Gospel of Thomas - coda 8

Gospel of Thomas, coda 8

“And he (Jesus) said, ‘the man is like a thoughtful fisherman who threw his net into the sea and pulled it out full of fish.  Among all the little fish found one fine large fish that would be beneficial to him, and throwing all the little fish back into the sea, he easily chose to keep the big one.  Whoever has ears to hear let him hear.’”

To catch a large fish you have to fish for it.  You have to cast out your net.   However you don’t know what your catch is going to be when you fish.  The catching of the large fish was accidental.  It was caught along with all the little fish in the ordinary way.   The fisherman was going after the big fish.  But the fisherman is wise.  He examined his catch to see what was there.  And when he saw the large fish he realized its value.  What is the large fish?  It represents something valuable that exists in the world that is found in the ordinary course of life events.   The wise person is one who is open to seeing the extraordinary in the midst of the ordinary.

I turn to Tau Malachi, to explain this further.   From Malachi’s perspective, this large fish is the Christ within you.  It is your true self.  To believe in Christ is to believe in the divine potential that exists within you.  To follow Jesus is to follow the spirit of Christ that is within you.  Literally, to follow Jesus, is to become more and more like Jesus, to have the same mind or consciousness that was in Christ Jesus, and to embody the Christ Spirit that was in Christ Jesus.  Faith in Christ brings salvation, but it is knowledge of what Christ knows through identification with him that is knowledge, knowledge here being gnosis or spiritual knowledge or realization.

To find the big fish, you have to sort through all the little fish, the myriad of selves you have and choose the one that is most true.  Think of the many selves you are.  I am a Pastor, a teacher, a husband, a father, a son, a leader, a student, a writer, a seeker, etc . . . but who am I really, whose am I, what am I here for?   I have a lot of purposes or can have a lot of purposes but what is the one purpose that I am born to for this life.  I can get caught up in a direction that takes me away from my true purpose.  I don’t want to lose that purpose.  There is work in this sorting.  There is discernment.  The big fish can be overlooked and treated like one of the little fish or even discarded because you want to have a lot of fish.

The throwing back the little fish may involve giving up the smaller dreams, goals and ambitions, and pursuing the greater dream, goal, and ambition.  The keeping of the big fish may be pursuing the right spiritual path and practice, committing yourself to spiritual practice and living.  What if being spiritually awake at all costs was your most important goal and you stuck to practices that kept you spiritually awake or become more awake or wide awake?  Or more spiritually connected to God and motivated by God, that Christ within you?