It is said that the Dao that can be named is not really the Dao at all. What is the Dao which resists encapsulation into a symbolic frame of reference? It is something we can only know directly, as a part of it.
This means that a certain type of knowledge is itself a state of being par excellence, and a certain type of being is itself a condition of knowledge par excellence.
These are the same and are the very meaning of the term "Gnosis". The faculty which obtains to its realization is the Nous, the condition of attainment of this realization is Gnosis. Gnosis is the actualized Nous.
It could be considered this way:
It has been formally stated that two choices that diverge only a small amount, are increasingly difficult to distinguish as to which is preferable as their distinction is more difficult to make out, and this without regard to the importance of the decision to be made.
"Decisions, decisions" is the cliche phrase people utter under these conditions, almost as if they were mocking the very idea of the possibility that this situation is truly a pain to decide, when in fact it is a luxury to decide such "difficulties" (which path to take to the bank to cash a 20 million dollar check, etc). Obviously you'd want to pick the safest path. But the issue is just this: Why would a danger come on so rare a day in one person's life, instead of any other day, when the rarity of that danger to occur is to be multiplied by the rarity of a day on which one cashes a 20 million dollar check. Indeed, one is likely to estimate the degree of importance for such a margin of safety for different paths to the bank in some proportion to the amount of money that could be lost if one couldn't make it to the bank that day. In fact, the check can be replaced, and that is not the issue. The issue is that the one thing that stands in the way is the possibility of a personal tragedy which offsets the value of that check, even if one managed to cash it...
There are many things which could happen on the way to that bank which would make one reconsider leaving the house to cash it on that day. Is this day, that day? "That day" is some day of one's life, or some moment, which has a negative impact which offsets some positive feature of one's life. If death is the thief it is reported to be, or old age, or debilities of any kind, or tragic events of many kinds, then this day is inevitable for anyone alive...
Indeed, the world of possibilities which the current actual world has prevented by taking their place includes many "better worlds" in which not only is the world better for you, but for almost everyone else as well. It cannot be better for evil and Good at the same time and in the same way, and they must have opposing changes in quality of life. But for the purposes of deception, this necessary polarization in the equilibrium of axiontic beings is buffered by delay periods which suit the appearance of justice and propriety required to complete the theft of Good by evil over the longer run, an at that rate only as the discretion of the Good makes it necessary.
Therefore, such a decision can be perilously important. Timing can be the difference between tragedy and comedy even on a day "of no importance". So all the more on such a profoundly unusual day. Imagine all the things one could change in the world, all the elements of the world that would suddenly "become alive" to your person, just because on this day you could affect changes in it in terms that it understands best, and to a very great degree, over a long period of time, from one's own will (everyone worldly is a slave to some sufficient amount of money). You've suddenly become a "very interesting person" to the world. That must surely come with a price, even if only energetically and "mystically".
Perhaps one's caution is to some extent appropriate. But how could it help? The problem is that this decision is not easy to decide as to "which is safer" because to go by any route carries with it its own native, and unpredictable risks. One could dodge left when in fact one should have dodged right, or vice versa, without knowing which way is correct, even after completing very long deliberations on the matter. One might not even get out the house, and decide to send some agent, and this may lead to disaster, as some unfortunate occurrence may happen at home that day, which would have happened on no other day, and would happen only if you remained home instead of going out.
What an irony. It is the myth that in the end, "the gods" always win, the fates always have their way, and a person is not at all in control as it thinks. In fact, this is already true to some extent. But what doesn't change is one's interior world of evaluative cognition, and the sense that one must best frame some constructive attitude to one's endeavors when conducting one's business, no matter the degree of certainty of success, or even of what can be expected at all.
There must be something we can know with certainty, even if it is only that we are uncertain, and uncertain even to what degree we are not certain! At least of that we are certain, and we are able to be certain either that we are certain to some certain degree, or to some uncertain degree. But we are always at least certain of some amount of uncertainty whenever it does occur, or we are certain of nothing at all in any case.
