Gnosis = Ignorance

Something has slowly been dawning on me over the past few weeks, forcing me to re-evaluate what I thought I had learned so far. This is something I expect to do for some time to come. Bear with me here as I am articulating this as I go for the first time.

To have knowledge of something is to have experiential understanding of something. If I haven't experienced it, then it is simply fact, data. Facts and data or touchy because since I don't know first hand, I take that fact as true on faith. If the fact is wrong, then I am wrong by default.

If this is true, then I have to discard almost everything I thought I knew, which doesn't leave me with a whole heck of a lot. As I move towards gnosis, and re-evaluate my understanding of my existence and what/who I am, this process will continue until I am left with nothing since what little I do know belongs to this world of forms, not to the ultimate Reality where my spirit/consciousness resides. Where I truly am. This would mean to me that gnosis ultimately leads to ignorance.

But ignorance of what? Facts and data? No, I have lots of those and will continue to gain and discard this as I move along. Ignorance means literally "not knowing". Gnosis therefore leads to the understanding that I don't KNOW anything of Reality in the experiential sense.

But once gnosis is realized, what do I gain? Experiential knowledge of the Divine is the text book answer, but what does that mean? Will all the truths of Reality suddenly come clear? Will I suddenly comprehend the true history of Christ? Will I suddenly speak 5 languages and know he square root of 1? Of course not, but then what knowledge am I gaining?

Then it occured to me that I am using the wrong definition of knowledge. Gnosis translates as knowledge in the only sense we have for the word in English, but it actually means another kind of knowledge altogether, something we don't have a word for. It is an understanding of the nature of my relationship with the Divine. A communion of sorts between the Divine and my Self. These seem to me to be more feelings that intellectual knowledge and would be almost impossible to impart to another. This experience, this knowledge of the Divine nature of Reality, is truly inexpressable. Which is why it cannot be bestowed or granted. It must be found. I cannot learn it in a book. To find it I must unlearn everything until I find the very basis of who I AM. As Rev. Scott put it, we need to break ourselves down to our elements, analyze them, and re-integrate them.

I have just begun reading the Pilgrimage, which is required reading for my 2nd assignment. In it, I have learned in the first couple of chapters that if we focus too hard on the goal, we miss the details of the journey. We miss what the experiences along that journey will teach us about ourselves. And to do this is to defeat oneself before you have even started.

It is clear to me that gnosis will not be mine until I truly Know My Self. Perhaps gnosis then is a gradual awakening to my Self, a remembering of what I am, rather than a blinding ephiphany that blind sides me on 2pm on some idle Tuesday. Perhaps it is not the reward at the end of a rigorous obstacle course, but the obstacle course itself.