A Tribute to Shirley Painter - (1623)

2 Years - 27th of March

I have wanted to write a brief tribute for a while now, in fact for two years. For the previous two years (2015 and 2016) I ended up being late, but for this anniversary I find myself more or less on time (well a little late). So here goes...

So two years ago on this day, the 27th of March 2015 Shirley Painter, a Gnostic missionary passed on. I often think of her for a special reason: and that is to draw strength. There is no doubt that Shirley was a strong person, a person that possessed firmness of character, a person that was tenacious and a person that had amazing courage right to the very end. 

Very honestly it is very rare to find anyone else as real and of this current day that showed as much courage, openness, loyalty to Gnosis and the work during such a time, as she did.

For my part she is well deserving of many a Gnostic tribute, because she gave us a marvellous opportunity of being able to explode our hearts with prayer and then later to witness the tangible effects of those prayers. Which for me, upon talking to her husband, that was present when she passed on, culminated in what, in Gnosis, would be called a conscious death, which is the goal of any serious Gnostic student.

He also mentioned many of the profoundly esoteric and spiritual insights that she had before passing, that are also worthy of being put into a book sometime. 

A Facet

What I am going to do in this post is present a facet of Shirley's life as I experienced it. In reality I didn't witness or experience very much, but I can say that what I experienced was impactful and has left an indelible mark in me.

Courage

Being already ill, where people at that stage would not perhaps venture out of the vicinity of their home town or home even, Shirley and her husband left New York state for Perth, Western Australia to complete a 3 month missionary training course. To travel that far, the opposite end of the Earth is already a great feat, and to stay three months putting up with a very hot Perth summer with temperatures often above 40 ºC with no air conditioning at night, is even more courageous. 

To be far from home in a foreign country without the medical help that she had access to back home, is perhaps what many people would remark as crazy. But she did it and did it well, and what's more she didn't surrender before the prospect of what the course was for, to become a missionary to leave your home town, settle in another town somewhere all so that other essences may have access to the light (Gnosis) that can lead them back to their Inner Being, where their suffering will end and the fulfilment of everything within them is completed. That is love isn't it!

Missionary Course

Shirley completed the course with full participation doing very well in all the activities of the course. After the course she and her husband were ready to embark on the mission of moving from their home town to an entirely new town in America to begin teaching. I would say that everyone agrees in that that was a courageous decision.

At one moment in the course while this decision was perhaps being processed, she expressed her concern about not being Gnostic enough. That concern was certainly put to rest, in the time that followed. That concern I think was only a concern, to be doing the course means that you are Gnostic enough.

Where others would perhaps go into retreat, she remained fully active and engaged as much as her health would allow in her Gnostic mission. To have also shared the process of dying with so many people is amazing and something extraordinarily helpful and instructive for our consciousness. In this way she gave us a supreme lecture, solid, real and direct to the consciousness. 

If Ever Worried

If I am ever worried about something, I think of Shirley and say to myself: "look at what Shirley did, she faced the maximum fear that I have, and the most important event in life with so much courage, openness, honesty..". Maybe I can do the same with this relatively small thing that is nothing compared to what she managed. 

There are so many lessons that we can learn here and one definite lesson is that: 'as we are in life so will we be in death'. As Shirley was, as her husband put it in life: tenacious and with conviction so she was in the time of passing. The way we live our life right now will determine how our passing will be.

Gnostic Children and Husband

She also achieved something that is very difficult to achieve and so many Gnostic parents fail or are simply not as lucky, Shirley was able to bring all of her children into Gnosis. So successfully that two of them are right now actively working in their mission bringing new essences to the Gnostic teachings, one in America and one in a land a little far from home in New Zealand. This is surely not an easy feat in this time and age in the West with all the fascinations that modern life has to offer.

She also brought her husband David Painter to the path and he is working now as a marvellous missionary. 

See you can tell by this that Shirley didn't do things in half measures. The people in her life went all the way.

Family of Champions

One other marvellous thing for me was to see how marvellously her immediate family conducted themselves during the whole process. The maturity, the understanding, how the esoteric knowledge of life and death that Gnosis gives or leads us to know was upheld. It was such a beautiful impact if I could describe that way, to see force of the consciousness pervading in all of them, making the whole process something so different to what we commonly see. This was a huge living message of hope of our really our psychological and esoteric work can make things very different.

Shirley's process be something to help, inspire, guide and reassure people as it has done for me. For me Shirley did something marvellous, what a special thing, her process like lifted a veil and made the possibility of passing through that process consciously, with dignity and without fear, a real possibility. This is such a huge thing that has huge ramifications actually in our day to day lives, well in mine anyway.

A Message of Hope and Ramification for Our Daily Life

That was also one of my hopes as well, that Shirley's process be something to help, inspire, guide and reassure people as it has done for me. For me your mother did something marvellous, what a special thing, her process like lifted a veil and made it possible, to die consciously and with dignity and to not fear the process. This is such a huge thing that has huge ramifications actually in our day to day lives, well in mine anyway.

To Round My Tribute Off

For me she goes down as one of the heroes to role model. To approach the end of life the way she did and be rewarded with a conscious passing is a supreme goal of a Gnostic that I hope personally to achieve. Just as Master Samael was is our hero and role model for the Great Work and the dissolution of the ego, Shirley is for us when it comes to courage, loyalty to Gnosis and about how to live Gnostically, the last and most precious moments of one's life.

To an essence that gave us a tremendous gift, certainly we will see you again, witnessing you working to complete your realisation, in another body of course, we just hope to recognise you. So then until that moment... May our best wishes reach you, wherever it is that you may be now, may much strength be with you and may the Divine Law and the Christ favour you in work back to your Being, that is a given!

End (1623).