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Gnosis, in my opinion, is a remembering of something we can't be civilized without, but of which we don't have to be conscious of for it to docetically do what it does anyway. It acts as an experiential database of all that we are or can be, ever. Glimpses. Like the dancer or musician that goes into trance or a star athlete of whom it has also been said, "Look! Just look at him. That's what God is like."
I studied the Enneagrams and learned from that about the chief difficulty (according to that system) in life is avarice, greed. I really didn't think that was the case, but decided to play pretend with the idea of it just to see if it turned out to be one of those bells that made me drool for it.
The reason I found it difficult to accept that my chief feature was avarice is that I had always abandoned or given everything I owned away every time I was called to the road. I even gave away stuff people gave to me because I was so poverty stricken the very sight of me made their hidden compassion upsurge into consciousness. Sometime for the first ti-me, or so they said. How much more giving could I be than to create a conscious awareness of a somethingness like compassion to people who never knowed they were possessed by it? Greedy? Hell, I was a virtual martyr!!
I'm always the last to know. It's the bane of my existence. It took maybe five years for me to realize that I'm a miser. A stone-hearted, selfish fool. There is a condition that must be met for my greediness to spring into action. The condition was part of the Enneagram dealio, but I ignored that part of it for a while. When I re-membered it from all the flotsam I encountered studying the Enneagrams that had little to do with me and my abhorrent chief feature, I understood the intent of it and I puled with joy, and drooled.
It was something I didn't create by adopting any of the various rules of conscience that surrounded me. I wasn't responsible for being the way the Enneagrams suggested I might be. The specific situation my avarice, greed, and selfishness way beyond reason popped up when I had to have the wherewithal I needed to get away by myself in order to reflect on the past. I realized I don't experience events that happen in my world in real time. Only later when no one is around to dispute my Word.
That's what I didn't know about that caused me to treat the other with askance when they wanted what I needed to get away by myself for myself. I neglected being-for-myself. I was taught that it was better to give than receive, and down-played what I needed for myself as bad taste. I actually read Emily Post quite often. Selfishness nor greediness is considered good taste. But, I needed it. I needed it for-myself.
I had little help realizing the truth when it came to doing for myself. It took a while to grok the fact that nobody was gone do one damned thing fer me. No blame. They didn't know. I had to go there by myself-for-myself. It was easy. I'm a natural at it. I just had to give myself permission. It never turned a head nor snubbed a nose. I slip away when the ti-me co-me-s, and it never raises a brow. Nobody knows.
I went to the store and bought 100 feet of garden hose and one of those multifaceted spray heads. I'm burning off around the edge of my lawn into the woods to prevent some accidental woods fire from burning the grass right up to my house and catching it on fire. I already had one length of hose, so I'm able to reach 200 feet out from my house in all directions.
I have already done a couple of burnings, but the last one almost got beyond the reach of my one length of hose. Today, after I hooked the new hose together with the old one I started a new fire on the north side of my house. The reason I love burning brush is that I was brought up that way. My father liked to clear land and burn off the wood piles. Sometime we would stay up all night watching what started out as huge fires to a kid.
Sometimes it feels weird to observe family traditions without a family to carry them forward. I guess I should have been more thoughtful.
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
