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Children of the Light

Chapter 50 of the Gospel of Thomas for Awakening

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Ye are all the children of light, and the children of the day (I Thessalonians 5:5).

Jesus said, If they say to you, “Where did you come from?” say to them, “We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.” If they say to you, “Is it you?,” say, “We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.” If they ask you, “What is the sign of your father in you?,” say to them, “It is movement and repose.” (50)

If they say to you, “Where did you come from?” say to them, “We came from the light, the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.” First let us note what Jesus does not tell us to say. He does not tell us to say that we are creations of God or servants or God–and certainly not sinners.

Our origin reveals our nature. Since we came from the Light, we are ourselves that Light. Quite some years ago a healing group met each week in our monastery. At the beginning of each session we would say some prayers, always ending with: “Christ is the Light; the Light is Christ. I am that Christ; I am that Light.” This is the truth of our real, essential nature. It is not the truth of our temporal, ever-changing nature that is involved in evolution. But it is necessary for us to stop in our evolution dance occasionally and remember who and what we really are.

Flower in the crannied wall,
I pluck you out of the crannies,
I hold you here, root and all, in my hand,
Little flower–but if I could understand
What you are, root and all, and all in all,
I should know what God and man is.

So said Tennyson and so say all the wise. Those who do not say so should be ignored and even avoided. For they tell us lies about ourselves and would have us lie to ourselves in time. “Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God” (Matthew 22:29). Saint Paul described them as “having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof: from such turn away” (II Timothy 3:5).

We entered this relative field of evolution from “the place where the light came into being on its own accord and established itself and became manifest through their image.” That is the point at which the Invisible Light became Visible Light so creation could be projected for our habitation and evolution. That Light manifested as the creation in which we too became manifest. Being images of God, we became revelations of God just as the sun is reflected in many vessels of water. The reflections are many, but the Reflected is One.

If they say to you, “Is it you?,” say, “We are its children, we are the elect of the living father.” We are not God, but we positively are the children of God, “for in him we live, and move, and have our being; for we are also his offspring” (Acts 17:28). The word translated “offspring” is genos, which means “kind” and from which we get the word genus–species. So we are what God is–as Tennyson says above–the difference being in degree. God is infinite and we are finite, he is the ocean and we are the waves. The ocean is the wave, but the wave is not the ocean.

We have been chosen by God, the Living Father, to evolve throughout our incarnations within relative creation, within physical, astral and causal worlds, until we attain to his perfect likeness, participating in his infinity which he shares with us, yet which is always his exclusively. We become godlike but never become God. We will be gods within God.

If they ask you, “What is the sign of your father in you?,” say to them, “It is movement and repose.” Our life is the shared life of God. It is a dynamic, evolutionary life which consists of “movement and repose, ” of “motion and rest” (Patterson and Maeyer’s translation). This means that within us there is both intense evolutionary movement in the form of development and at the same time there is an increasing establishment and expansion in the motionless consciousness that is the essence of our being, that is the Father within us. These two simultaneous poles of our existence are the “sign” of our Father within us.

Here, too, the words of Rumi cited earlier apply. This is the heart-song and the experience of the yogi.

Read the next article in the Gospel of Thomas for Yogis: Here and Now

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Chapters in The Gospel of Thomas for Awakening

  1. The Open Secrets
  2. Seeking Is More Than Just Finding
  3. Seeking the Kingdom Realistically
  4. The One Goal
  5. From the Seen to the Unseen
  6. What Jesus Wants Us To Do
  7. Eat Or Be Eaten
  8. Fishing Wisely
  9. The Inner Field
  10. Guarding the Flame
  11. What Will You Do?
  12. Who Shall Lead?
  13. The Unspeakable
  14. When Virtue is Vice
  15. Father in Heaven; Father on Earth
  16. Divine Discord
  17. The Divine Gift
  18. The Origin is the End
  19. Original Being
  20. A Mustard Seed
  21. Disciples of Jesus
  22. How to Enter the Kingdom
  23. Unity of Vision
  24. Where is Christ?
  25. Love and Protect
  26. Seeing
  27. The Fasting and Sabbath of the Spirit
  28. How Jesus Saw the World
  29. Hidden Treasure
  30. One
  31. The Power of Unbelief
  32. Spiritual Strength
  33. Speak It Out
  34. The Blind
  35. The Secret of Spiritual Security
  36. Live Carefree
  37. Unashamed Before God
  38. At the Source
  39. The Religion of Ignorance
  40. Within God
  41. Spiritual Gain and Loss
  42. Move On
  43. Challenging the Master
  44. The Source of Good and Evil
  45. Great in the Kingdom
  46. Impossible Duality
  47. Peace That Moves Mountains
  48. Back to the Source
  49. Children of the Light
  50. Here and Now
  51. Seeing Yet Blind
  52. Outer Ritual or Inner Growth?
  53. Infinite Transcendence
  54. “Hate”
  55. True Understanding
  56. Wheat and Weeds
  57. Finding Life
  58. Live and Die Not
  59. “Lest Thou Also…”
  60. Who Will Die; Who Will Live
  61. The Path of Unknowing
  62. Awakened by Death
  63. Turning Ourselves Away
  64. Gullibility
  65. The Rejected is Truly Accepted
  66. All–and Nothing
  67. The Blessings of Persecution
  68. Life or Death Lie Within
  69. Admission
  70. Not a Divider
  71. Seeking the Harvest
  72. Thirsting in Vain
  73. Who Shall Enter?
  74. Unfailing Treasure
  75. The All Speaks
  76. Well-dressed Ignoramuses
  77. True Blessedness
  78. A Duplication
  79. Balancing the Inner and the Outer
  80. Near and Far
  81. Seeing the Unseeable
  82. Seeing Your Unknown Side
  83. Our Forefather Adam
  84. Blessed Homelessness
  85. Doubly Wretched
  86. Onward and Upward
  87. Twofold Life
  88. The Yoke of Christ
  89. Knowing the Unknown
  90. Asking and Hearing
  91. Give Not…
  92. Seeking and Knocking
  93. Right Generosity
  94. The Expanding Kingdom
  95. The Fulfilled Universe
  96. Taking Stock
  97. The Spiritual Family
  98. Three Debts
  99. Father and Mother
  100. Exoteric Religion
  101. Ready for Invasion
  102. Penitential Discipline, Anyone?
  103. Daring to Know
  104. Ending Duality
  105. “I Love You More…”
  106. At the Source
  107. Finding the Hidden Treasure
  108. Having Come to the End
  109. Immortal and Above the World
  110. Body and Soul
  111. Where is the Kingdom?
  112. Male and Female?
  113. In Conclusion
  114. Glossary
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