The Left-handed Path
What Jesus was trying to tell you in the “Prodigal son” story
We live in a universe coded to duality. Everything has an opposite in some context and that’s how it works here on this earth.
When I say left-handed path, it sounds like I mean the ‘wrong’ path but that’s because ‘right’ has been associated with ‘good’ in this reality — so ‘left’ has to mean the other side of good…whatever! Let me see if I can explain myself.
The left-handed path is otherwise known as the prodigal son path or the gnostic path. It is the path that chooses to follow the will(or feeling) and find out the truth for self and not from what it’s been told over time… the left-handed path is what ‘good’ people would call devilish or satanic..okay that’s too harsh. Rebellious is a better word. You could also say it’s the path of the rascal… but what most people on the ‘right’ don’t know is that the ‘left’ is also a path to truth and most times, the more ‘fool-proof’ path. Do I have your attention yet?
Let me start from the beginning
I keep saying it, I grew up in Nigeria and from when I was zero years old, my mum and dad told me about Jesus and the importance of making heaven. So you could say I started out being a good boy. I was probably caught in my first lie and disciplined so I knew early enough that Jesus didn't like such things…and so it went. I was born “born again” and I didn’t fail to let that fact out to anyone who was willing to hear, from choir try-outs to trivial conversation… I kept telling them that I was born good and I didn’t have to live a life of sin before knowing Christ. I was a good boy.
And then…
The truth hit me. It started out nice with ‘The Secret’ and I started to see how the religion I’d been taught was just wrong. I had been forced into being good because of the fear of punishment so imagine what I became when I learned that while there was a consequence for actions, there was no ‘eternal punishment’ per se. I could have sex and only worry about pregnancy and STDs and not hellfire… It was so so freeing.
The Yogic Path
Before I fully get into the rascalious (there’s probably no word like that) lifestyle, there is the path of the yogi. This path is the path of denial. I fasted, went vegan, was holy as much as I knew how and mind you this was after I had seen the secret. I had a bit of freedom but I was now engulfed in cosmic realities. I wanted to be like Christ in the christ way (so I was a tad rascalious but still holy per se). You know how christ hung with the hookers and drunks but he was still christ, right? I wanted to be so enlightened that I would not need to reincarnate into this world. I wanted to be done so I went the yogi path. I meditated and all that.
The Gnostic Path
One day my wife put it to me that my ‘holier than thou’ syndrome was becoming annoying and I flipped real quick. I decided to be ‘bad’ and do only what I felt like doing…for real. Not what society wanted of me but what I felt like doing, like the prodigal son… and like the prodigal son, it got rough.
You see, when you decide to be a law unto yourself, that’s when the life lessons start to roll in and before long, you may be dining with pigs (that’s from the prodigal son story. I realize that not all my readers are familiar with Christian stories). I started to learn the harsher lessons of life and started to evolve much faster. I spent time in places and with people I had previously judged, and I got to understand life from their point of view (I mean like prostitutes and drug addicts). I got to see how all these people, no matter how broken they seemed, were a unique part of God and how most of them had very pure hearts. I got to see that if my consciousness was subjected to what their experience had subjected them to, I would probably be way worse.
I started to see that I wasn’t special. I was just another actuality of God having my own experience and was not better or worse than any other aspect of God having their own experience… this is what many who were born on the yogi side never see…but I am grateful I saw it.
Conclusion
I have come to see that when a person has experienced the rougher side of reality, they can then return to their father and they will be celebrated for finding their way back… God is not judging you for being Gnostic, if anything, he is excited that you have a mind of your own and you are doing what your nature has called you to do. If you are of an angry nature and you doll out all that anger and don’t keep cool because society asks you to be civil, then your anger will undoubtedly lead you to a place where you will realize for yourself that you need to let go, and when you return to your father, you will be refined and evolved.
The ‘best’ people in the world had rough patches in their experience and that fire refined them into the celebrated beings they are today. That fire taught them patience, gratitude, and many other virtues.
If a person is ‘good’ for goodness sake, then, of course, it is alright…like when I went vegan for health sake, I saw the health benefits and I did not crave meat. There was no temptation and I was enjoying it. What I didn’t enjoy was the way I started judging meat eaters and that’s the challenge most times with the path of denying self certain pleasures. The day you can be good without judging what you term as ‘bad’, then you are complete and in most cases, you reach that point after having a rough go on the left-handed path.
Daniel…out!
