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As far as history and basic texts, I think the Gnostic Bible edited by Willis Barnstone really helped me. It was pretty comprehensive, provided many different strains and lines of thought, original texts, and succinct objective description of context and history.
The Gnostic Bible: Revised and Expanded Edition https://smile.amazon.com/dp/1590306317/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_C9G8BbNYAPVYJ-- probably easy to find in any library lending program.

So far as practice and discipline... I am sure I don't do enough. It is always too easy to let life get in the way. I try to do mindfulness exercises, that and prayer and meditation, but I try to keep it in bounds... A few minutes at night and morning. The best practical practice I ever had was my first couple of years in AA, actually... Which is obviously not for everyone. But for my the practical exercises in the Big Book moved me spiritually much farther than anything else... Far further than any church ever had been able to. And it got me out if myself, too. In all honesty, probably time for me to go through the 12-Steps again, clear away some of the detritus that has gathered.

Not really very impressive, I'm afraid. I enjoy reading the more sophisticated stuff, pondering the deep meaning and what lies below the cloak... But I've found I no longer trust it. Too easy, seems to me, for corruption to enter whenever I get that deep into things. My flawed understanding gets in the way of the truth of my heart, and I fall in love with building castles and gardens out of the various theories and descriptions... and I get lost in it. Which is why I wonder about all the stuff contrasting children of light with children of corruption. Seems to me that anything that excludes groups of people from even the hope of salvation is far from the Divine I recognize, and I wonder if others haven't fallen into the trap I myself do. So until I have deepened my practice to the point where I am not subject to corruption and fancy, I try to keep it simple as I can.

That's the beauty of being gnostic. You can do whatever you want! There is no authority or indoctrination that goes along with it like the exoteric churches.

Jeremy Puma wrote a book called A Gnostic Prayerbook: Rites, Rituals, Prayers and Devotions with various consecration methods as well as a lot of prayers and sacraments and other rites. Great book.

I am still very new to the concepts, but I was introduced to Gnosticism by reading The Jesus Mysteries and Jesus and The Lost Goddess. The writing style is very digestible for a beginner IMHO. There is a third book i have yet to read, but I’ve enjoyed the first two so far. I’m not sure how much these relate to other gnostic resources, but they were a nice starting point. YMMV!

I do agree in general, and I have desire to be argumentative. For the sake of discussion, I can do you one better. Please forgive the copy/paste job from my own thread on /r/DMT.

Dr. Strassman's recently published book DMT and the Soul of Prophecy dissects the Old Testament in order to conclude that DMT could have and likely did inspire the prophets. More, Dr. Strassman concludes that the use of DMT should produce contemporary prophets, as Hebrew prophecy is our universal, innate potential. Dr. Strassman's scientific breakthroughs have inscribed into every soul the faculty of Hebrew prophecy. Rabbi Joel Bakst says that DMT research is "nothing short of Messianic."

Now, there is no question that the band Tool are an ayahuasca/DMT band. The most ambitious thing the band could attempt to top themselves after the smash hit AEnima is Hebrew prophecy. Compare “Jambi“ to John 1:51, itself quoting Jacob's Ladder: "[Y]ou will see 'heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending on' a human being [the Son of Man]." Tool opened up heaven to crown a Son of God. It is unreasonable for me not to throw my hat into the ring, and I am the only one with a hat in the ring except to the extent that Christ consciousness is an inherent potential within everybody. In our version of Christianity, everyone is the Buddha.

5-MeO-DMT is "the Kingdom of God at hand," but it is also the traditionally incomprehensible "knowledge" called "godless chatter" in 1 Timothy 6:20-21. In fact, the concept behind Tool's album "Lateralus" is that those who sleep to the issue are blind and do not see, deaf and do not hear, "lame" and incapable of following along quickly enough. The album, as I understand it, exists for a DMT theologian to come along and explain for the benefit of the blind, deaf, and lame.

I became convinced that the ancient issue of the philosophers' stone was also this knowledge, today a "Rosetta Stoned" phenomenon, which I, too, assembled as a hermeneutic of Holosync "consciousness" in the realsneaky_.doc series of documents. The three documents of the Rosetta Stoned philosophers' stone are realsneaky4.doc, realsneaky5.doc, and "Eckhart Tolle Principles by Tyler Durden." Literally, I was a 2012 prophet of consciousness with the philosophers' stone. "Soapbox, house of cards and glass, so don't go tossing your stones around." "Kangaroo be stoned, he's guilty as the government." This, too, anticipates a stone: "Steal, borrow, re(e)fer save your (savior) shady inference." The hermeneutic is also a theory of communication composed of many pieces, all rooted in finding the present moment, the "Schism."

In 1 Kings 18:19-40, the prophet Elijah assembles 450 by 400 false prophets, ridicules them, and has only the 450 executed. Each year, NYU School of Law gathers 450 students, never teaching a business model, an internet law clinic, or the practicalities of bringing suit. It is probably deliberate. Columbia Law uptown gathers 400 students. In the name that all is holy, never work with an NYU Law graduate because they are the 450 by 400. Call me realsneaky, but tell the 450 that "Elijah has come!" In fairness, THAT is more of a Christ claim.

