Last week I started reading a letter from a podcast listener and I didn’t get very far. I got as far as the 23rd Psalm basically, and that was it, right? So last week I said there were two prayers that I pray. She asked what prayers do I engage in and how can I give honor to the Father, the Son, and the Fullness in those prayers.
So, the other prayer that I say daily or nightly, if I’m going to bed or if I wake up in the middle of the night, is what’s called the Lord’s Prayer. And technically that’s from chapter six of the book of Matthew. I prefer reciting the Lord’s Prayer in King James language because I think it’s beautiful. So I’ll first let you hear what it sounds like in King James, and then we’ll look at a more modern translation and talk about the energy and the flow and whatnot of the prayer.
This prayer was suggested by Jesus as he was talking to his disciples and they asked him, how should we pray? Same question as the listener’s. And he said this:
“After this manner therefore, pray ye: Our Father which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.
That’s the way I learned it as a kid, and I really like the poetic nature of the Ye’s and the Thou’s and whatnot, so that’s why I speak that way in prayer. But it isn’t necessary, and it’s not even necessary to use these exact words. There are many New Testament translations now, and they all have slightly different takes on exactly which words to use, but the meaning is always the same. And remember, it’s not the particular words that we use with each other. It’s the meaning behind them that’s important. The meta level means to step up and see what is being communicated. It’s not the particularities of memes themselves.
Here’s the most modern translation that I know of, and that is David Bentley Hart’s translation of the New Testament. And his is a fresh translation of the New Testament, not reworking old translations like most Bibles are, but he actually went to the original Greek and retranslated it in the most precise manner he could. And this is what David Bentley Hart’s version sounds like.
Our Father, who are in the heavens, let your name be held holy; Let your Kingdom come; Let your will come to pass, as in heaven so also upon earth; Give us today bread for the day ahead; And excuses our debts, just as we have excused our debtors; And do not bring us to trial, but rescue us from him who is wicked. [For yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory unto the ages.]
Now again, I’ve noticed that the word ages in these translations can also be translated as Aeons, and I think of Aeons as units of consciousness, not as units of time. So when it says, For yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory unto the ages, in my own mind, I think For yours is the Kingdom and the power and the glory unto the Aeons. And finally, we’re pulling the Aeons and the Fullness of God into the prayers, because they’re usually left out. Note, in this Gnostic Christianity, the Fullness is an actual entity. It’s a location where the Aeons live. And the Aeons are infinite in number because they are expressions of the Son of God, and the Son is infinite in scope, power, and size. So it stands to reason that the particularities of the Son of God would also be infinite. So, the Fullness of God is where they live. That’s what it means to be the Fullness of God—the place where the Aeons dwell. And the Fullness and the Son and the what’s called the Totalities of the ALL, which are like the parents of the Aeons, they are coexistent; they’re equal in scope and power with the Son. Normally in Christianity, the Fullness of God is just used as a an adverbial expression of how great and big and grand God is. But it’s actually quite a bit more than that. It’s a description of all the individual traits of the Son of God.
OK, let’s go back for a minute and talk about prayer. Jesus said, “And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others.” And that’s what makes them hypocrites, because they’re actually looking for recognition and brownie points from other people. He goes on to say, “Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full.” That is, from the other people, the brownie points. “But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”
And I think of the Father not as this big eye in the sky who watches everything that everybody does. The Father is within us because we all carry the Fullness of God inside of us. So the Father is as close to us as we are standing here. We wear this body on us and we also wear the Fullness of God within all the parts of our body. That is how the Father sees us. He’s inside of us. He sees everything because he’s going along with us. We take him along with us everywhere we go. Continuing, Jesus says, “Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. And when you pray, do not keep on babbling like the pagans do, for they think they will be heard because of their many words.” So the idea of having to repeat, to sit and repeat and repeat and repeat, as monks do in various religions, to sit all day and repeat the same prayers out loud, hundreds and thousands of times—that isn’t necessary.
