In Two Worlds — As the name suggests, this site is for those who have been questioning what we think of as everyday reality and now feel like they’re living “in two worlds.” Touches on lots of strange phenomena as well as the darker aspects of “what’s out there,” but the tone is anything but bleak. If I had to summarize the overall message of I2W I would say it’s “learn what’s out there, and what’s truly influencing us so that we can become fully conscious and free in our thoughts and actions.” This site has had a major influence on my thinking and writing, and Carissa has been nothing but supportive of Beyond Within as well, so it’s only fitting to share the lurve!

Noble Dreams — A forum that covers similar subject matter. This is another one that I’ve gotten a lot of inspiration from, and has also supported Beyond Within. Thanks guys!

Divine Cosmos — Divine Cosmos is a great resource on subjects I’m extremely interested in but don’t cover as often: the mystery of 2012, the concept of ascension and the mass shift in consciousness. David Wilcock makes a very well researched and well presented case that we may be on the verge of something big, and it’s anything but the same doom-and-gloom we usually hear about.

Thought / Word / Deed — A blog on “thought, word and deed,” or in other words, achieving balance and consistency, internally and externally. This is something I’ve been focusing a lot on, and Korey covers the subject matter in a way I’ve really resonated with and found personally useful.

That’s all for this week!

–Palehorse

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Fear not the flesh nor love it. If you fear it, it will gain mastery over you. If you love it, it will swallow and paralyze you. –Gospel of Philip

The Gnostics are often portrayed as extremists. Not religious extremists as we think of them today, but extreme in how they regarded the body. As the popular conception has it, all groups believed the physical world doesn’t matter, and in their quest to become free of its constraints different groups were led in one of two directions. Some renounced the body and chose a life of rigid asceticism, while others viewed life as a hedonistic free-for-all.

While this may or may not be the case with some groups, I posit that this belief comes partly from the exaggerated claims of their ancient opponents, and partly from projecting common modern views of what it means to be “free.” A fundamentalist of most faiths would tell you that we have to renounce the body and its “carnal urges” in order to earn our freedom. (Yes I know, “salvation by faith alone!” some will exclaim — but in my experience, if you answer “so my actions don’t matter then!” the discussion gets either very quiet, or very loud, but either way a clear and sensible answer is rarely forthcoming.) And then there are the “free spirits” who take the opposite approach, believing that freedom is found in indulgence.

From the quote above we can see that the group who produced the Gospel of Philip (likely the Valentinians) would beg to differ with both parties, instead advocating a philosophy of balance and moderation. When it comes to the question of personal freedom, I have found no better advice than this. I’ll explain.

“Fear not the flesh nor love it.” “Fear” refers to those who renounce the body and the trappings of the material world. “Love” in this instance refers not to a healthy self-love, but rather to identification, and indulgence, possibly to the point of obsession. What happens when we renounce or identify with the body?

“If you fear it, it will gain mastery over you.”

Try an experiment. For the next ten seconds, don’t think about sex. Ready? GO!

…

What happens the second I tell you to stop thinking about sex? That’s right — your mind goes “sexsexsex!” because the subconscious mind doesn’t register “don’t” and “don’t think about sex” is still a thought about sex. If you were to try this for a day, a week, or longer, suddenly you would find references to sex popping up everywhere you looked; it’d be inescapable! This is because of the basic truth that every action has an equal and opposite reaction. If you push something away by force, it boomerangs back at you with equal force. If you deny part of natural material existence, you put the mind and body, two aspects of yourself, into conflict… and the rejected aspect will simply begin expressing itself some other way, with or without your conscious consent. The Roman Catholic church continues to give us many tragic examples of the “fruits” of denying the body, and freedom has no part in the equation. Many of us have also seen examples of overprotective parents whose kids go absolutely nuts and indulge in all the things they were denied with reckless abandon the minute they leave home. These are all examples of what I call “forbidden fruit syndrome” — the quickest way to create a demand for something is to restrict or forbid it. If you define part of your identity as being against something, that thing is still defining you. It has gained mastery over you.