This should remind some of Descartes' famous thought experiment in which he developed the "cogito", which involves something that is not an entity but rather a condition of understanding of a certain minimal amount of certainty no matter how much is uncertain. It is his process of demonstrating an example of how this notion can be intuited by way of a thought experiment meant to reduce all certainty to a bare necessary minimum above zero. At this point, certainty has been tested to a theoretical maximum, and this refined remnant of the very sense of certainty in anything at all is a maximum degree of certainty with which one can properly begin any efforts at understanding anything beyond it to any degree of certainty. This will always by the maximum certainty a human mind can obtain, although it needn't only come in this form. By means of proper investigation of all things "by the Light of Understanding", one can know Truths which are directly related to this initial approach to the matter of irreducible and indefeasible certainty.
But what in the daily life of a person as puny and limited as a human can be understood or embraced with such a degree of certainty? Surely it is one's own inner state of Spiritual Energy and its relation to the energies of the phenomenal world around it! This is apparent even if one has no bodily senses at all, as a sense of Grace or of metaphysical animosity. One can detect these very purely and relate them to basic bodily functions and kinesthetic states of experience (breathing, blood flow, intention vectors, symbolic projections remanifesting as perceptions, etc). These are also often filled with a sense of energy called an "aura". This must be subjectively interpreted by someone who already has this sense of experience, as it is a qualitative primary datum and is no more describable in words than the "blueness of blue".
What is it that makes one move today? What is one's "motivation"? What is the speed and force of one's gait? What is one's posture. Is the head held high, or low? What is the reason? Does one notice sounds in a peculiar way? Motion in the peripheral vision? People's facial light reflections as they turn their heads to gawk at you, perhaps? Does this "grip" your attention? Why? Why do you feel a sudden need to increase or drop your pace? Do you feel inclined to go along with this impulse? Does it "feel right"? Does it seem to reflect some buried truth about how seriously you are taking a petty desire?
You are on the way to the bank with a check that is redeemable in cash on demand, for the sum of 20 million dollars, at a bank that is 1 block from your home. You are one block away from this money, which is yours already by deed (you now hold that deed), and it is perhaps in the safest place it could be for the time being anyway. Is it REALLY the wisest thing to do to go and immediately cash that check? Leaving aside issues of legality (it was awarded as a prize for some outstanding deed, which you are famous for, and so you have no problem buying a house with cash right now if you wanted, because no one would think it is strange if you showed them the front page of that morning's newspaper, showing you receiving the giant check last night at an event attended by many big names in the city you are in). So that is not an issue. You could go and get to spending right away. Yet this possibility contains a lot of energy! It contains more energy than most people can imagine, because many interested entities are out and about and surrounding such an event whenever it does occur, but especially in your case, because whether the world knows it officially or not, it is controlled, even if only unwittingly, by forces inimical to your progress as a person in that world.
Let this be the case. Also, it is always true that if this is the case, you will Know it at your deepest core, because a person who is truly a part of a system has intimate knowledge of that system in participation within it. Since you do not have that experience, and instead have a sense of alienation which is due to a native awareness that your proper environment is "elsewhere" and that this domain is the haven of beings "opposite in moral nature and ontological essence". Therefore, you would be able to sense two things:
1) The changes in your own energy fields due to the influence these forces acquire through ego infiltration
2) The changes in the energy field of the surrounding world due to its force of impact on one's energy fields, as detected through the recognition of its internalization through the ego, emotions, thoughts, feelings, perceptions, etc, or else through a feeling of this pressure as it is successfully resisted by one's energy field.
If one is sensitive to 1), it is because of one of the reasons in 2). If one is with Gnosis, one also understands that 2) is directly revealed by understanding the meaning of 1).
People who bear the Nous are always aware of 1), but only those who actualize the Nous and reach Gnosis can understand and comfortably reflect on 2), both intuitively and analytically. If one cannot do this, then it is bound to become a spiritual malady upwelling in the conscious mind through a distortion of the ego into its shadow, and dramas enacted through its adventitious projections into suitable (or only seemingly suitable) hosts, who are themselves possessed of some degree of proclivity to enter into such interactions, either because they stand to gain from them as evil beings, or because they are programmed by such beings and act as autonomous yet subservient agents (as suzerains, and not sovereigns), or because they are other unrealized Spirit Beings who are subject to similar vicissitudes of ego/embodiment dynamics.
