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> The only reason that I came back to God was due to my divorce. That event in my life caused me to question many things. The biggest upheaval was that it dragged me kicking and screaming out of a state of being comfortably numb. I was cruising in a spiritual sense. The more that my marriage continued, and the more that my wife and I became increasingly successful as the result of our secular team, then the more that I became of this world.

> I look back on the immediate days after my wife left me and the emotional state that I was in, and I can now observe a man who was being dragged kicking and screaming into the spiritual world very much against his will. It was only a couple of years ago but now it is as if I am looking at a different man entirely. Back then I would have given just about anything for things to have returned to what they once were. Today, there is nothing that I could be given to return to that former iteration of myself.

> Francis Berger has written another interesting article which draws upon work by Dr Bruce Charlton and expands upon it. The topic is the difference between the spiritual and the physical world, how the global system attempts to trap us within the physical system, and how we can avoid the traps of the physical system while retaining our spiritual freedom. In other words, we need physical bread to physically nourish us; there is no avoiding that. But if our focus becomes entirely the physical bread, then when we physically die we will discover that we are spiritually dead as well.

>> The only reason that I came back to God was due to my divorce. That event in my life caused me to question many things. The biggest upheaval was that it dragged me kicking and screaming out of a state of being comfortably numb. I was cruising in a spiritual sense. The more that my marriage continued, and the more that my wife and I became increasingly successful as the result of our secular team, then the more that I became of this world. >> I look back on the immediate days after my wife left me and the emotional state that I was in, and I can now observe a man who was being dragged kicking and screaming into the spiritual world very much against his will. It was only a couple of years ago but now it is as if I am looking at a different man entirely. Back then I would have given just about anything for things to have returned to what they once were. Today, there is nothing that I could be given to return to that former iteration of myself. >> Francis Berger has written another interesting article which draws upon work by Dr Bruce Charlton and expands upon it. The topic is the difference between the spiritual and the physical world, how the global system attempts to trap us within the physical system, and how we can avoid the traps of the physical system while retaining our spiritual freedom. In other words, we need physical bread to physically nourish us; there is no avoiding that. But if our focus becomes entirely the physical bread, then when we physically die we will discover that we are spiritually dead as well.

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The difference between the physical and spiritual realms is the underlying basis for Gnosticism. Gnostics observed that there was a basic difference between the realm of Nature and the realm of mankind. That difference is compassion. Nature does not exhibit compassion. It is a constant battle for survival. When an animal is injured in the forest, it dies alone, without help or comfort. The human realm introduces something new and unique -- pity for those who suffer. Compassion, pity, charity, empathy -- these things exist in the minds and hearts of human beings. Perhaps they exist in pontential in other lesser beasts, but they are only fully developed in human beings.

This distinction between the natural world, "red in tooth and claw" as the saying goes, and the human world, where the sick and lonely and dying are comforted and helped, points to a fundamental separation between the flesh and the spirit. They are not alike. They are not two parts of a single whole, they are in conflict with each other. That is the seminal insight of Gnosticism. From it flows all other Gnostic doctrines and concepts. For example, Gnostics believe that the physical world was not created by God, but by a lesser being sometimes referred to as the demiurge. This lesser being was mistaken for God by mankind, and worshipped as God. The supposed "God" of the Old Testament is this demiurge.

We are not cut off from the true God, who sent his son to us to lead us out of darkness. This was the one we know as the Christ. The demiurge wishes to keep us in ignorance, but the Christ wants to illuminate our souls, so that we can be liberated from the flesh and return to the spirit, from whence we came, in our essence, and to which we must ultimately return. Gnostics believe that the demiurge created our physical bodies, but that the true God, through one of his agents, placed in each of us a spark of spirit which the demiurge, for all his earthly power, lacks. Man is above the demiurge (above the "God" of the Old Testament) because man has a spark of divine fire within himself, but the demiurge has none.

[–] • 0 pt

I copy/pasted your comment to the blog as Hopefully, it shows up after approval and it's replied to.

[–] • 0 pt

Let me know how it goes ... in the sub (I never look at my mail).