“If you love it, it will swallow and paralyze you.”

Identifying with and obsessing over the body and the things of this world is the source of much misery, because the only thing about them we can depend on is change. Change is guaranteed, and loss is a certainty; yet fear of change and loss are two of the biggest negative driving forces of this world. Where’s the sense in fearing the inevitable? If we base our identity on anything temporary, our very identity can be stripped from us. Energy we spend on trying to cling to “the way things are” is energy wasted. Our efforts to resist change consume us and cause us to stagnate. Change is like a river that’s going to flow with or without your consent; try to swim against it and you might be able to fight it for a little while. But once your strength runs out, you’re swept along at its mercy; you lose all ability to direct your course and may smash into a rock or two. If you make more efficient use of your energy by treading water and allowing yourself to flow with the current rather than pushing against it, you put yourself in a better position to consciously navigate a smoother path.

How then should we regard the body and the material world?

In between the extremes of renunciation and indulgence lies the narrow, middle path of balance and moderation. We should regard the body and world for what they are — temporary tools that provide us the ability to have experiences and learn a set of lessons about ourselves. That meat-suit you’re wearing is not “you;” it’s an entire collection of organisms that have come together for the purpose of giving you the experience of interaction with the physical world. When is the last time you said thanks? Physical pleasure is neither the ultimate goal nor something to be shunned; it is simply to be experienced, appreciated and learned from. When we can see change as a set of opportunities rather than threats; when we can experience what the physical world has to offer us with honesty and integrity, neither fearing, identifying with or claiming it as a need, we find ourselves on the narrow path. When we find this balance, we move without tension or conflict. When we can move and act out of our own nature and will, without clinging to objects or expectations, we become free.

–Palehorse

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Over the course of my developing interaction with the divine figure Sophia, I’ve dug up some of my favorite sources and have been taking a fresh look at Gnosticism. I have long cited Gnostic thought as one of my main influences, though as with a lot of systems, I stop short of calling myself a Gnostic because I don’t identify with a lot of things that people typically associate with the term.

Nonetheless, I take a lot of inspiration and insight from various Gnostic scriptures, and more recently I’ve had the idea to incorporate this in my writing. This piece marks the beginning of a new category for the blog, “Gnosis.” Mixed in with my regular articles I will periodically be taking a passage and writing up an exposition of the meaning I get out of it. Before I start that, I figured it would be useful to give it some context by explaining what Gnosticism is, and what it is to me. At least a basic knowledge of Gnosticism is important for anyone who is a seeker or otherwise interested in religion and spirituality though, as many commonly held beliefs and ideas are influenced or directly taken from it, often without knowing where that influence originated. …I’ve got a thing for the underdogs, okay?

What Do We Know About Gnosticism?

As simply as I can put it, Gnosticism is practiced by those seeking Gnosis, or subjective, experiential revealed knowledge.

Beyond that, Gnosticism is hard to define or categorize for a number of reasons. Much like early proto-orthodox Christianity, Gnosticism was not a single movement with a specific body of beliefs and practices; it is a modern umbrella term which covers a diverse range of belief systems.

It factors in signficantly that the Gnostics were heavily persecuted. The developing and later increasingly militarized proto-orthodox church worked to stamp out the Gnostic movements, and by about the 6th century, had done a pretty good job of it; forcing those who remained further underground. As a result, until more recently most of what we knew of the Gnostics were from the writings of their theological opponents. Needless to say much of this material is openly slanderous and its factual accuracy largely suspect, save for when it quotes Gnostic sources directly. This changed with the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, a large collection of well preserved Gnostic scriptures unearthed in northern Egypt in 1945. Even still, due to deterioration as well as the long road from being discovered (and partially destroyed in the process) to being translated, published and finally released to the public decades later, many of those scriptures are incomplete, missing sections ranging from a few words to several pages of material.

