Did you see the Nova show on PBS last night about how the Mayan language was decoded one step at a time by a succession of individuals? With the final piece of the puzzle being resolved by a mere child? It was a kind of "feel good" piece in that there are still Mayans around who speak some of the language their ancestors were using back in the day.
The very idea that these researchers could figure out how modern Mayans could learn to read their own history without interlopers with hidden agendas is the feel good part. My immediate impression is that for a Mayan individual who learns to read the original carvings and statuary they could become as if Mayan priests. They know the secrets of the ancients, or at least they could make that claim. Who would tell them "No."
I guess I'll never know how this might turn out since I ain't immortal, but it's an interesting development that allows rampant speculation by reflecting on what might happen to the Mayans now.
That program last night made me think of Gnostics. I'm speculating that there won't no sech thang as a Gnostic in the same sense that there were and still are Mayans. For the Mayans, their history is literally written in stone. That's probably the only reason they still got it. The so-called Gnostic Library discovered in Egypt in 1945 is not the history of a people like the stone temples and carvings and statues and jewelry of the Mayans are. The sayings and stories associated with the "gnostics" are not a matter of history at all, as much as they are a guide to how not to repeat history and thus be doomed to what never worked then either.
Reagan's speech writers had him saying one specific and very lonely statement that I agree with. He said, and I paraphrase, "Anybody can become an American no matter what part of the world they come here from." The history of America is really about immigration from it's roots to it's core. In my opinion it can also be said, "Anybody can become a gnostic despite what they were raised to believe." All they have to do is to experience gnosis and it's so, no matter how they get there.
In my opinion, experiencing gnosis is the crowning achievement of individuation. Experiencing it by any means literally implies that you have your own identity, no matter what. Unfortunately, it also means you're typecast, and limited in the roles you can play with some degree of believability. The range and scope of how much star power an individual has often depends on how many different types of roles they can play, and when possessing enough is enow.
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.
