Alienation

One of the common experiences of Gnostics (and other "alternative" groups) is the feeling of alienation, of not quite belonging where they are. This, of course, is partly due to the fact that a Gnostic is 1 in a 1000, if even, and that minority groups are, by their nature, somewhat alienated from the dominant culture and group of the given people. But is that all of it? Gnosticism gives another reason.

Have you ever had the feeling that you just don't belong here? By here, I mean in your town, in your country, on this planet. This should ring a bell for many people who are reading this blog, and let me try to explain why.

You don't come from this place. Yes, you're "human", and yes you were physically born here on this planet. I would never argue against that. But, as we all know, there is more to this than meets the eye, because there is more than the physical. Creation didn't start with "Creation" (a la Genesis) - something happened before this. This is a common teaching in both Gnostic and Qabalistic texts. So, while Genesis describes the creation of the Cosmos (the "System" that Gnostics try to break out of [in much the same manner as the Buddhists do with Samsara]), which includes, of course, the "stuff" that makes up the Earth and our physical bodies, that "stuff" isn't all of us, and our True Creation goes back a lot further than that. In essence, you could see it as: the Demiurge created our bodies, but our souls were created by God. The Breath of God was breathed into Adam, whose body lay like a lifeless inanimate shell, and it is the Divine Spark in all of us that harks back to our true heritage in the Pleroma, in the Fullness of God and his infinite majesty.

So what does this all mean? Simply put, the reason why you feel you don't belong here is because you belong in the Pleroma, and by "you" I mean a greater you than the ego usually likes to admit. The body is, in essence, a cage, just as the Cosmos is - the Matrix that we all have to wake up to and break free from, and "what makes us free is the Gnosis". I'm not saying, of course, that we should shun the physical or commit suicide in order to try to "get out", as that simply won't accomplish anything. You can't escape easily. You will be reincarnated. The bondage of Samsara is broken through other means, and this is through contact with the Divine (through Gnosis). Over a number of incarnations where such contact is sustained the bonds begin to weaken, and eventually there is an Ascension of the soul, a Return of the the Divine Sparks into the Pleroma, the Tiqqun (Repairing) of the World, the Reunification of the Shekinah with the King.

This is a common thread of Gnostic thought (see "Allogenes", for example, which means "the Foreigner", and deals extensively with this subject), and, indeed, was important for Christianity and Judaism as well (among other religions), since, for example, Judaism places a special importance on their exile from Egypt and subsequent places (identifying it with the exile from the Garden of Eden and the fall of the Shekinah, which is the fall of Sophia). It is a recurring trend in all people, which tends to strengthen the idea that humanity doesn't quite "belong" here. We belong, in essence, in the Garden of Eden, from which we were exiled, and we are homesick, yearning to return there, for no grass here has the greeness of those meadows, and no fruit can taste as sweet as that of the Tree of Life.

To be alienated is, in essence, to be alone (or, at least, the experience can feel like that), but to be alone is to be One, for the word "alone" is a conjunction of "all" and "one": all-one becoming al-one. This is the same for other words of a similar nature like "only", which was originally written as "onely" in an older form of English. So, to be alone is to be One, and when we consider the philosophical implications of this, the "loneliness" element is diminished considerably. As a Gnostic, one of the key beliefs is that all is One, that everything ultimately belongs to the Fullness. Thus, if we are "all one", then being "alone" (in a negative sense) is merely a misconception of the state of our total being, of God being alone in the Universe.

Let us pray for Tiqqun, and let us share our Wisdom, our Understanding, and our Knowledge with one another, that we might all know the mysteries that make up the Ascension. May we remember our Fall and Exile, and that of Sophia (the Shekinah), and we work towards the Restoration of God, which is the Restoration of Man.