Additionally the Gnostics were deliberately obscure, and made extensive use of metaphor and symbolism in their writings. Whereas mainline Christianity was otensibly a movement for the masses, Gnosticism was not meant to be for everyone. Many of their beliefs and practices were kept in strict secrecy until one became an initiate. More literal minded orthodox detractors often made the mistake of taking Gnostic writings at face value and criticizing them based on these faulty interpretations. While the results were often amusing, the misconceptions perpetuated by these practices certainly don’t help those of us trying to piece together a more accurate picture of what these movements were all about.

All that nonwithstanding, there are commonalities between the various Gnostic groups that can be pointed out and discussed in order to get a generalized feel for what they represented.

Gnostic cosmologies begin with a single unknowable Source, from which comes a series of emanations, divine figures called Aeons. Of these Aeons, Sophia is generally seen as the lowest, meaning the closest to our third-dimensional reality. Central to Gnostic belief is the idea that the world is inherently flawed, not because of any “fall” on the part of mankind, but because it was created that way from the beginning by a flawed deity who falsely believes “I am god, before me there is no other.” This creator, known as the Demiurge and often associated with the god of the Old Testament, is ignorant of the higher realities and divinity above himself. Man contains a “spark” of true divinity, but has likewise forgotten who he is and where he came from. “Salvation” then is not from punishment after death, but from ignorance, and the prison of materiality. It comes not through faith in an external savior, but through gnosis. Jesus is seen as a teacher of gnosis, who came not to save man from sin, but rather to show us how we might free ourselves. It becomes easy to see why the Gnostics were persecuted by the Roman church — since, if we’re all sovereign beings who can connect to God at any time via direct personal experience, then what need is there for a priestly class, a church hierarchy, or an ever-present collection plate?

What Does Gnosticism Mean to Me?

For my part, I’ve seen a lot of discussion in various forums of what makes one a “True Gnostic™”, which I find almost laughably ironic and more well suited to a discussion of evangelical fundamentalism. The fact that this goes on, and that many Gnostic groups today seem to have taken on roughly the same structure and function of the mainline churches that reject them, are big reasons why I don’t call myself one. Another reason is that we simply don’t know for sure what went on at those initiations, or exactly how the Gnostics interpreted their scriptures behind closed doors. Needless to say I’m less concerned about coming up with a bullet pointed list of True Gnostic Beliefs™ and more interested in exploring and discussing where my seeking after gnosis is leading me.

This concept that man carries a spark of the divine is at the heart of my own spirituality; most if not all other truths stem from this. We are simultaneously and paradoxically more sovereign as individuals and more interconnected as a collective whole than we could imagine. To me Gnosticism is a rejection of any authority higher than the self, while at the same time impelling us to be impeccable, to represent our highest ideal selves, which is where our authority lies. I don’t subscribe to the strict dualism, but as far as I’m concerned it follows that this concept has been misrepresented in many common portrayals of the Gnostics. Even if the world is a good few steps removed from the Source, relatively speaking, it’s all still from the same Source as everything “higher.” The physical world is not evil, bad or the enemy — spiritual ignorance is. This is simply a system with its own set of parameters that makes a certain range of experiences, and lessons, possible. The system has been hijacked by those who would turn it into a prison, but the creation itself is not at fault; it just IS.

Thus I am not necessarily in favor of escaping the material world, but rather transforming myself and becoming free within it. But freedom is not found by either of the usual extremes: renunciation, or unbridled hedonism, which are two sides of the same coin, and equally unbalanced. And with that statement I may be the only person on earth who’s in danger of getting beaten up by LaVeyans and Buddhists alike. The ego, represented by the false creator, or Demiurge, is not something to be defeated, destroyed, relinquished, killed or otherwise done away with, but we are also not meant to indulge in or be ruled by its false beliefs about itself. The ego is an aspect of the self, a tool used for having experiences and interacting with the material world — but when we go to war within ourselves, who wins? No, the ego is to be transmuted by the purifying, alchemichal flames of gnosis; to be balanced and shown its true form by Spirit. This catalyzing process is every individual’s apocolypse, which literally means “unveiling”; a trial by fire that brings forth a whole new creation.

