We have to keep going and growing. This is the characteristic of what those who enter the pursuit of gnosis have undertaken. Throughout this text, we're going to continue to explore various aspects of the differences between gnosis and orthodoxy, but whatever we examine, this is the bottom line. Gnosis is there to expand you, to open you up, to help you keep growing and developing, whereas the very nature of orthodoxy tends to be to keep you down, to keep you from going too far, to make sure that you are under the thumb of the system and the individuals representing the system, and that you don't expand beyond that. It is a contracting system.
Gnosis is an expanding system.
If you want to be gnostic, you have to be willing to keep growing. If you are going to keep growing, you have to expect that your skin is going to keep splitting, and you are going to step out into a new being. That's germane to the message of Christ. He says, through St. Paul, that we put off our old personality. We put on a new personality in Christ.