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As part of the Gnostic psychology that I’m developing along with my brother, Bill, this episode discusses virtues and vices and how they relate to our Aeonic inheritance.
I drew up a chart of vices and virtues for my book, The Gnostic Gospel Illuminated. If you have that book, you can turn to page 26 to see the contrast of vices to virtues. I will also post it along with this episode on the gnosticinsights.com website so you can look it over. I list 34 vices on the left side of the ledger and contrast them with their opposing virtues; this is not a complete list, just a sample. For example, greedy is contrasted with generous; rude is contrasted with respectful; despairing with hopeful; fraudulent with truthful, and so on.
Vices and virtues are dialectical polarities. A dialectical polarity is a line with two opposing poles at either end. For example, night and day are a dialectical polarity and twilight lies in the middle between them. Likewise, hot and cold are dialectical polarities and warm lies between them.
For every virtue that exists from the beginning in the Fullness of God, there is an inverted version of it that arose during the Fall. The vices are upside-down versions of the virtues. Virtues are pre-existing eternal values that are part of the nature of the Father. Virtues are not defined by humans; nor are they social control measures cooked up by the powers. Virtues are part of our essential, enlightened Selves. Virtues are part of the operating system of the Pleroma. Vices are part of the fallen Ego of the Aeon who Fell, which we identify as the Demiurge. Every virtue has a dialectically opposite vice. You could say that a confused human lies between them.
We humans are only happy and fulfilled when we embody the virtues. We are only happy when we are operating according to our best design. This is our highest human potential. There are people, as few as they may be, that live mostly on the virtuous side of the ledger. When given a choice between selfless or Egoic behavior, these virtuous types choose to honor the Father and their higher Self rather than their own Egos.
People who mock virtue and do not remember the Father and the Fullness would call these virtuous people “goody two-shoes” and brain-washed religious kooks. I have to laugh because someone wrote in recently to call me “incredibly provincial.” Provincial is defined as “unsophisticated or narrow-minded.” Ha! That’s a good one. The implication is that if you are speaking of the Father, the Fullness, or the Christ, you are “unsophisticated and narrow-minded.” When comes the day that the Demiurge’s algorithms want to silence all talk of the pre-existent God Above All Gods, “provincial” will be one of its search terms.
On the other hand, virtuous people think of those who aren’t virtuous as lost souls in need of remembrance and redemption. Virtuous people oppose the Demiurge with love, not vice. We Second Order Powers were not designed to “fight fire with fire.” We are led astray when we use the tactics of the Demiurge to try to set things right. The expression “the ends justify the means” is not Aeonic but demiurgic, because it is used to justify vices such as lying, hypocrisy, and the killing of innocents in the supposed pursuit of a virtuous outcome. This isn’t the way the Father works. This is the work of the Demiurge.
The vice orientation is continually pushed on us with popular culture as characterized by Hollywood and the licentious Left. I don’t think you can lead a life of personal debauchery and vice without it affecting your mind and body. People who appear to have given themselves over to the vice side of the moral ledger pay a price with their physical and mental health. They also leave a trail of devastation in the lives of those around them. These people are not virtuous and they are not enlightened or self-actualized. Self-actualization involves being the best Self that you can be, not getting away with whatever you can get away with.
When we behave virtuously, we fulfill our Aeonic design. Our Aeonic design includes our One Self that is a pure reflection of the Hierarchy of the Fullness of God. As the Aeons in the Hierarchy of the Fullness each have a name, position, place, and duty, so do we. Every living creature embodies the Hierarchy of the Fullness in its design. We all share the same One Self at our core. We differ because we each also embody an Ego that, like the Aeons, carries our name, position, place, and duty. The One Self at my core is a full embodiment of the Pleroma of the Fullness of God. So is my dog’s Self and the Self of the blue jay squawking outside my window. My One Self is identical to every living creature in the universe, as every living creature in the universe is a Second Order Power sent here from the Pleroma, with the pattern of the Pleroma tucked deep inside. I share the same Pleroma as you, the dog, and the blue jay.
Each of us manifests a unique combination of the Pleroma. I visualize the Pleroma as a gigantic pyramid of golden spheres. These golden spheres are what we call the Aeons. And each of us down here below is a unique combination of all of those countless Aeons that make up the Pleroma. Those unique combinations are expressed as our physical bodies and also our personalities, as we manifest our unique physicality and talents. Our Aeonic expression is also affected by the memes we attach ourselves to and the relative strengths of our Egos and Self.
This Aeonic expression reminds me of DNA expression. We have varying proportions of the same Pleroma activated in our personalities and bodies as, in the same manner, every creature has varying combinations of the same four DNA letters. Yet, only about 3% of our DNA goes into making the protein that builds our bodies. The other 97% of our DNA is of unknown function. Another interesting thing about this mysterious 97% of our DNA is that it is “highly conserved,” meaning that it is a closed book that never changes. So it is actually only 3% of our DNA that we compare to the same 3% of all other lifeforms on the planet when we discuss differences across species. For example, our 3% of expressed DNA is 98.8% identical to chimpanzees. Our 3% of expressed DNA is 98% identical to pigs, and 90% identical to cats. We are 70% identical to garden slugs and 45% identical to cabbage. In like manner, we are also unique expressions of all of the Aeons of the Hierarchy of the Fullness.