For further reading:

The Gnostic Gospels by Elain Pagels (aff.)

Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew by Bart D Ehrman (aff.)

The Nag Hammadi Library by James L. Robinson and Marvin Meyer

The Other Bible by Willis Barnstone (aff.)

The Gnostic Bible by Willis Barnstone (aff.)

–Palehorse

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In my last post I discussed the concept of creating one’s ideal world by being the kind of person who would populate it. This ties into the concept that we create our own reality. In a world of six billion people though, all with different beliefs, hopes and dreams, how can it be said that we each create our own reality? How do we reconcile each individual’s subjective experience with the greater objective consensus reality?

You may be familiar with the theory of dreams that says every character, place and situation within the dream represents an aspect of the self. I believe that in a sense, real life is the same way. We “dream” people and situations into our experience that represent aspects of ourselves — the only difference being that in life, the other dream characters are self-aware and are dreaming you into their experience for their own reasons.

Common sense would seem to dictate that there is an objective and “real” universe, “out there” that exists and is what it is independently of our perception of it. Discoveries in quantum physics have disproven this however — the behavior of a particle changes based on the presence of a conscious observer. Extrapolate this to the macrocosm, and it becomes evident that the universe is being continuously co-created by Consciousness.

Based on parallel universe theory, the idea that everything that can exist does, somewhere/when, I’ll take it even further. I posit that in a sense, we are each at the center of our own individual universe. My universe may overlap with those who enter my sphere of influence and share a lot in common — but it might also be very different, in very real and significant ways.

Think of it like a venn diagram, where one circle is my reality, the other is yours, and the place in the middle is where they overlap.

Now picture billions of these circles, all moving in and out of each other, flowing and rearranging continuously in infinite configurations. If we picture a visual representation of this image, we would end up with something resembling the Flower of Life.

The place where two circles overlap are the reality shared between, say, you and I. This area consists of our shared beliefs, perceptions and experiences. When we say we know someone, the person we know exists in this overlapped section. But can you know me as I know myself? If you’ve cultivated self-knowledge and objectivity you’ll know more of the true person just as you know you true self. If you haven’t, your impressions of them will be largely colored by your own perceptions; they’ll simply be a character in your dream.

The part of the circle that doesn’t overlap represents the part of ourselves and our reality that is not shared. How much of our fundamental experience of reality do we really share with the random guy we pass by on the street, and how much do we simply assume that we do based on what we suppose is “common sense”? How much of our reality do we share with the random guy across the world and how much do we simply assume based on our own beliefs, experiences and perceptual filters?

The statement “history is written by the winners,” is often used to convey that what we take for granted as being “the way it happened” may or may not be the case. If we take into account the concept of divergent timelines, it may even be possible that one’s history depends on which timeline they’re on, and continue along, when timelines overlap.

I’m reminded of a few times in my life where I and someone else remembered two completely different, mutually exclusive versions of an incident that was too recent for memory to degrade that much, but too mundane for either of us to have any vested interest in changing the details. Since its only happened rarely, I don’t think its a problem with my memory, and since its happened with a few different people I don’t think it was theirs either. Each time while it was happening I had a sense like “pay attention; something unusual is going on.” Ever since, I’ve always wondered whether we experienced some sort of timeline crossover. According to countless accounts that I’ve read, my experience is one among many; some similar, some even more likely to make one raise an eyebrow. The concept of “alter-vus” is an interesting one, which is defined as your experiences not matching your memories. For example, today you find a fully stocked and operational grocery store where you know there was just an empty lot yesterday, and everyone you ask remembers it as “always having been there.”

Back to the flower of life… the larger circle around the collection of smaller ones could be said to represent the greater consensus reality. This would consist of the physical and metaphysical laws that preserve the appearance of a coherent and continuous experience. Then again, as far as I’m concerned, rules and laws are handy for providing structure just until we’re able to transcend them… I believe that within the larger structure is a lot more possibilities than we could ever imagine; many of what we take to be rules or even laws are simply common assumptions. Within those larger boundaries, vast numbers of personal realities can exist comfortably — largely because we never question the assumption that they’re all the same.