If it is just for you and your friends why not just compile it for them and give it freely through a pdf or buy the Nag Hammadi Library if you want the compilation in printed form?

https://www.amazon.com/Nag-Hammadi-Scriptures-Translation-Complete/dp/0061626007/ref=asc_df_0061626007/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312154640153&hvpos=1o2&hvnetw=g&hvrand=1103748380697344035&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=9011016&hvtargid=pla-433814904643&psc=1

Yes, that’s my tumblr. I’m not familiar with Lifting the Veil, but I’ll check it out. Here’s some books I’ve got on occult anatomy, in case you aren’t aware of them:

https://www.amazon.com/Occult-Anatomy-Man-Manly-Hall/dp/0893143383/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=39CDCC2COESMJ&keywords=occult+anatomy&qid=1556166793&s=gateway&sprefix=occult+an&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Occult-Anatomy-Bible-Corinne-Heline/dp/0933963203/ref=mp_s_a_1_7?crid=39CDCC2COESMJ&keywords=occult+anatomy&qid=1556166793&s=gateway&sprefix=occult+an&sr=8-7

https://www.amazon.com/Biology-Kundalini-Jana-Dixon/dp/143571167X/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=37O9RI5WOK1YZ&keywords=biology+of+kundalini&qid=1556166981&s=gateway&sprefix=biology+of+ku&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Melchizedek-Mystery-Fire-Treatise-published/dp/B018M37PKY/ref=mp_s_a_1_fkmrnull_3?keywords=manly+p+hall+fire&qid=1556167048&s=gateway&sr=8-3-fkmrnull

I’ve come to believe that the Holy Spirit was originally the Christian term for what the yogis call kundalini.

99 cents

http://www.amazon.com/Corpus-Hermeticum-Hermes-ebook/dp/B003DZ1LDE/ref=sr_1_1_twi_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420733901&sr=8-1&keywords=Corpus+Hermeticum

free!

http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/anotherhermeticum.pdf

https://www.amazon.com/Holy-Blood-Grail-History-Shocking/dp/0385338457 is a good read if you like history. Of course, serious scholarship picks it apart, but there's lots of good stuff in here that keeps coming back to the south of France. Read the excerpt right on that Amazon page. I believe I read this book in Spanish and still have it around here somewhere. There are some good YouTube videos on this and on closely related subjects. There's also a Wikipedia article on the book and several dedicated websites. I mention this stuff so you can maybe get a sense for whether there's enough material on the Languedoc in the book to justify a read. I think you'll agree there is.

This is Cathar country and the theater of the Albigensian Crusade that began in 1209, where one could win indulgences from His Holiness Pope Innocent III for murdering Cathars (in this case, I believe it was a Crusade indulgence granting remission from punishment for sin after death). The Catholic lords could seize Cathar lands, while the Catholic rank and file could sack and pillage, so a good time was had by all. It's estimated that a million people might have died in this so-called Crusade.

The Albigensian Crusade is where the famous phrase was coined "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" (Kill them. For the Lord knows his own.). The pope's own legate was asked before the massacre of Beziers (a Cathar stronghold) how they were to determine who was Catholic and who was Cathar, and that was his answer: Kill them all and let God sort them out. This butcher was the papal legate and abbot of Cîteaux, Arnaud Amalric, and he himself boasted to His Holiness the Pope that nearly 20,000 men, women, and children were killed on his order at Beziers. Apparently, modern estimates are that at least 10,000 were slaughtered, but either way this abbot of perhaps the most prestigious abbey in Christendom certainly earned his papal indulgence that day. Beziers is not far from Carcassonne.

I would visit Rennes-le-Château just for the mystique, which is even closer to Carcassonne than Beziers, as well as Montségur.

Gnosticism | Benjamin Walker

https://www.amazon.in/Mystic-Diary-Dan-Sociu-ebook/dp/B07Y3ZSKFF

https://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Book-Dead-Liberation-Shambhala/dp/1570627479/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1537217004&sr=8-2&keywords=tibetan+book+of+the+dead

This one Have you read it?

IMO Samael Aun Weor is a fraud. I condemn Gnosticteachings.org wholesale.

I'd recommend gnosis.org and the Gnostic Bible on Amazon. That and some of Carl Jungs stuff.

Start with the gospel of Thomas. Move to the gospel of Phillip. Then to the gospel of Judas.

Edit: this is the first Gnostic book I got. I can't recommend it enough:

https://www.amazon.com/Laughing-Jesus-Religious-Gnostic-Wisdom/dp/140008279X

>It is, however, still way too optimistic in nature.

It's not optimistic. It's experience.

And I'm not going to sugar coat it either. It's going to be a long haul and transformative if you embark on it. It changes you. It changes your valiue system and it changes the way you conduct yourself.

Everything that doesn't make sense now, and unfortunately in some cases it has to hit rock bottom first to enable the mental surrender (surrender in a positive sense), can be turned around into making brilliant sense. It's why some people come to following trauma or when they're at breaking point. It's when they're most ready to let go of the current paradigm. You don't have to get to that stage however. It's about choice.

