Constant Self-Testing - Gospel of Thomas

Verse - Constant Self-Testing

Jesus said, “Praise be to you, when you are hated and persecuted, but no place is found where you can be persecuted.”

Comment

But it would be wrong to think that God tempts people: To those who think that the Scripture says that it is God who tempts: it is the evil one who tempts. But this evil one is not an anti-god either, but only the shadow of God that is within us as the fruit and consequence of spiritual lack of awakening and lack of knowledge, self-imposed attachment and self-darkening, always luring us towards earth, to the external world.

So we are ultimately thrown back on ourselves. On our divine self as the source of the inner light that breaks out in us in the school of life that we all go through, when we have gradually reached the highest level of earthly maturity on the path of constant self-examination and self-testing. No matter what level of maturity we are at, life always tests us where we are weakest, so that we learn to expand the fortress of the soul on all sides and to arm ourselves against adversities and temptations with such composure that we can face them with a smile, without turning our eyes away from the eternal. Anyone who lives like this lives without danger. Danger lies neither in possession nor in lack, but in that desire for and obsession with transient things and ties that blind us to the essential and the reality behind appearances.

The Poor

He who lusts after external wealth is further from heaven than a rich man who values all possessions as fiefdoms and feels just as secure and superior without them as with them. It is not possessions that decide, but the heart: where it turns, that is where it finds support. If it clings to external wealth, it is without support - and so are those who persecute others and take their possessions.

They find no place on this earth that guarantees them and their possessions security and permanence. If, on the other hand, the heart is rooted in the inner kingdom, then nothing less can hold it and hinder its flight, even if it were the wealth of the entire universe. Such a heart does not worry or lust, does not chase or wander. In every situation it remains focused on the essential, because God knows it within itself.

The Wise Man

He lives as if he had died to the world and was not alive. He possesses as if he did not possess. He works as if he did not work. God works through him. His life is giving - and when the outer abundance increases with the inner abundance, it is his call and vocation to give even more, to be an even greater servant of all those whom God sends him because they need him. In this we touch on the deeper meaning of Christ's demand for abstinence from the world and rebirth. Anyone who has died to the world and returns to physical existence after passing through the span of death begins as a child.

And no matter how often he became a child, it was and is always uniquely new, a source of more beautiful development, deeper awakening, higher initiation and more lively maturation. Anyone who dies before dying and is reborn after passing through the mystical death becomes a child again, but in a higher sense. He awakens as a self-aware child of God. This awakening is more essential and the actual ultimate goal of the school of life. It is the beginning of cosmic maturity.