Our Ego is that part of us that differentiates us from others. Our differences are carried by our Egos. Our Aeonic Ego is further modified through the memes that we accumulate during our lifetimes.
Let me remind you of how I use the term “memes.” In my Simple Explanation, memes are defined as any unit of information that can be exchanged between entities. Words and images are memes; bundles of ideas and “isms” are memes. Even chemical expressions exchanged between trees in a forest are memes. Whenever you learn something new, you add that meme to your personal collection. I call your collected memes your “meme shroud.” These memes can be thought of as strings draped over your Ego, obscuring the true Self that lies beneath your Ego.
Your Egoic soul carries that meme shroud from life to life, and the shroud overlays upon the physical body that you are born into. And those physical bodies are combinations of the Aeonic design brought into the material universe through the Holy Spirit bringing the life force and consciousness, and the remembrance of the Father reflected by the One Self.
When we gather memes from our environment, they stick to us and obscure our optimal Self; and this is where problems can arise. This is known as placing the bushel basket over the lantern of your enlightenment–a metaphor from the New Testament. It means that we each have a unique light to share with the world, and we need to put that light on a lampstand where it can be seen and be helpful to others. We do not want to put our light inside of a wooden crate, or a bushel basket, to be hidden rather than shared.
If people are living mostly on the side of the vices that control them, or they’re all-in as complete sellouts to the Demiurge, boasting about their evil deeds and darkness and promoting it, then they tend to take on a certain look. They are carrying a particular set of memes that they’ve picked up, and it affects them. You can see the vice, the debauchery, and the memes that go along with each of these debaucheries and vices, because they show up publicly as visible signs. Gluttony, for example, is easily seen as obesity; crack addiction displays itself as lost teeth, bad skin, and holes in the brain; greed can show up in overdrawn bank accounts and maxed out credit card debt; sexual promiscuity shows up in STDs and shameful obsessions. Every vice has a price and it eventually shows itself for all to see.
I believe that each vice or debauchery is ruled by a particular archon. There are archons in charge of every vice and debauchery, as well as archons in charge of triggering every emotional frustration that we humans experience. These archons do their utmost to direct events in order to confuse and block the good efforts of humans. They are like mischievous imps that throw obstacles in our way.
Each archon engenders a particular meme pattern that brings about a certain set of behaviors and beliefs that constitute that archon’s domain, whether it’s an addiction to a certain drug or activity, or narcissism, or you-name-it–whatever the trigger is, there’s an archon that rules that domain. And when we go along with the vice side of the virtue/vice dialectic, then the grip the archons have upon us is strengthened, bringing ever more anguish and misery to the human that has fallen into the trap.
Remember, the Demiurge and his archon helpers do not have our happiness or best interests in mind. The Demiurge only cares about one thing: complete control. And when we play into the hands of the archons, we bring about our ultimate unhappiness and frustration, our fears and our guilt, and we contribute to our own downfall. That downfall was the goal of the Demiurge all along, as it leads to our loss of free will.
Now, the other side of the Ledger, the virtuous side, results in what we call well-being, self-actualization, enlightenment, and redemption. If you’re living on the on the virtuous side of the Ledger, you are living a life where you live by the simple Golden Rule of reaching out to help others with assistance, information, and love rather than leading a narcissistic or egoistically-controlled life. And the fruit of those virtuous actions–love, patience, kindness, and all that—is the key to winning the endless war with the Demiurge.
Ideally, all Second Order Powers, that is all living creatures, are patterned after Aeonic visions of Paradise. The Aeons dream us up the way a screenwriter writes a screenplay. We are the desired manifestations of Paradise, fruited down here in the material plane, with our consciousness and free will intact. And here we find ourselves co-existing with and dependent upon a Fallen Aeon. For, while our bodies may have been designed in Paradise, we also have a material side and that material aspect of ourselves is controlled by the Demiurge. But, lest you despair, simply remember that He who is within us is greater than he who is in the world. In other words, Aeons are more powerful than the Demiurge, because the Demiurge is made up of one half of one fallen Aeon. Whereas, in our Aeonic design, we are only one fractal iteration away from the Entirety of the Pleroma, and our One Self is intact.
Everything here in this universe is an imitation of things that go on in the Paradise that we all are a part of and we all remember in dreams. The Demiurge thinks he created this material plane on his own, because he doesn’t remember what came before the Fall. But despite his amnesia concerning his true origins, the Demiurge builds using the patterns of the Hierarchy, because that is all he knows.
As I talked about in last week’s episode, called The Demiurge’s Strings of Power, while the Demiurge may arrange material so it looks like the hierarchical pattern of the Pleroma, he needs absolute authority over the objects he manipulates. Free will is not an option. To the Demiurge, our free will looks like chaos and anarchy. This is why vice and debauchery always culminates in a loss of free will over the vice, as the victim digs themself into a deeper and deeper archonic hole. To be happy, to be fulfilled, to be Self-actualized, we must live on the side of virtue, not vice. We must exercise free will and not allow ourselves to be ensnared by the Demiurge and his archonic helpers. This is not a condemnation or a judgment. This is an opportunity to look up. To remember the gnosis. To realize we are better than the strong forces that tempt and ensnare us. Remember, we are part of the solution. We are here to embody the Fullness of the Pleroma. We are here to demonstrate the Father’s love and thereby remind the Demiurge of the God Above All Gods so it can return to its home in the Pleroma.
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