At the start it can feel like a toy boat in a storm. The storm is the Cause throwing the boat around which is the Effect. What it really shows is what you have been harbouring and carrying around with you, and what has been blocking the calm. You have to learn to reverse that dynamic. Things that upset you in the outside world, the injustices you see, are the Effect to the Cause that you have to look at in yourself. You become a passerby to a World of Effect. Ego loves a drama and you're going to need to stop taking it so seriously and become the passerby.

The light behind the dark isn't put out, it can only be obscured.

If you want a scientific approach because you don't know where to start with religion or mysticism or gnosticism then you'll want to start reading up on Jungian Shadow Work - who himself identified parallels with the Gnostics - but who very much defended approaching it as a science.

>I have learned though, to be sceptical of even the most comforting advice and/or gesture due to obvious reasons.

BE SCEPTICAL!

Don't take anybody's word for it. Not mine. It's experiential. Go and experience it for yourself.

That's the whole point.

Suspend belief both for and against.

Even if you trusted me 99.999%, and there's no reason why I'd expect you to (I could have a brain tumor, be a troll, or seriously mentally ill and or deranged) at 99.999% you'd still require an element of faith. We need you at 100% that you've just had an experience. And you won't understand the full implications of it at first, and it may take you years and further revelations to dig where you need to be. To borrow a turn of phrase we need an out of material (spirit) birth, and this experience is going to have no context when you bring it back into your material world of understanding - but that is your mustard seed that starts to grow and germinate until it is able to host new concepts and paradigms.

It will take time. It will take hard work. You will be required to ask yourself hard questions. You'll come to dead ends and have to back track. At times you will become frustrated. Persevere.

If you want an analogy to slip you into it Jung's wife Emma wrote a Jungian breakdown of the grail mythology which explains the gnostic inward journey and encountering archetypes.

Research "contemplative prayer" techniques. It's not a prayer in the contemporary sense. It's actually that the outward world inhibits one's ability to go within one's self. And even memories and recollections of the idle mind when you are trying to silence are resistance to remembering a different state of consciousness that you are entitled to.

https://www.amazon.com/Grail-Legend-Emma-Jung/dp/0691002371

IF YOU WANT A VERY SIMPLE TENET TO EXPLORE:

Descartes in saying "I think therefore I am" was wrong!

Wait until everybody has gone to bed, when the house is quiet, find a still room with a comfy chair where you won't be disturbed. Sit down upright. Close your eyes. And do what the Ghostbusters tried to do when confronting Zuul and before Marshmallow Man appeared.! Try to think of nothing - for 20 minutes. Be still but very aware. Try to think of nothing.

If you think therefore you are, then you will quickly realise you are not in control of your thoughts. They will pop in and out. Anything from an itchy nose to being aware to a clock ticking to an idea popping into your head is a thought. Ideas will emerge like dreams do. Condition yourself to become aware very early on, to identify the source behind them if you can, and to let them go.

Every thought that appears don't resist. Don't interact. Observe that you have observed it, and consciously let it go.

Do not judge any of your thoughts; good or bad. Observe them. Let them go.

You are not your thoughts. Buddhists sometimes call this the chattering monkey brain.

That is from the ego, which is a construct you believe in. That you were raised to believe in by people who believed in similar constructs from the cradle up.

Empower the observer that is observing that you are having thoughts. That is you. Find yourself in stillness.

This is your Forgiving Mind that can occupy the present. Forgiving that it is willing to look beyond the material. That is willing to look on the marterial without judgement. Purely as an observer. Your Ego based consciousness is Past-Future dominant. ONLY YOUR EGO IS CAPABLE OF JUDGEMENT (and it is terrible at doing it accurately). It's all about reacting going forward to lessons past learned with preconceptions. You are conditioning yourself, in a very real sense, to see past this. Your self experiences you are going to learn to see in others. What you find true for yourself you're going to hold true for others. It's a stepping stone from individual consciousness to collective consciousness to a universal consciousness. In a collective consciousness you are still an individual but you are going to recognise the same experiences and identity in others.

Even before experience it will lead to real changes in your day to day life. You'll be more aware of your day to day thoughts, especially negative thoughts that arise which you might not otherwise have been aware of, and you'll be empowered to swipe left on them before they can take a hold. It will affect your daily positivity and productivity!

When you become accustomed to your quiet meditation, pursue a 'Welcoming Prayer' type approach in your waking-walking life.

'People', or events you perceive, can only attack your body, your ego, and the values it holds.

When you learn to identify with your Inner Observer, and that you are first and foremost consciousness, the only thing that can attack you is your own thoughts of what constitutes attack and what justifies defense!

Once you have become accustomed to your Observer start taking it out of the box and seeing the Effects of the outer world. Any effect you see is a sign that you are harbouring a similar cause. In the same vein that if you see a speck in another's eye take the plank out of your own. This in turn will reinforce more experience, and this will change the way you interact with the world and how the world interacts with you.

"The light of your body is your eye" AND "you are the light of the world."

The totally unjust word suddenly becomes a classroom and you become a liberator.