“Is this spiritual teacher authentic?” We receive this question quite often on the forum and it reveals a particular tendency in students that should be acknowledged and recognized. First is the inherent assumption that we at Glorian have full and complete knowledge of everything that has ever been written about spiritual traditions, movements, and contemporary leaders. Second is the belief that we have consciously investigated within the superior dimensions all the world’s great spiritual thinkers and can thereby give them the assurance of support, the recognition and admittance of their inconsequential obscurity, or even their outright public defamation. Third, building on the prior point, is the belief that we are authorized to tell the world who is legitimate or not even if it might please some and offend others, especially when we seek to uphold and follow a precious maxim: “Respect the religion of your neighbor. Those who criticize others violate the law of the tranquil heart.” Lastly, we strive to dethrone the idol our students have of us within their minds that believes we somehow have more knowledge of a person’s unique needs that cannot be discerned even by his or her own Innermost.

Gnosticism as a tradition and practice teaches self-reliance, investigation, experimentation, and verification of spiritual facts. You cannot learn this essential skill if you do not test the validity and teachings of a particular school yourself, or if you merely rely on what others have told you. People are more or less erroneous in their beliefs, assumptions, and experiences. Therefore, to remove any possibility of error on our part, we need to rely on our inner divinity to rightly guide and orient our afflicted heart.