The Return Of Gnosis

The Return Of Gnosis


In The Garden – The Three Trees

December 21, 2016

Show Notes:

- Episode introduction and theme

- Do you ever feel as though there's something missing from life, in western culture? The cyclical nature of things

- The source of the richness in life - experiencing life as though it were a gift. But what in life is not a gift?

- Perspective - What is the relationship between our objective reality and the relative view we take of it. Is there an element of choice?

- Participating in the stream (of life) vs observing it from the shore.

- Nick saves Martina from being crushed by a public bus in Sweden.

- Nick's dream of the Three Trees.

- Uncertainty as a source of discomfort, simultaneously what gives things real value in that nothing is guaranteed, which makes everything a gift.

- Is 'reason' or 'thought' a process of stepping out of the stream? What takes place when there is complete undivided attention in response to one's external environment? Is there a separation?

- Both rationality and irrationality exist. Both the infinite and the finite exist.

- The individual journey from birth to death, development of higher cognitive faculties that facilitate functioning independently in the world, may also hem us off from the state of wonder at being that embodies childhood, which we must then rediscover.

- The Dark Night of the Soul. The dual world. When something is a constant it gets tuned out. Without the finite, the infinite would eventually lose its flavor.

- What are people mostly pursuing? Is it to have the experience of the infinite (peak experiences) all the time? The effort to repeat past experiences. Is it possible to live life fully awake, without going back to sleep?

- Flowing with the river, toward the ocean. Attachment as swimming against the current.

- The experience of life today takes away from the possibility of any middle ground. Physical vs spiritual poverty/richness. The external richness is a quanity, the internal is a quality. A part of us can never be satisfied by any quantity, but requires the quality which brings a state of peace.

- The spectrum between reason and love. That which exists in time and has a cause and effect (pursuing), verse that which is timeless and is an end in and of itself (being).

- Greed is a need that can never be fully satisfied. Ominiscience and omnipotence - the quest for certainty of outcome as the pursuit of power and control as a dead end. Understanding its limitations, not only conceptually but experientially.

- The beauty of voluntary human interaction, when you give of yourself freely, you are truly giving, and the opportunity to do so exists in the fabric of every moment.

- Meaning - is it possible to ascribe meaning to reality independent of our participation in it? Is everything truly a gift, or is reality simply 'what is' and we have a choice about what meaning we consciously choose to ascribe to it? If so, is that choice then not itself also a gift, since its outcome is not set?