Jesus says do not be like them, “For your Father knows what you need before you ask him.” And personally I am not what’s called a prayer warrior. Some Christians call themselves prayer warriors, and they are moved to pray for people constantly. And that, I suppose, is a good thing because it’s a method of expressing love. But Jesus said your Father knows what you need before you ask him. So asking him over and over and over for these things doesn’t help. I think what the prayer for other people does is it helps you focus that the answer will come to them from the Father above. And it opens you up to see if there’s some way that you can help the Father bring it into practice here on Earth. The simplest prayer would simply be, “Thank you for the Christ. May Christ’s will be done.” That’s all you need to say because the Christ knows what everybody needs.
OK. So let’s look at what I’m thinking when I’m going through the Lord’s Prayer.
“Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name.” Hallowed means separate because of glory. It’s a hallowed place that only the Father occupies, because the Father is so infinitely glorious, we can’t even begin to imagine it. And it says in the Tripartite Tractate, as it says throughout the Bible, that we cannot look upon the face of God the Father, the God Above All Gods, because he’s too great. In the Tripartite Tractate it says anyone looking upon him would be annihilated. And that goes for the Aeons and the angels as well as us down here below.
The only one that can look upon the face of the God Above All Gods, the origin of consciousness, is the Son. And that’s because the Son is an encapsulation in a monad form of the Father’s traits, but it’s a particularity—an infinitely large, particularly. And also when we say, “Our Father in heaven,” in the Tripartite Tractate it says that we have the God Above All Gods as the ultimate Father of consciousness—that’s where the consciousness begins and that’s where it resides, and the Son is his offspring. That’s why it’s called the Son. And let me remind you that the only reason we use a male designation of Father and Son is because it has to do with the direction of the energetic flow. The male is the outward projection of the flow. The female is the receptive projection of the flow. So the Father and the Son are male figures. The Cosmos is a female figure because it receives the emanations of the Son.
But as soon as the Son was formed, being in the exact image of the Father, he also became a Father. And he gave birth to the Totalities. And so it says in the Tripartite Tractate that as soon as the Son was formed, he also became a Father. So we are emanations of the Son of God and then we are emanations of the Fullness of God, because this consciousness is coming downstream to us.
So, the listener’s original question was, “How can we pray to the Fullness of God and the Aeons?” When we pray to the Father, it’s not only to the God Above All Gods. The Father also includes the Son who has become a Father. We don’t pray to individual Aeons. The Aeon that we can pray to directly would be the Christ. So we pray to the God Above All Gods and his designate, which is the Son who also is called Father, and then we can pray to the Christ because it’s his job to help us. The rest of the Aeons have other jobs—they’ve got tons of other jobs, including the way physics and chemistry runs, and the way cells work in our bodies and how bodies go together and all of the things that make up the living creatures of the Earth. Those are particularities of those particular Aeons–Aeons in charge of blood, Aeons in charge of personalities, Aeons in charge of everything. The Christ puts it all together. So the Aeon that we can pray to is the Christ, and the Christ is represented by Jesus in Christianity. You can pray directly to the Christ, or you can pray to Jesus if you like to personify Jesus, as many of us do.
And I’m thinking that in that Hart’s version of the Lord’s Prayer that I read you, it started by saying, “Our Father, who are in the heavens, let your name be held holy.” That’s a plural, isn’t it? Who are? And so I’m thinking that Jesus recognized that the Father had many parts. And, of course, in traditional Christian religion he’s called a triune God, and they recognize him as the Father and the Son, (OK, we agree with that), and the Holy Spirit. And that those are the three parts who would be the “are” in heaven. In Gnostic Christianity, the Holy Spirit is the spirit flowing down from the Fullness of God, which is infinitely complex. It’s not a singular thing.
So, the prayer goes on to say, “Your Kingdom come,” and when I say Kingdom, I’m picturing the Kingdom of God. And, a Kingdom is a place, isn’t it? And it’s a place where someone is in charge. There’s a King. And so we are saying that we want the Kingdom of God to come. And you can picture the Kingdom as, you know, really neat. It can be that castle on a hill kind of thing, with pennants, waving flags, and all that. So, “Your Kingdom come; Your will be done.” Now, part of the characteristics and traits of God, of the originating consciousness, is willpower. We also have willpower.
