Recieved my new version of the Nag Hammadi

My new copy of the Nag Hammadi the revised and update translation of sacred gnostic texts.

For those of us who enjoy the bible's teachings should not read the bible with out these companion gospels.

To spark your interest and I believe this is very prevalent in today's world here is a verse from the gospels.

We Shall Be Consumed by Man-Eaters (29,17-30-4)

Man-eaters will grab us and consume us, and they will enjoy themselves like a fisherman who is casting a hook and line into the water. For a fisherman casts different kinds of bait into the water, because each kind of fish has its own food, but when it bites into the bait, the hook hidden within snares it and draws it up by force from the deep water. Nobody can catch that fish down in the deep ware unless a fisherman finds a way to trap it. By tricking the fish with food, the fisherman has caught the fish on the hook.

The Adversary Tries to Poison Us with the Food of This World (3-.4-25)

We like life this in the world, like fish. The adversary is on the lookout for us and is lying in wait for us, like a fisherman, to catch us. The adversary is delighted to consume us. {He Dangles} many kinds of food before our eyes, the stuff of this world, because he hopes to make us desire just one kind of food and to taste only a little of it, that he then may catch us with his hidden poison and take us from freedom into slavery. For when he catches us with a single kind of food we can not help but desire the rest of the food. In the end, such thing become the food of death.

I love these texts, they show the true spiritual nature of the bibles intent. They are not just stories but philosophies on life.

The food of the world is poison to the soul and leads to slavery. I view these text as explaining how desire for possessions, wealth power are all falsities. This idea is further supported in the following verse.

The Devil LIes in Wait with Food (30,26-31-24

These are the kinds of food with which the devil lies in wait for us. First he plants pain in your heart so that you feel heartache over something trivial in this life, and he catches us with his poisons. After that he introduces the desire for an article of clothing, so that you will be proud of it, then love of money, pride, vanity, envy rivaling envy, beauty of body, can covetousness. The worst of all these are IGNORANCE and LAZINESS.

All such kinds of food the adversary prepares in an attractive way and spreads it out before the body. The adversary wants to make the thought of the soul turn the soul to some kind of food, and thus he hopes to overwhelm her, until she conceives evil and bears fruit of matter and behaves badly, pursuing many desires and cravings, seduced in ignorance by the pleasure of the flesh.

As you all know or for those of you who don't I do not preach dogma or doctrine. I use the books of spiritualism and religions to find enlightening views that help us find our way.

I have always believed that good and evil reside in man, in the wording of these texts we see the Devil is represented as an evil deceiver but then as the adversary within. Our adversaries are anyone who would do these things to us and what we allow to be done to us because of our own desires for trivial things. The adversary resides with in ourselves, we are our own adversary. It is our desires that are used against us. It is when we see the trivial in life as important that we loose our way.

So what I take from these texts is that our desires for the trivial material aspects of life will be used to enslave us. If we remain ignorant and lazy we are not going to see how these are used against us and fall for the trap of foods of the world. We must exam ourselves and expand our knowledge so that we do not bite the hook of temptation and instead spit it out and grow our souls to serve good and kindness and not the greed's and vanities of self.

This is from the text named "Authoritative Discourse" Nag Hammadi

This is how I believe, you must make your own interpretations should you choose to. If they differ from mine that is okay, I'm not telling you how to believe or even that you must believe these texts you do not. This is my disclaimer, do not follow me, follow yourself and your own intuitions and grow your own knowledge as I'm sure no matter how we differ in our views we can reach the same goals of world peace, love, empathy and understanding.