In any event, this is a certainty which is felt throughout the whole psychodynamic entity of the person, and is something they alone are able to feel, assess, and responsibly address.
The significant distinction between any two paths is therefore differetially evaluated either externally and objectively or internally and subjectively. If the external distinctions are unclear, and yet the ramifications are objectively of a great magnitude by outer accounts, then that means, to the True Being, that the True Significance of the event is to be understood is proportionately inward and subjective. It means that one must do the calculation of all possible fates which could reduce this event of outward importance to an absolute zero. One must assume that one will be struck by lightning on a clear day, on the way to the bank, on the very day one chose to go there to cash that 20 million dollar check.
One must assume this, as the likelihood of its occurrence is in direct proportion to the combined outward and inward significance of the event. Outwardly, one is "taking a big risk, for a big gain, in that unlike on other days one stands to lose a great deal more by dying". That is, to the world, one loses more than "just life" if one dies that day, but in fact one loses life + 20 million dollars unspent. This worsens as one is younger, and so more able to realize a longer life with the enjoyment of that windfall. Yet this is an event in itself rarer that being struck by lightning while walking in a thunderstorm. But today it is clear! But what is clearer than the weather is that the evil mind truly hates the Divine Light, and a Gnostic Being KNOWS this, and knows it is not of the world, and feels directly this adverse tension, this eternal antivalence. So it knows, subjectively and with inward certainty in direct proportion to that outward and objective understanding of the rarity of outward circumstances, that these have raised the spiritual stakes of this day and every day henceforth...
Every breath, every thought, every word, every glance, every step, from here to that teller, and until the day of one's death, is now colored with the hateful eyes of the demiurgos through any of his manifold eyelets. And you can rest assured that on that day, all eyes really are "on you".
The truth is that you can directly and meaningfully cope with outward forces via inward mechanisms which are the source of all the significance of outer events anyway. These inner mechanisms are ways of adjusting one's consciousness according to one's Highest and Best Mind, which is in Zoroastrian Gnosis called "The Best Mind" or "Spenta Mainyu". That should be one's utmost concern on even the most meaningless day of one's life! In that case, what day could make your heart pound? What event? Even if the whole world ended around you in an instant, you'd be unmoved. To students of Daoism the connection between this idea discoursed by Laozi, Zhuangzi, and many others such as Liu Yiming, all bring to our attention the same set of Spiritual Values as the Christ and Zartosht, as well as Buddha and so many Others have taught!
The Truth is that you, Light Bearers, have already gotten your Great Inheritance, and it is within you! That is why every day of your lives you have walked as if you were on the way to that bank, because that bank is Heaven, the realm of the Best and Highest, and those there are expecting to see you. You want to reach that destination, which is reached on the way to death, sometimes before reaching it, sometimes only after. But it is reached in principle at any time that you realize your Inner Spirit is Gold, invested in your free willed custody while in this world, and it is available for your manifestation in the world according either to the whims of your ego "companion" (the demon that shares, or had shared your body), or to Your Best and Highest Self, as condensed within your human personality at its own best and highest possible expression.
The day you Truly Realize This Truth, that is The Day that demiurgos and "all its eyes" are on your every step, as you head to that Greatest Keeper of Spiritual Gold, the Highest Heavens, the lowest of which are above the demiurgos by untold fathoms and across unfathomable eons beyond its ken. That is the realm from which you came, and to which you must return. Every day you realize this fully, is a day you have surpassed the most debased and greedy, gaudy dreams of the whole world and all its appetites put together throughout time! Realize this all the time, and then you are more likely to realize it at "crucial times" without flinching. [1]
Some of those "crucial times" hinge on a moment's notice. Now is always one of them.
Footnote:
[1] For an excellent discussion on the overall relation of the ideas of demiurgos to these other religio-mythic structures in their Gnostic interpretation, read this book, doing a search under "demiurgos" in that text online. For any Daoist connection, a look at anything written by Liu Yiming will put the matter clearly into a Light any Gnostic would understand without controversy. But one can easily see the connections between Daoist, Buddhist and Hindu Yoga in their Alchemical affinity, and see the immediate connection to Gnosticism if one has the requisite "eyes to see and ears to hear".
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