A practitioner of faith

Got your attention didn’t I? Yes , I’m still alive. Just a bit busy of late, doing stuff.  Stuff? All kinds of stuff you know the kind of stuff we all have in our daily life. Work, paying bills, parenting, hobbies, birthdays and all kinds of social obligations. You know, stuff!

Writing requires a subject, the will to write it down, A PC, pen, etc. when you have that story in your head, the time and state of mind to put it all down.  Here I am putting it down again.

While I was killing time the last 10 minutes before the end of a long working day(no sense starting something you have to quit 10 minutes later, is there?) I went to my Facebook page to see a friend of mine had added me to his list. As I watched his info screen I saw Buddhism as his faith. I clicked my profile and saw Gnostic. I Clicked it and found a bunch of groups about the subject. The one first on the list catch ‘d my eye.  It’s avatar of a picture of an ancient damaged book intrigued me.

Click, Click.

I scrolled through the page and found that some one posted a question: How does one practice the faith of Gnosticism.

To me at first, the question was a bit odd. But as it started drifting about in my mind, I could feel the urge for someone to pop it.

Most religions have a certain amount of rites or rituals to practice it’s faith. So what about gnosticism. We’ll it works a bit differently with Gnosticism.  Yes you can preform all kinds of silly rituals each day or week, like praying or blowing candles, eating bread and wine or whatever other thing you can think off. The essence of Gnosticism isn’t like that at all. To tell you the truth in Gnosticism It doesn’t really matter.  Gnostic’s do not have to go to church each week or turn to the east. Gnostic’s don’t have to do any of these foolish silly rituals.

Au contraire, the last thing a gnostic wants is to let his faith be distracted or clouded by rituals or rites that  can get him of the track or get him worshiping a demigod of some sort. Not that it isn’t allowed for a gnostic to get a little of track from time to time(will get there).  A Gnostic connection to god, the All  or the supreme being is very personal. It is the basis of a Gnostic ‘s faith. Being a Gnostic means that you practice your faith 24/7.  A Gnostic believes that one can come closer to God by living.  A Gnostic ponders about what he has seen heard or experienced and makes his conclusions accordingly.

A Gnostic should be  a skeptic about religions; Christianity, Buddhism, COFSM, Atheism(Yes you believers in the absence of a deity, it’s a religion too, there is just as much proof of the absence off a deity, as there is off one), but foremost of his own faith and his own conclusions.  Christians and most other major religions want exactly the opposite. To just simply believe what they want you to believe. This is the fundamental difference that separates Gnosticism from most off the other religions.

As a matter of fact most Gnostic ‘s will get of track a few times in a life, because of their skepticism. (See ) A Gnostic does not believe it can achieve enlightenment in one lifetime.  But he does believe each of his lives will bring him closer to the All.  Now I am not able to write a blog about the All. It’s impossible because of the size of it. The all is the grand design, the Alfa and Omega, God, Nature. The All is… the all is the omnipotent, neither good or bad, ying and yang, left and right, up and down, in and out. The All basically just is and also isn’t. (See why I can’t blog about the all?).

So how does a Gnostic practice it’s faith. The question is as easy as the answer.

He or she just simply does!

Jezus of Nazareth( The most famous Gnostic), once said. Love another like yourself and God above all. This is the thing a Gnostic tries to achieve.  Which I must say is challenging enough for a mere human being. The only other thing a Gnostic does is try to learn, learn  from the lessons of life itself and learn from the experiences of the lives of others.  A Gnostic lives his live,experiences and watches.

A Gnostic will try to rethink every moment, every interaction, every feeling and thought and look for it’s learnings. A gnostic handles in the believe that he is responsible for all of his actions and their consequences, however small they might be. They realize that every action has a reaction. Every cause has an effect. A Gnostic tries to be aware of all that he or she does.  A Gnostic realizes that life in general is sacred and will always try to avoid hurting the soul of a fellow human being.  A failure to do so, shows a gnostic how insignificant he is and how much he has still to learn. Love another like yourself a daring task indeed.  A gnostic should know that in order to  love another he or she must first love himself. If a gnostic does not love him- or her- self, he should first learn how to achieve this.  Gnosticism isn’t practiced in a church.  For a gnostic the true church is life itself.

Maybe now you understand why I found the question a bit odd. Why? because of the answer: A  Gnostic practices his faith all the time.

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