I happened across a comment online the other day where some person was saying that no true Gnostic should vote for McCain. I had to laugh.
This is the same rhetoric I could hear back in the Southern Baptist Church. "Thou shalt not vote for Obama." For most exoteric religions, I can see how members of their assemblies like being told what to think, who to vote for, how to live, what products to buy, what products "true believers" shouldn't buy, etc.
But to hear a self-proclaimed Gnostic start saying that "true Gnostics" can only vote one way or another truly bugs me. It seems that any religious movement is capable of developing these "fundamentalists," who are essentially people who think the world should revolve around what they believe, think, and feel. In short, this is obviously a person who hasn't learned that the true self is not the ego, not the consciousness, and not the physical body. The true self transcends all of this.
To wrap your spirituality around anything else is a practice in futility. Is that to say that I don't believe true Gnostics should vote? ... Well, that's the wrong question. I don't force my journey towards gnosis on anyone else. I would never say a "true Gnostic" does anything but follow the urging of their spirit. Your journey is not my journey, even if our destination is the same.
If you want to focus your energies on making the Black Iron Prison of this reality more comfortable for you or for others, go for it. Political beliefs, social efforts, environmental causes -- none of these accelerates your spiritual journey. As I've said before, good and proper actions in this life are offspring of your spiritual awakening, but they are not the ends to your means.
Whether your support is for the Democrats or the Republicans, the two parties with which most people align themselves, you're feeding a Black Iron Prison of some sort. Democrats want a big centralized government. Republicans want smaller, more local governments. Democrats want to put the government in charge of as much of your life as possible, because you can't be left to make d
ecisions like charity, health care, and how you spend your money on your own. Republicans claim to want to leave that power in your hands, but then they build a large military and intelligence complex to restrict your rights just as much. Even the Libertarians would leave many of the decisions in the hands of big corporations.So, who's right? you may be wondering. None of them are right, and all of them are right. But in the end, none of it matters. We are transients in this life. None of this will matter in 500 years or 1000 years. In 2000 years, almost everything of our society and the societies around the world will be gone. Will you spend your short while on this Earth focused on transient matters, or will you focus on returning to the Fullness? Will you force your beliefs on other people, or will you discover and elevate your true Self?
The choice is yours, by all means. I, for one, choose something more permanent.