“This is all very interesting” (or downright nutty as the case may be) you may be thinking, “but what’s your overall point?” That’s a damn good question, glad you asked. The point is that if we get rid of the assumption that we’re all playing in the exact same proverbial sandbox, then we’re left with some very important implications. If my reality is literally my own creation, and not contingent on any other person or entity, then I have a lot more freedom to act and create, to choose who to share my reality with, and decide what parts of other creations I want to allow to color my own. If I want to make an awesome cake, I would include chocolate but exclude ketchup; if I want to create my ideal experience I need to be equally discriminatory about what I put into it. This starts with what qualities I exhibit in my own life, and extends to the people I choose to share my life with.

That’s not to say I’m trying to emphasize separation — we have enough of that in this consensus reality already! But that brings me back to the subject of self knowledge and objectivity. With self-knowledge and love, objectivity and discernment, we begin to attract more people and influences that are compatible with our reality, and recognize those that aren’t. At that point an interesting thing begins to happen — the circles within our area of the Flower start to show greater overlap, “the divine within me recognizes the divine in you,” and there arises a new creation that we may have only thought was possible in our wildest dreams.

Namaste indeed!

–Palehorse

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When we get to a point on our paths when our awareness is increasing, it’s common to feel a sense of overwhelm about the state of the world in which we find ourselves. War, poverty, hunger, corruption. It can be an even harder pill to swallow when we figure out that most of these problems were deliberately created to put more money, power and control in the hands of the few.

We ask ourselves — what can I do to make a difference? Should I take up activism? Give to charity? Research and expose deception?

While all of those things are important and have their place — they’re also reactionary. They might help a few individuals, but they probably won’t make a dent in the source of these problems. In order for real change to take place on a wider scale, there needs to be a shift in consciousness — a fundamental change in the way that people operate and relate to each other. How can we help bring this shift into being at an individual level?

“Change yourself, and everything changes.”

This isn’t just a New Age cliche. We are all part of a vast network, connected at the energetic level. When we change something about ourselves, the energy we’re putting out changes accordingly. At the subconscious level, everyone connected to us then has a choice to make: either they find our new direction agreeable and it gives them a boost toward making their own change, so that they remain compatible with us. Or, they choose to stay where they are, and most likely drift out of our lives.

It can be hard to see this in action since most of the time when we change, we do so gradually, often unconsciously, in response to other people and circumstances. When we change in a reactionary way, we are part of the effect rather than the cause. When we’re against something, we negate our own best intentions because the subconscious, the collective unconscious and the universe itself don’t register negatives. When we’re for something, when we decide in advance what we’d like to see more of in our lives and change ourselves to reflect that, is when we become part of the solution.

My approach involves a combination of learning who I am and deciding what kind of person I will be, and using techniques I’ve developed to affect changes in myself quickly, at deep levels. This has been known to produce rapid, even volatile shifts in my life circumstances. While this can be initially jarring, it has also given me the opportunity to learn how the “network” operates by witnessing it firsthand, often in startling ways. One of the things I have learned is that when we change, we send out a ripple effect that compels change in those we’re connected to. Or, if they choose not to change with us, they drift out of our lives. More than once I have made sudden significant changes in my life, only to begin seeing a wave of people in my sphere of influence making similar changes in their own — regardless of whether we were in direct contact, or even whether they knew what was going on with me. Needless to say my experience with this phenomenon really opened my eyes to the power of a single individual to bring about real change. It’s not hard to imagine how this principle would play out in the world if more people stopped being reactionary, stopped trying to control external circumstances and people, and instead focused on being masters of themselves. When it comes down to it, controlling other people and outcomes is ultimately futile. Our own selves are the one thing we are able to have control over — but therein lies the source of our personal power, and our ability to be a force for positive change.

Our ideal world will not be created by one group forcing its will on others, much less by force of arms. Each of us can begin helping to create our ideal world now, by striving to BE the kind of person who would populate it.

–Palehorse

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