Other Doctrine Encounter Confusion Syndrome - (4525)

This happens all the time, we meet another doctrine and we get confused and stuck. 

The thing to do is to be aware of this process and if we find that the experience didn't serve us, we can choose by the way of lived experience to avoid it next time.

In more detail, what happens is that we read something or encounter others from a different spiritual doctrine, school or movement and we get impressed. We then thinking that we are not doing anything in our Gnostic studies and so we get disappointed in Gnosis and more interested in the other doctrine.

As we keep reading or talking about the other doctrine we then compare Gnosis to the new doctrine, seeing which one is deeper, or more complete etc. Then we try understand the new doctrine by matching Gnosis to it, by looking for similarities, translating concepts from the new doctrine into Gnostic terms etc. We then find that things don't really match and are missing and then we get confused. Then being confused we slowly start to fall into a slump, where we get depressed and we don't do anything.

Falling into a slump we actually go backwards in either system - Gnosis or the 'new' one.

The lesson is that we get somewhere by practicing intensely one thing. 

The other lesson is that deviating into other spiritual teachings, schools and businesses etc. does not help and stops our progress. Many teachers advise against doing this because it creates confusion. The thing is students see it as a fanatical kind of restriction and they do it anyway. Some students then get their experience and learn from it while others get confused and end up dropping all their spiritual studies or settling for a doctrine that will not give them the path. Well maybe that is where they need to be for now. 

If one is intelligent one can unify it all by knowing that by freeing, awakening and using one's consciousness all becomes known and available when we intentionally focus our consciousness. To free and awaken our consciousness we need the work which Gnosis gives us.

The answer is to concentrate on one thing and go deeply into it and master it. Then apply the age old principal that by mastery of one comes mastery of all!

End (4525).