Beginnings

OK, until i figure out how to make separate pages and links, this will be four chunks on one page instead of a main page, and 3 side pages.

Gnosis: esoteric knowledge of spiritual truth held by the ancient Gnostics to be essential to salvation.

In other words, a mystery - and one relevant to the understanding of one's own life, or that of others, or the world in which we live.

Let's face it - this complex majesty, this living Earth, holds very few surprises or mysteries for those with even a moderate IQ or basic observational skills. Macro-environmental physics are mostly deterministic, and therefore predictable. People follow basic societally encouraged patterns to encourage success and propogation of the 'species' (wasn't Species the movie where you got to see Natasha Henstride's bosom covered in blood? That's hot. But I digress.), and also therefore are relatively predictable; any good author will tell you to analyze a character's motives to determine future acts right off the bat.

For those who pay attention, the world can be an incredibly dull and magically-neutral environ.

These 'Gnostic' searches are an attempt to delve deeper. Admittedly, with no way of knowing if we are simply confusing and obfuscating simplicities in a vain attempt to delude ourselves into feeling self-important in discovery and exploration. We really have no objective way of determining what is a mystery, and what is bullshit. But we search in the hopes of the former, frankly because of ego, and of having really very little else to do once the whole food-shelter dynamic was solved about 500 years ago. Is mental masturbation a Sin or Illumination? And really, does it matter or do we care?

On that ambiguous, self-aggrandizing note, we explore in this blog three topics in no particular order:


0 Gnostic Christianity (should be a link)

-- There are like 200 different versions of Gnostic Christianity or Zoastrianism on Wikipedia - why are you creating another?

--> Because I am right and they are wrong.

Listen, here is the low down, without fancy labels or predictions:

To the brilliant observer (i.e Me, hereafter referred to as TBO), the world seems to be chaotic, painful, random, and about as far from fair, just, linear, family-friendly, team-oriented as it can be. Tropical storms, puppies choking on nylons. Babies dying in their sleep. Everything breaks, everything sucks, and the Newtonian law about objects in motion remaining in motion is wrong - objects in motion, left un-observed, will mysteriously fuck up at the worst possible moment for no apparent reason.

Order decreases as chaos, entropy, increases.

To paraphrase the (apparently) correct Second Law of Thermodynamics, shit that is not fucked up will fuck up at a later date. Things will never get better or more orderly... either give the illusory appearance of temporary stability, or disintegrate before your eyes (usually at some form of family holiday function)

So, one asks after noting all this, "What the fuck?"

Here is where I disagree (or ignore) other Gnostics, because I admit I don't know enough objectively to label or define anything other than in the most basic terms:

This fragile Earth, this universe of molecules and space-heaters-in-mobile-homes and Starbucks with sullen, depressed brunette wait-staff, is what we roughly could describe as 'white noise' to a radio operator.

God - maybe the creator of this physical realm, but maybe not ( I wasn't there! ), is off doing his Divine bowling league in Heaven (for lack of a better term), and we are stuck - trapped, if you will bear with me - in a physical realm of disorder and pain and chaos. Were we trapped here by an insane creator god who thinks he is the 'real' God, but isn't? Was this physical plane created by God the real deal as some form of test or staging ground to act as a barrier between inspiration and enlightenment? My answer is simple - I have no friggin clue. Not even a guess. I really don't think it matters.

For whatever reasons, we have been thrust into the crappy, mundane, physical world. We are Arnold in 'The Running Man', which I might add, featured a svelt Richard Dawson; I think you can already seem the wisdom in what I am saying.

So whoever did it to us, and whyever they did it, we mortal coils are stuck in a rat race where the walls keep moving, and more unsettlingly, taunting back at us, as we try to find some cheese. Or Gnosis. Or Salvation. Or low fat non-dairy half cafe lattes with a twist of lime, some sweet and low.

Basically, we are trapped in a physical prison. By whom? For what purpose? I have no idea and can't sell you one, try as I might. I don't drink coffee but I'd love to be able to buy some of those lattes for friends, family, brunettes.

I'd like to share a revelation (or Gnosis, if you've been stealing my lingo as I encourage) that proved to be wildly false, but still very useful. Which is the best kind really, as there is no such thing as a bad gnosis, just like (sadly) there can be no final, definitive one.

I was a devout Catholic Christian, and was blown away - BLOWN AWAY I SAID! - when I heard that there was at least sketchy circumstantial evidence that Jesus was the illegitimate son of Mary and a Greek mercenary. To this day, I have absolutely no idea if it is true or even a credible rumor; at the time, it didn't matter. Now it doesn't matter, but for very different reasons.

At the time, I was blown away. My solid foundation was rocked because it had been based on a FACT and now this FACT was in question.

It took a disturbingly long time for me to realize I did not care. Yep, I did not care about such a seemingly earth-shattering detail - was Jesus the Divine, Immaculately conceived, Son of God? Or Joseph? Or Bubba the pool boy? What were the implications one way or the other?

And BAM, Gnosis - It didn't matter to me. Whether Jesus was the Son of God, or a god, or Joseph, or Bubba, his message was Divine. Of that, from reading it, experiencing it, LIVING it, I was certain. Did it matter how I got it, whether he was wearing wool or a cotton-poly blend on the Cross? No, of course not.

The unfortunate Human prediliction to argue semantics is based on ego and the need to be (irrevocably falsely) unique. Over and over and over again, in religion, in gaming, in politics. Welcome to my Blog.

We live in a world we like to pretend is orderly, and therefore just and therefore (possibly!) Divine; it is none of those. We live in a relatively slow-moving, mostly benign, shitstorm. Suck it up and agree.

The *message* of Jesus, however the heck we were lucky enough to get it, is a lifeline that God the Father sent down (sacrificing Jesus in the process) into the Chaos of our world, so we might grab onto it and not be Lost. We were not doing all that well metaphysically, so he sent in a Lifeguard to slap some floaty arm balloons on us - but only those willing to accept them.

The good part of this theory - we can stop trying to pretend this physical world is the perfect design of a perfect god. We can admit that, most days, it is kind of noisy and smelly, and not that spiritual, and rarely inspiring or implying Divine thoughts unto the viewer. Basically, it is a large ball of dirt that has just barely cooled, but might be hit by an asteroid at any minute, and while we are not being destroyed by random galactic debris, there are still puppies crying, babies dying, and my Buffalo Bills can't win a fucking Superbowl; in a nutshell, it is an injust crapshoot run by Pete Rose and Roman Polanski, but minus the cash payouts or young scented muff. Hyperbole aside, certainly NO ONE can look around and decry, "This is Heaven".

The bad part - we can never know if we are right, we can never be 'done', our search will never be 'complete'. Worse than that, the world will continue to get worse and worse, descending into Chaos irrevocably. All we can hope is that our 'individual' time-lines are so insignificantly small on the scale of Said Bitch Universe that we are long dead before there is some Cosmic 'Phase 2'; She may build an Intergalactic Highway right across our palms, our hopes, our planet.

So we grasp that lifeline, that message of Christ, and tug as hard as we can, hoping that God will yank us out of the Bushwood Estates Pool before Karl Spackler bites into the Mars bar as we shockingly look Unto Him. Gunga... gunga galunga.

Amen.


0 Gnostic Gaming (should be a link)




0 Gnostic Politics (should be a link)

-- Is it as pre-determined as it appears to be?