In the universal language of symbols, house is a common representation of your body, or rather the interior of the body, your inner temple. This temple does not only refer to the biological interior of the body, but more to the non-physical parts of it, such as the consciousness, the five psychological centers (intellectual, emotional, sexual, motor and instinctual), the higher bodies (such as astral and mental), as well as other counterparts that some people may have more and others less, depending on the inner work that they have or haven’t done in the past. All of these things are internal, and are part of our inner house.

This symbol of the inner house can come up in dreams for those who are working on themselves; they may see themselves in the house in which they live physically (or have lived before, such as their childhood home); they may some specific things taking place in that house, which shows how the inner work is being performed. For example, they may see that their house is missing parts of the doors or windows, which makes it less protected from the elements. They may see water entering their house, or they may see a storm outside but the interior of the house not being affected. They may also see different people inside the house, to whom they relate in various ways, some create a good overall effect on the house and some bad, as some people are suspicious and with bad intentions and some are good, and some are simply neutral. They may also see themselves allowing some tenants to move in, or allowing some of their friends to come inside, but then seeing that those people are leaving behind unwanted things. On the bright side, if the work is performed well, they may see spiritual beings entering the house, or one’s own Divine Mother residing in the house and keeping good care of it. They may also see their house becoming larger and larger if they are progressing well on the path.

It is a very practical demonstration for us to see how we are doing. If we identify with our egos throughout the day, it means that we allow them to enter into our five psychological centers. For example, if we are not on guard during the day, we may identify with things such as lust or anger, or any other ego, in which case they enter the centers, and before we know it we have our centers polluted with the energy of the ego. We then have to fight back strongly in order to eliminate it and resume in a detached state throughout the day. During the night, this could be shown to us as robbers trying to break in our house, succeeding with it, and us fighting with them in order to throw them out.  It is much better to keep the work on the egos at the porch or further away from house, rather than allowing them to enter. When we feel the ego coming, it is still at the “porch” level. It is only when we dwell upon it or identify with it that it establishes itself within our psychological centers. It is always recommended keeping the battle outside, because like this we win. However, if the ego has entered inside us then it has been fed. Furthermore, if this happens, the ego could have temporarily seized and condition the will that belongs to our free consciousness, which could lead up to us going along with whatever the ego wants us to do, and thus failing in that particular battle.

So the symbol of the house is a very important one, and can be a symbol that is occurring a lot throughout our path to awakening, showing us how our work is going and what we need to pay a special attention to, what we need to avoid, what we need to embrace, etc. Because of such a great importance of this symbol that is shown to us in our dreams or astral experiences, it has been used in various esoteric teachings. One of such is known as the “Teachings of Silvanus”, an early Christian-Gnostic text from the 3rd century, discovered in the desert of Nag Hammadi in Egypt. The writer (or writers) of this text speak about the great importance of dedicating one’s life to awakening, as well as to keeping the inner house protected.

I will include some paragraphs here and make some commentary under some of them. The text starts with the following:

“Abolish every childish time of life, acquire for yourself strength of mind and soul, and intensify the struggle against every folly of the passions of love and base wickedness, and love of praise, and fondness of contention, and tiresome jealousy and wrath, and anger and the desire of avarice. Guard your (pl.) camp and weapons and spears. Arm yourself and all the soldiers, which are the words, and the commanders, which are the counsels, and your mind as a guiding principle.

“My son, throw every robber out of your gates. Guard all your gates with torches, which are the words, and you will acquire through all these things a quiet life. But he who will not guard these things will become like a city which is desolate, since it has been captured. All kinds of wild beasts have trampled upon it, for thoughts which are not good are evil wild beasts. And your city will be filled with robbers, and you will not be able to acquire peace, but only all kinds of savage wild beasts. The Wicked One, who is a tyrant, is lord over these. While directing this, he (the Wicked One) is beneath the great mire. The whole city, which is your soul, will perish.

That which enters the inner house, which passes through its gates, are the egos that we have within ourselves, things such as lust, pride, anger, fear, jealousy etc. As they are not part of us, but instead occupy the space of our consciousness and in this way they condition and trap it, they are seen as something external entering our inner house. This is an accurate depiction, because they are not part of our inner house, but are heavy and low energies that we have created over lifetimes and which we can dissolve with the inner work. The egos are robbers and wild beasts, which have captured the whole city (a city can also be a symbol of our interior) and aim to destroy it.

“Remove yourself from these things, O wretched soul! Bring your guide and your teacher. The mind is the guide, but reason is the teacher. They will bring you out of destruction and dangers.”

