Like Fish

 

[QUOTING]

For this reason, then, we do not sleep nor do we forget the nets that are spread out in hiding, lying in wait for us to catch. For if we are caught in a single net, it will suck us down into its mouth, while the water flows over us, striking our face. And we will be taken down into the dragnet, and we will not be able to come up from it because the waters are high over us, flowing from above downwards, submerging our heart down in the filthy mud. And we will not be able to escape from them. For man-eaters will seize us and swallow us, rejoicing like a fisherman casting a hook into the water. For he casts many kinds of food. He smells it and pursues its odor. But when he eats it, the hook hidden within the food seizes him and brings him up by force out of the deep waters. No man is able, then, to catch that fish down in the deep waters, except for the trap that the fisherman sets. By the ruse of food he brought the fish up on the hook.

In this very way we exist in this world, like fish. The Adversary spies on us, lying in wait for us like a fisherman, wishing to seize us, rejoicing that he might swallow us. For he placed many foods before our eyes, things which belong to this world. He wishes to make us desire one of them and to taste only a little, so that he may seize us with his hidden poison and bring us out of Freedom and take us into slavery. For whenever he catches us with a single food, it is indeed necessary for us to desire the rest. Finally, then, such things become the Food of Death.

Now these are the foods with which the Adversary lies in wait for us: First he injects a pain into your heart until you have a heartache on account of a small thing in this life, and he seizes you with his poisons. And afterwards he injects the desire of a tunic so that you will pride yourself in it, and love of money, pride, vanity, envy that rivals another envy, beauty of body, fraudulence. The greatest of all these are ignorance and ease.

Now all such things the Adversary prepares beautifully and spreads out before the body, wishing to make the mind of the Soul incline her toward one of them and overwhelm her, like a hook, drawing her by force into ignorance, deceiving her until she conceives evil, and bears fruits of matter, and conducts herself in uncleanness, pursuing many desires, covetousness, while fleshly pleasures draw her into ignorance.

But the Soul -- she who has tasted these things -- realized that sweet passions are transitory. She had learned about evil: she went away from them and entered into a new conduct. Afterwards, she despises this life, because it is transitory. And she looks for those Foods that will take her into Life, and leaves behind her those deceitful foods. And she learns about her Light, as she goes about stripping off this world, while her True Garment clothes her within, and her Bridal clothing is placed upon her in Beauty of Mind, not in pride of flesh. And she learns about her depth and runs into her fold, while her Shepherd stands at the door. In return for all the shame and scorn, then, that she received in this world, she receives ten thousand times the Grace and Glory.

From "Authoritative Teaching" - The Nag Hammadi Library (Codex VI, Tractate 3) - translated by George W. McRae

[END QUOTING]

Fairly self-explanatory for those on the Path with ears to hear.

~ g
.