July 9th, 2026

The Forgetting 

 Seems to me that these recent days of forgetting are an apt description for my apathy and self-serving lack of connection. When I'm in a state of self-embroilment, I've made a choice to return to a state of unconnectedness, a return to i ~ a small i, in a sea of i's.

As noted via the Gnostic tradition, this is not a personal failure (unless owned as such) — it is a gentle reminder that I'm not a failure, but a sleeper who has wandered from the pearl —

the light didn't leave,

I just stopped looking for it.

The Hymn of the Pearl tells it plainly. A prince, sent from the East to Egypt for a single pearl guarded by a serpent, eats the local food and forgets — forgets the pearl, forgets home, falls asleep in a foreign garment. A letter from his parents wakes him: remember. He charms the serpent, takes the pearl, starts home. On the road he's met by his own robe, woven to match exactly who he'd become. He puts it on and enters his father's house.

The Hymn of the Pearl 

Full text 
Also known as The Hymn of the Pearl, the Hymn of the Soul, the Hymn of the Robe of Glory, and occasionally as the Hymn of Judas Thomas the Apostle. 

I don't think the forgetting was ever the failure. The soul's condition in matter has always been described as a kind of sleep — not a fall from grace, just a distance traveled. The prince doesn't sin his way into Egypt. He simply eats, and forgets, the way I eat my own days and forget.

And even Sophia's grief — her exile, her mourning — was never something to rush past or explain away. It's what makes the story move. Passion that gets metabolized, not punished.

So maybe the light in me was never damaged by whatever darkness I've been sitting in. Just covered. Nothing broken. Something obscured, for now — the same way what's within doesn't need to be built, only brought forth. Its absence is the only harm.

~

I don't need a technique for this. I need patience with the dark as a stage, not a verdict. A letter, eventually, will come.