if we believe – keep the faith – everything will be taken care of for us when the time comes. How absurd is that? But that is exactly what has happened in our patriarchal secular society and our religions. Hope and pray for guidance, confess your sins, trust in the Lord, and your souls will be saved. That's it; no effort necessary; end of story!
Would you have such blind faith in the bank that holds the mortgage on your home continuing to honor your contract when you are years behind on your payments? Would you truly believe your spouse would graciously continue to forgive you if you were unfaithful every other night of the week for years on end? Are you sure the Chicago Cubs will win a world series ever again?
The thing is, we are all part of the greater Consciousness; we are the rim and the spokes that make the hub of the wheel work, and it is our duty and obligation to do our level best for the hub – or the All. If we are all part of a wheel, it seems to me that it would be helpful if we knew where we were going, and why. The old saying, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, seems quite apt in this analogy. When a wheel doesn't get the job done, it is removed, thrown aside, and replaced with a different one.
If one understands the intentional duplicity of thought in the deceitful patriarchy, then one can probably figure out that accepting the blind faith philosophy so zealously encouraged in our society is precisely the wrong thing to do. But if one doesn't, or can't, intellectually see that deeply into the human psyche, then he probably will become part of a discarded wheel. Perhaps it is the All's way of thinning the herd of souls that could, like lemmings, overrun the earth, and hence the pleroma, if blind faith were enough to get there. So the masses may never figure it out, but that doesn't mean that you can't.
You owe it to yourself to adjust your priorities about what's important in life and to focus your intellectual curiosity over why you are alive. Gnostics say that experience and seeing, and absorbing what you see and experience, is far more important than formal study and education. It has something to do with nature – being close to the earth – and the natural wisdom of intuition that has all but been purged from our senses. It is the musky scent of Sophia and the deep feminine, of damp soil, dark caves and wombs, and of the fertility rites of the old pagan ways when "God was a Woman."
Mr. Coelho, in his laconic way, sums it all up this way in his last item on the Inventory of Normality: 47] And finally, thinking that your religion is the sole proprietor of the absolute truth, the most important, the best, and that the other human beings in this immense planet who believe in any other manifestation of God are condemned to the fires of hell.
Suffice to say that there are, and were, several forms of Gnosticism on the planet, just as there are hundreds or thousands of forms of religions and manifestations of God. Though classifying Gnosticism as a religion is probably a misnomer, it is appropriate to think of it as a religious philosophy. In today's world, the leading forms of Gnosticism break down like this: Christian (about 70%), Hermetic (about 25%) and Sophian (5%). The overall percentage of Gnostics to the human population is about slim and none.
The issue here is not about formal religion or philosophy, or money, power, and aesthetics, or cars, houses, and clothes, but to cajole you into using your own intellect – your own inherent curiosity that has been systematically engineered out of you by the malevolent patriarchy – in order to begin searching for your own soul and your own enlightened way toward an understanding and knowledge of why in hell you're alive. I call it Sophy's Way.
The first item that struck me this way was this one: 9] Comparing objects like cars, houses and clothes, and defining life according to these comparisons instead of really trying to find out the true reason for being alive.
In my essay Looking for Felicity on this blog, Paulo explains that this same situation occurs in our search for happiness: "We have developed certain values – money, power, aesthetics – which … prevent us from stopping and asking ourselves: Am I happy?" Of course the answer is no, but we blindly forge right on ahead, lying to ourselves, unaware that we might all be about to fall off a cliff only to drown in the raging sea like an endless column of lemmings. He expands the issue here to include the search for the meaning of life.
So it appears that we are never truly happy, nor do we care whether we ever learn the truth about being alive – the ultimate mystery – because we measure the satisfaction of our lives in shallow, thoughtless, hubristic ways. It's just too much of an effort to try to figure it all out. Could it be that acquiring such knowledge, though, might be the key to actually finding felicity? There are many in this world, who have active, inquisitive, thoughtful, minds who think it is. But the masses couldn't care less. It's all about possession, appearance, and dominance – the sustenance of the archons.
So the question becomes, how do we convince the masses that we need to change our values and our ways? The easy way out is to tell us we don't have to change: that if we believe – keep the faith – everything will be taken care of for us when the time comes. How absurd is that? But that is exactly what has happened in our patriarchal secular society and our religions. Hope and pray for guidance, confess your sins, trust in the Lord, and your souls will be saved. That's it; no effort necessary; end of story!
Would you have such blind faith in the bank that holds the mortgage on your home continuing to honor your contract when you are years behind on your payments? Would you truly believe your spouse would graciously continue to forgive you if you were unfaithful every other night of the week for years on end? Are you sure the Chicago Cubs will win a world series ever again?
The thing is, we are all part of the greater Consciousness; we are the rim and the spokes that make the hub of the wheel work, and it is our duty and obligation to do our level best for the hub – or the All. If we are all part of a wheel, it seems to me that it would be helpful if we knew where we were going, and why. The old saying, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, seems quite apt in this analogy. When a wheel doesn't get the job done, it is removed, thrown aside, and replaced with a different one.
If one understands the intentional duplicity of thought in the deceitful patriarchy, then one can probably figure out that accepting the blind faith philosophy so zealously encouraged in our society is precisely the wrong thing to do. But if one doesn't, or can't, intellectually see that deeply into the human psyche, then he probably will become part of a discarded wheel. Perhaps it is the All's way of thinning the herd of souls that could, like lemmings, overrun the earth, and hence the pleroma, if blind faith were enough to get there. So the masses may never figure it out, but that doesn't mean that you can't.
You owe it to yourself to adjust your priorities about what's important in life and to focus your intellectual curiosity over why you are alive. Gnostics say that experience and seeing, and absorbing what you see and experience, is far more important than formal study and education. It has something to do with nature – being close to the earth – and the natural wisdom of intuition that has all but been purged from our senses. It is the musky scent of Sophia and the deep feminine, of damp soil, dark caves and wombs, and of the fertility rites of the old pagan ways when "God was a Woman."
Mr. Coelho, in his laconic way, sums it all up this way in his last item on the Inventory of Normality: 47] And finally, thinking that your religion is the sole proprietor of the absolute truth, the most important, the best, and that the other human beings in this immense planet who believe in any other manifestation of God are condemned to the fires of hell.
Suffice to say that there are, and were, several forms of Gnosticism on the planet, just as there are hundreds or thousands of forms of religions and manifestations of God. Though classifying Gnosticism as a religion is probably a misnomer, it is appropriate to think of it as a religious philosophy. In today's world, the leading forms of Gnosticism break down like this: Christian (about 70%), Hermetic (about 25%) and Sophian (5%). The overall percentage of Gnostics to the human population is about slim and none.
The issue here is not about formal religion or philosophy, or money, power, and aesthetics, or cars, houses, and clothes, but to cajole you into using your own intellect – your own inherent curiosity that has been systematically engineered out of you by the malevolent patriarchy – in order to begin searching for your own soul and your own enlightened way toward an understanding and knowledge of why in hell you're alive. I call it Sophy's Way.
vvv
Copyright (2009) by Albert Lloyd Williams
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