Faith Can Move Mountains

There is so much we cannot know, mainly because of our disconnect from the Truth, that we have to take on faith. Now, if you’re like me, your faith can be tested from time-to-time. But it stands the test of time, everytime.

Ironically, Gnosis is knowing we don’t know. As we progressively free ourselves from the conceptual matrix we have mistaken for reality, we become certain about less and less until we find ourselves living in the Mystery. It is an extraordinary twist that the great Gnostic injunction ‘Know your Self’ most famously finds its fulfilment in Socrates, whom the Oracle of Delphi declares the wisest man alive, because ‘He knows that he knows nothing.’

Gnosis is knowing nothing and loving everything.

Jesus and the Lost Goddess (page 182c)

Life doesn’t make sense. It’s an absolute Mystery.

Yet as we progress on our journey something changes. We begin our search because we are terrified by the fact that we don’t know what is going on. Through the process of awakening we discover something wonderful — the source from which life originates and towards which it is evolving is more perfect, more beautiful, more loving, than words can possibly communicate. Life is essentially Good.

This can sound like glib positivity, but it is not. Gnosticism is not about avoiding the fact of suffering and retreating into wishful thinking. It is expressing our natural compassion for doing all we can to ameliorate the terrible suffering we encounter, yet at the same time knowing that, despite appearances, all is well. It is understanding that ultimately, therefore, good will come from bad, and choosing to play an active part in that process.

We can’t understand the Mystery of Life, but we can come to trust it, and this transforms everything. Ironically, Gnosis turns out to be synonymous with faith. But by ‘faith’ Gnostics don’t mean blind belief in historical events, as Literalists do, they mean complete confidence in the life process. For Philo faith is ‘the queen of the virtues’. Basilides eulogizes: ‘Faith is the best quality.’ Simon Maguis teaches: ‘Gnosis and faith give the soul which chooses them permanent peace.’ The mystical marriage is living with Gnosis of the eternal Mystery and unshakeable faith in the fundamental goodness of the unfolding drama of the temporal world.

Ibid (page 183)

Amen.