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The impact of a Gnostic Experience

Gnosis – deep experiential knowing that is personal, beyond conceptual. This past Sunday, I facilitated a Gnostic Intensive. The aim of this intensive is that participants have at least one Gnostic experience regarding one of the four primary questions:

Who am I?
What is Life?
Who is another human being?
What am I?

Beyond these questions, participants journeyed into other questions such as “What is God?”

Though I’ve lost count of the Gnostic Intensives I’ve facilitated, it boggles me how much I learn and grow with each one. This time, I walked away with a much more complete understanding of the value of this experience in the context of our practice.

One of the things that happens with a Gnostic Intensive is we begin entering the more stable point of view of our true self rather than the conditioned self. Consider how your point of view changes depending on the environment, other people, and life circumstances. With these normal day to day changes, you may glimpse the various cloaks of the conditioned self. The conditioned self leaves us with anything but a stable point of view.

With each pass through the Gnostic Intensive, I gain a richer appreciation for how having a stable point of view changes the game of life. One thing that seems to happen is that psychological work moves with greater ease after the Gnostic. That’s saying something, given that this work tends to be super quick anyway. I think that is due to having the beginnings of a stable POV.

When our POV is cluttered with the debris of unrealized goals and needs, pain and false identifications, and all manor of masks, the truth of who we are at the CORE has little chance to play and express itself, little chance to SERVE with joy. While having the more stable POV of our true sovereign self, opens the door to all kinds of freedom.

This doesn’t happen all at once, but the Gnostic seems to open the door pretty wide.

I’m curious and interested in hearing your experiences with the Gnostic Intensive, particularly AFTER the Intensive. For those of you who experienced a Gnostic, you may not have reflected on it in a while, what do you think the impact of that experience was?

I’ve had a few people ask me if I would consider hosting a monthly Gnostic Intensive. As much as I value this and see its role in the work we do, I know it can also be a challenging experience. I’m curious what y’all have discovered about the impact of the Gnostic.

How has it impacted you personally (if you care to share those bits)? If at all.

How has it influenced the way you work or experience your work? If at all.

How has it shaped your perspective about your life and work? If at all.

The pic is of my friend, David Knezz, www.mask-maker.com. David is a genius with using masks to facilitate encounters with the true self.