A favourite passage from The Gnostic Gospels, by Elaine Pagels.
The Gnostic writings were a favourite source of inspiration to Jung, and it’s easy to see why. They were, in many ways, depth psychologists, but didn’t have the label 🙂
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Abandon the search for God and the creation and other matters of a similar sort.
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 Look for him by taking yourself as the starting point. (Self Knowledge)
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 Learn who it is within you who makes everything his own and says, “My God, my mind, my thought, my soul, my body.”
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 Learn the sources of sorrow, joy, love, hate.
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 Learn how it happens that one watches without willing, rests without willing, becomes angry without willing, loves without willing.
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 If you carefully investigate these matters you will find him/her in yourself.
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 Quoting Gnostic teacher Monoimus,
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 also quoted by Hippolytus of Rome, Refutationis Omnium Haeresium, 8.15.1-2, as translated in The Gnostic Gospels (1989) by Elaine Pagels, Introduction, page 18 (2006 edition, Phoenix publishers).
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Related: hermetic view of human potential
🦉 © Peter Fairbrother @pjforguk www.pjf.org.uk 🌄
4 thoughts on “Looking inwards for enlightenment”