Sunday, November 13, 2011

The Book of Wisdom - Chapter 9

75. The ebst that you can seek from Him is that which He seeks from you.

76. One of the signs of delusion is sadness over the loss of obedience coupled with an absence of resolve to bring it back to life.

77. The Gnostic is not one who, when making a symbolic allusion, finds God nearer to himself than his symbolic allusion. Rather, the Gnostic is the one who, because of his self-extinction in His being and self-absorption in contemplating Him, has no symbolic allusion.

78. Hope goes hand in hand with deeds; otherwise, it is just wishful thinking.

79. That which the Gnostics seek from God is sincerity in servanthood and performance of the rights of Lordship.

80. He expanded you so as not to keep you in contraction;
He contracted you so as not to keep you in expansion; and He took you out of both so that you not belong to anything apart from Him.

81. It is more dreadful for Gnostics to be expanded than to be contracted, for only a few can stay within the limits of proper conduct in expansion.

82. Through the existence of joy the soul gets its share in expansion, but there is no share for the soul in contraction.

83. Sometimes He gives while depriving you, and sometimes He deprives you in giving.

84. When he opens up your understanding of deprivation, deprivation becomes the same as giving.

85. Outwardly, creatures are an illusion; but inwardly, they are an admonition.
Thus, the soul looks at the illusory exterior while the heart looks at the admonitory interior.

86. If you want a glory that does not vanish, then do not glory in a glory that vanishes.

87. The real journey is when the world’s dimensions are rolled away from you so that you see the Hereafter closer to you than yourself.

88. A gift from man is deprivation; but deprivation from God is beneficence.

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