To Be and To Know

One or the Other?

There are two factors in life, they are to be and to know. There are always two, we can at no point along the way omit one. They are ever present. We may embrace only one and reject the other one, even though we do that the one we reject is still there within us. In fact they are really dependent upon each other, they are co-dependent.

Crux of the Matter

The whole crux of the matter is how do we relate to these two aspects of our life. Do we just develop one of them or do we develop both or do we develop none of them. What we decide to do in a surprising way determines who and what we become in life.

Which is Best? Both, Only One or None?

We say in Gnosis that the best of the three options is to develop both of them, but in, or with balance.

If we only develop one of them then we become very one sided or lob sided. For example if we just develop the Know we become a very wise and intellectual rascal, and on the other hand if we develop only the Being we become like the stupid saint. We are so good that we end up making stupid decisions and people inevitably, in life, end up taking advantage of that too good quality and use to do evil.

I think you see that the best to develop both of them together. We have to know if we are developing them evenly and if we are not we must correct that imbalance within us. If we don’t our spiritual progress will sooner or later reach a standstill.

If we Know too Much We have To Be

This is really the conclusion of this post. We may get to the point where we know so much about ourselves, about our egos and about life but in front of the events, the temptations, the situations where we know what the right to do is -  we simply fail, we don’t do it we ARE NOT, in other words we are not being what we know. There is some disconnection there.

We have to remedy this imbalance by working on the go, by dying within ourselves and actually acting out what we know. That is really what we have to do if we don’t want to develop a double life, a double personality.

That is the danger of too much knowing and not enough being, we become scoundrels where we are very astute, we know how to manipulate situations and others to get what we want which is usually for the invested interests of the ego and we create a double secret life where we are rotten when no one is looking and we are great virtuous when people are looking.