Now, there’s a long running argument in theology about whether God’s will blanks out our will. But that isn’t true. Every expression of the Fullness of God carries all of the expressions of the Fullness of God. And, the Fullness of God carries that willpower that begins with the originating consciousness, flows down through the Son, flows down through the Fullness, and on into us. So we have that same exact characteristic of willpower as the Father, the Son, and the Fullness. That is why it is that at any given moment in time, you can make a decision for this or that. You are not powerless. You are not helpless. You are not a pawn in a bigger game, and, is the bigger game gonna be God? Or is the bigger game gonna be the Demiurge? No. You have the willpower of the Fullness of God within you, and so you choose to be in the Kingdom of your Father or you choose to be in the Kingdom of the Demiurge.
So, in this prayer, Jesus suggests that we pray for the Father’s will to be done on Earth as it is in heaven. So here we are trying to bring the perfection and the love and all of the virtues and the knowledge, the true knowledge, onto the Earth. That’s the job of the 2nd order powers. We embody the Fullness of God on this fallen plane. That’s what it means: “Your will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.” And that will is expressed through us.
Then it says, “Give us today our daily bread,” or “Give us the bread we need for the day ahead.” So, we don’t need to worry long scale about things. We’re praying for today’s manna, today’s provisions, to be given to us or to find them. And we recognize that all provisions come from above.
Now the next part, which is chapter 6, verse 12 of Matthew, says, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” And that is a tit-for-tat kind of quid pro quo expression. Excuse us our debts just as we have excused our debtors. This means that unless we have a forgiving heart, we cannot accept the forgiveness of God in the same way. There’s no way that you can expect to be forgiven for your shortcomings by the Christ, by the Father, by other people, if you are not willing to forgive others in exactly the same way. So we are forgiven to the extent that we forgive others. And it’s not just because of the balance of the scales of justice. It’s because, unless we can embrace the concept of forgiveness, we won’t believe that we are forgiven. If our hearts are hard and we carry grudges, well, how can we expect to be forgiven? We will project that same kind of grudge carrying and condemnation and punishment onto God. But God is all forgiving. And if God is willing to forgive us, we need to be willing to forgive each other.
The next line is, “And lead us not into temptation,” which I’ve always thought was a strange translation because the Father wouldn’t lead us into temptation. It’s not the Father or the Fullness or the Son that is dangling temptation in front of our eyes, although it’s all around us at all times. The one who leads us into temptation is the Demiurge and the archons of the Demiurge, so if we keep our eyes on heaven rather than on the world, we will not be led into temptation. In Hart’s translation, he says, “Do not bring us to trial, but rescue us from him who is wicked.” So, him who is wicked, that’s the Demiurge and those who work for the Demiurge. And we’re just praying that we don’t come to trial. But trials come to us, don’t they? All the time. So we’re asking for mercy. We’re asking that things would be easy and good. And, you won’t be truly tempted if you’re staying on the right side of the Ledger, the side of virtues rather than vices. If you live on the side of vice, you’re always tempted, because that’s all about temptation.
And then it wraps up by saying, “For yours is the Kingdom.” And so, when I say Yours is the Kingdom, in my mind, my spirit, my energy looks upward towards the heavenly realms, towards the Kingdom. So I picture again the Kingdom. And it’s not just picturing it. I’m moving my energy in an upward direction, onward and upward to be with the Father in the Kingdom.
“Yours is the Kingdom and the power.” So then we picture power in its most abstract form. Power. When I say power, I’ve got my fist closed and I’m moving it forward. It’s a motion. And so it’s the power that helps me pull onward and upward into the Kingdom. It’s the power that moves up for me, but it’s also the power that flows down from the Father. So, true power comes up towards the Father and comes down to us from the Father.