(…)Oh wretched man, what will you do if you fall into their hands? Protect yourself, lest you be delivered into the hands of your enemies. Entrust yourself to this pair of friends, reason and mind, and no one will be victorious over you. May God dwell in your camp, may his Spirit protect your gates, and may the mind of Divinity protect the walls. Let holy reason become a torch in your mind, burning the wood which is the whole of sin.”

The egos are our inner enemies. They are the energies within us that strive to keep us psychologically asleep. When we are thus asleep as they want us to be, they receive their nourishment, without which they wouldn’t be able to function. That food that they fight for is our identification with them, our attachment to them, our acting upon their whims and desires. For an intellectual animal this is a normal way to live life. However, when our spirit stirs and brings us on the path to awakening, we find ourselves before the dilemma of “to be, or not to be”. “To be” is to be conscious and present in the moment, to feel one’s consciousness awake and active. “Not to be” is to be psychologically asleep within the egos, to do whatever they want us to do. If we chose the path to awakening, to final liberation, then it is necessary to confront them and to dissolve them, so that the inner Being can be fully integrated within us; so that he can transform us into spiritual and conscious beings. Only to acknowledge the egos is not enough. To appease the egos, to make compromises with them, to make friends with them, is not something that will bring us to dissolving and transforming them. They need to be eliminated. It is either us or them, sleep or wakefulness, to be or not be.

And if we decide for the spiritual path, we will have the support of the “mind of Divinity” and of the “holy reason”, which are higher faculties of our soul, belonging to our divine Being. This takes us to a gradual incarnation of the latter, to going through esoteric initiations, and thus having the Spirit more and more established within us. He is then like a guardian, the protector of the gates of our inner city, of our inner house.

“(…)My son, listen to my teaching, which is good and useful, and end the sleep which weighs heavily upon you. Depart from the forgetfulness which fills you with darkness, since if you were unable to do anything, I would not have said these things to you. But Christ has come in order to give you this gift. Why do you pursue the darkness when the light is at your disposal? Why do you drink stale water, though sweet wine is available for you? Wisdom summons you, yet you desire folly. Not by your own desire do you do these things, but it is the animal nature within you that does them.”

When we choose the ego, we choose forgetfulness, we choose to be ignorant. The light of consciousness, of the Being is accessible to all who yearn for it, who are ready to make an effort to reach it, who have a sincere interest in it. Some people have more light within them than others; they can take up to the inner work with more determination than those who have less light, but ultimately we all need to start from somewhere. If we don’t have the light of Christ within us, if we don’t have the Human Soul incarnated, or other parts of the Being, then we need to work in order to acquire those parts. And as we acquire them, we start to see and comprehend more of who we truly are. We cannot know ourselves if we don’t know our Being, and we will not know our Being if we continue to identify with our animal nature, with the egos, those dark energies that want everything but the light.

 (…)“Listen, O soul, to my advice. Do not become a den of foxes and snakes, nor a hole of serpents and asps, nor a dwelling place of lions, or a place of refuge of basilisk-snakes. When these things happen to you, O soul, what will you do? For these are the powers of the Adversary. Everything which is dead will come into you through them (the powers). For their food is everything which is dead, and every unclean thing. For when these are within you, what living thing will come into you? The living angels will detest you. You were a temple, (but) you have made yourself a tomb. Cease being a tomb, and become (again) a temple, so that uprightness and divinity may remain in you.

When we allow the low animal energies to settle in us and accept them as ourselves, we could say that spiritually we deteriorate, our spiritual potential diminishes, the strength of our essence becomes the laziness of the egos. At that point the egos have our conscious will. The letter becomes fully conditioned and in control of those animalistic things, of anger, of lust, of selfishness and pride… When we are in such a state, we resonate with things that are of darkness, we move away from the light. Only by yearning for our divine origin is the light of hope kindled again, and we see the harsh reality of our inner world, of our situation

“Light the light within you. Do not extinguish it! Certainly, no one lights a lamp for wild beasts or their young. Raise your dead who have died, for they lived and have died for you. Give them life. They shall live again!”

We light the light within us when we do the inner work, when we strive to be continuously in the state of self-remembrance, observing the five psychological centers, keeping our consciousness awake and active. We light the light even more when we are dissolving the ego, when we “raise our dead”, which is when we liberate the asleep and conditioned consciousness from the grip of the ego, feeling its rekindled light shining within us and irradiating outwards. And we light the light even more when we create and/or activate our solar bodies, so that parts of our Being can be alive within ourselves, giving us spiritual nourishment and strength to do our duty as we walk towards complete awakening.

HDP, January 2021.