Considering your interest in the word's use & definition and the topic, I thought you might like reading this link: http://www.gnostics.com/spirituality.html (page seemed slow to load for me).
Or not, of course.
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I like it. It loaded quick for me. It has fade-in feature that is attractive. It does it when you arrive and when you leave the site. It looks like it is, from just a quick going over, an in-depth review of many religions and philosophies. This is something that just gave me a bit more of a grasp on what our inner core is:
Now, correcting my assumptions put forth early on in this lesson, it appears that Monads start out as leaving in the beginning of time their high spiritual status and condition as un-self-conscious god-sparks, so to say crystallized in impassive purity, cycling down through the worlds visible and invisible, they entered upon the sublime Adventure of self-evolution, of self-growth, of self-becoming, and of bringing to each one of their enshrouding quasi-conscious veils or sheaths of consciousness, an ever expanding consciousness of each one's own inner being; for the most wonderful thought in the archaic evolutionary scheme is this: that not only is the spiritual Monad itself evolving, revolving in unceasing peregrinations, but it thus aids in the evolution of everyone of these enshrouding garments or veils in which and through which it expresses its own transcendent powers.
From this, I would expect that the Ego is one of these veils and I would say that an individual should be taking care as to how he or she might become a bit too enmeshed in emotional attachment to matter. Salut, Sowelo.
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