“And the glory.” We praise the Father. We praise the Son. They are glorious. Glorious means wonderful, indescribably wonderful, beautiful. The best thing ever. That’s the glory. [For me, glory is associated with the color of gold.] And then, in Hart’s translation, he says, “the glory into the ages,” which allows me to fold the Fullness into there, and the Aeons. So, they’re glorious as well, because they are part of the Son. They’re not as glorious as the Son.
And, by the way, to remind you of how this gnostic cosmogeny works—the way the Totalities of the ALL were birthed was by the Son and the Father giving glory to each other. They had this reflected glory and love for each other, and it’s the process of giving glory that gives birth to new creation. So when the Son and the Father gave glory to one another, the Totalities were birthed, which is all of the breakout variables of the Son. And, the Totalities’ entire job is to give glory to the Son and the Father. They don’t do anything else. Their full time job is to give glory to the Son and glory to the Father. That’s all they do. They sing and they give glory in harmony, perfect harmony, all together. The way the Aeons were birthed was, as the Totalities gave glory to the Father, they became aware of themselves. They broke out from their melded-together unity and became individuated pieces of consciousness. And that next step is the Aeons of the Fullness of God. They were birthed by the Totalities giving glory upstream; and it’s the process of giving glory to God that creates our true Self nature.
Also, as soon as the Aeons were birthed, as soon as the Fullnesses were realized by the Totalities giving glory to the Father—as soon as the Fullnesses realized themselves—they immediately sorted themselves into the hierarchy of the Fullness of God. Everyone has a name, everyone has an address, a place, a position, a rank, and a purpose, a job, and that’s what I identify as the Ego, the birth of the Ego of the Aeons. But it’s not a negative thing, it’s simply awareness of one’s Self as an individual consciousness.
And that’s the Lord’s prayer. Usually you end it by saying “Amen.” And Amen means let it be so. So be it. Here-here. But if you forget to say Amen or you don’t say Amen, it’s not a magic word. This isn’t magic, people. So you don’t have to say incantations in any particular way and make sure you don’t skip any words. It’s all a matter of reflecting where your heart is. And, if your heart gives glory to the Father, that’s all that matters. You can even do it without words at all, as I’m sure the other 2nd order powers do. What do you think the rabbits are doing and the cats and the dogs and the cows all day long when they just seem to be dozing off, standing there in the sunshine or lying there? They’re giving glory. They know that they are loved. Even those that aren’t pets that have humans to love them, they know that they are loved by the Father, and by the Fullness, because it’s inside of all of them as well. And they probably aren’t reciting the Lord’s prayer; they’re just communing with the spirit of God. And you can do that as well, often called meditation.
Okay. Well, I guess this episode is going to be called the Lord’s Prayer because I didn’t get any further in the listener’s letter, but I did describe prayer and how I pray.
p.s. I do have particular prayers now and then. OK. If you’re in desperate situation, if I’m in a desperate situation, I will issue an emergency prayer just because that’s what my heart needs to do, and I have belief that issuing that emergency prayer will do the job for me. But it’s not any particular words that I have to say. For example, many years ago, 40 years ago, my husband and my dog and I were in a huge car crash where our van flipped end over end over end several times. I was belted in, but of course the poor dog was thrown around. But, during the end over end over end over crash period, I was praying to Christ. You better believe it, I was praying! Because it’s spontaneous, it’s automatic. Oh Lord rescue me! Oh Lord, help me! Oh dear God, save us! That’s an emergency prayer. And I’ll say that, yeah, that’s another prayer. So that is a third type of prayer that I do. Now it’s usually reserved for some pet emergency. Oh, dear Lord, help my poor Kitty. Oh, dear Lord, help this dog. It’s like that.
Onward and upward! And God bless.
Announcement! I am being interviewed on the Aeon Byte Gnostic Radio podcast April 1st at 10:00 AM Pacific coast time. This will be a live stream video podcast with opportunities to submit questions during the show. I’ll be talking about the new book, which is about to be released. Please put it on your calendar. It would be great to have some people in the audience who follow the Gnostic Insights podcast! Hope to see you there.
