Gospel of Thomas Saying 113
gnostic ken
gnostic ken
In a letter to his brother, Van Gogh said that sometimes he
would be paralyzed by the intensity of what was spresd out before
him upon the earth , and be unable to paint. Did he see
the "kingdom of God" out there in the landscape ? Whatever it was
he saw he pursued it with total singlemindedness. Like the biggest
sheep he wandered away from the whole group of his fellow artists.
When he died many artists came to his funeral and each one put a
sunflower on his casket.
Jack
Mon Nov 17, 2003 7:26 am, I said:
The spirit part of reality is not above the clouds or on a mountain
somewhere. It is everywhere.
Sat Apr 10, 2004 10:21 am, Scott added to my post:
And, of course, "within" everyone everywhere. (And they do mot YET recognize
it.)
Aug 31, 2007 08:50 PDT, Gnostic Tom said:
it is like asking "when will we arrive"
and being answered "we have never left"
you can't get there, because whereever you are,
you are already there, and whereever you have
been, you have always been there.
it is a matter of waking up and
seeing it, here, there, and everywhere
What Is.
G n o s t i c T o m
Aug 31, 2007 09:37 PDT, Scott said:
"It" is not out there, it is 'in here'.
Don't look for it with your physical eyes, recognize it with your 'spiritual
eyes' (i.e., an experiential/gnostic awareness).
Scott V.
Sep 03, 2007 15:58 PDT, I said:
That we are separate from spirit is illusion. "Heaven" is not up there
somewhere. It is here and now. We just don't see it.
Ken
Sun Dec 28, 2008 9:48 am, Rosalie said:
Applying this to Enlightenment, the spiritual, gnostic AHA! moments that
come, this reminds me that there is no physical way to tune into those, IMO.
Instead you just have to keep an open mind, be aware that this knowledge is all
around you, and LET it happen as it will. IME.
Rosalie
Sun Dec 28, 2008 2:38 pm, Linda said:
IMO, this means that we cannot see the kingdom with our material eyes, for
it is the kingdom of the spirit. The kingdom is everywhere, all around us
and within us. The kingdim is that which is within and empowers all things.
Linda
Sun Dec 28, 2008 7:34 pm, P3nn said:
The 2 simplest that I see with this is that we are the kingdom & 2nd is that
the kingdom is within each of us
MP
p3nn
Sun Dec 28, 2008 8:03 pm, annokig said:
aying 113 brings me back to something I keep coming back to
- the Basic Gnostic Teaching tool.... Freke and Gandy use
it over and over to illustrate gnosis..
Draw a circle. make a point for the focus of the circle...
In geometry. a point is merely a point really with no
attributes.
Draw many to infinite radii out to the edge of the cirlce..
If you imagine the circle spinning like a quarter. Each
raduis or the infinite radii each represent a psyche (soul)
or the experience of an indidual.
What does each of the radii have in common?
The center point... It is something that is common to all
of us. SO in this case the point takes on meaning, the
universal conciousness...the kingdom if you will.
If we look outward to the edge of the circle - the physical
world, we will never find the kingdom,
IT is only if we look inside the circle to the the deepest
recesses of our conciousness that we can find the kingdom
and as a bonus.... after a while you can maybe see that the
kingdom is the same shared point of conciousness for
all..... the center of the circle is the All and We are all
linked to each other by it.
IMO,
Ann
Sat Mar 13, 2010 4:06 pm, cedmarina said:
This indicates to me that God's Kingdom is very different from what any man can
expect.
The Kingdom is so different that most of us do not recognize it and do not have
a close enough relationship that Jesus (Holy Spirit) can show it to us.
One day, I expect to have my eyes opened in deat and see it all around me.
Cedric Gifford
I think this one is saying that that notion is wrong, the new kingdom is here within us waiting to be found.
I do believe that only a few actually find this kingdom in each generation but that the time will come (soon) when we will all be in it.
3. Jesus said, "If your leaders say to you, 'Look, the (Father's) kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the (Father's) kingdom is within you and it is outside you.
Its his attitude I like, he doesn't claim to know, he just believes that its different to what we expect and he hopes or expects one day to know.
If his posts in general are along the same lines then I have much to learn from him.
This is the sort of guy I could admire.
IMO.
Ken
gnostic ken
Sat Mar 2, 2013 4:11 pm, Oregon George said:
> 113) His disciples said to Him, "When will the Kingdom come?"
> <Jesus said,> "It will not come
by waiting for it. It will
> not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or
'There it is.' Rather,
> the Kingdom of the Father is spread out
upon the earth, and men do
> not see it."
His disciples ask Jesus, "When will the
kingdom come?" The assumption behind
the question is that the answer would allude to
some sort of external remedy,
something that will come from the outside to
change the world in some way.
Possibly the question behind the question is
this: When will a new world order
arrive in which the righteous are rewarded and
the world put right? More likely
though, if the disciples had been listening to
their teacher, the real question
would be: When will the oneness, of which you
speak, be shown to us? Jesus'
initial response is, "It will not come by
waiting for it." The literal
translation of this is, "She is coming not
in a look outward." It will not come
by looking outward for it. The implication of
that phrase is that the kingdom
is not outside, but in the here and now. I have
often quoted this saying to
demonstrate that for Jesus, the kingdom was not
a future event, but a present
reality, not an outward condition, but an inner
one. Looking to other sayings
in Thomas which refer to such expectations of
the future and to the enigma of
inside and outside, we find the following: GTh
22b states that the kingdom is
entered when "you make the inside like the
outside and the outside like the
inside." GTh 3 says, "… the kingdom is
inside of you, and it is outside of you."
Further, GTh 51 says, "What you look
forward to has already come, but you do not
recognize it." See also 37 and 91. All of
these sayings, taken together,
support each other and harmonize what seem to be
irreconcilable dichotomies.
They do this by suggesting another way of
understanding reality. That way is
nonduality. It maintains that there is no
separate inner or outer, these
dualities being a projection of a mind which
believes in separation. When the
concept of separation is abandoned in all its
forms, the kingdom of God's
oneness is experienced.
The saying goes on to say that "It will not
be a matter of saying `here it is'
or `there it is.'" The kingdom cannot be
located in space or time because the
world of space and time has nothing to do with
it. "Men do not see it," though
it is everywhere around them, because it cannot
be seen with the body's eyes.
It can only be seen or experienced by a mind
free of all attachments to the body
and to the world. The Kingdom of God is a realm
of spirit. The kingdom of man,
on the other hand, is a realm of belief, the
belief in separation, projected
outward to appear real. In that illusion of his
own making, man hides from a
faraway God in the conviction that he deserves
punishment and, therefore, fears
joining with God's love. The Kingdom of God,
however, is the true realm and
home of man.
When Jesus says, "…the kingdom of the
Father is spread out upon the earth, and
men do not see it," he is saying that the
Kingdom is everywhere. It is not
confined to any false distinctions as outside or
inside. It is beyond all
distinctions. When man abandons his false
beliefs and accepts his place in the
Kingdom, then with his mind's eye, he will come
to see it clearly, within
himself and spread out everywhere before him.
Thank you.
George Duffy
Corvallis, OR