About Todd Settimo (by Todd Settimo) -

I don't often tell my story because I regard it as a private one and I prefer to let my writing stand on its own. However, others who I greatly respect have told me that my story will shed light on the writing of Gnosis. So, here goes....

I've been consciously 'on the Path' for nearly as long as I can remember. As of this writing (January 2006), I'm 47 years old.

My earliest memory is of choosing my family and life circumstances. I saw a vignette of what life would be like with this family I was viewing. This vignette had the quality of a hologram, in that by seeing this representation of a scene with this family, I knew the whole of what my life with them would be like....I knew this choice would provide what I needed. I recall turning to another being that was accompanying me and saying, "This is the one."

This memory kept bothering me from about the time I was three years old and could articulate it to my mother. One detail in the vignette that stuck out to me was that my brother was laying down, sick, on a naugahide couch that we didn't have. All other details of the vignette were accurate with regard to the current state of my life at that time. I asked my mother about the couch I saw since I was convinced I was remembering an actual event and not just recalling a dream. However, my mother told me it must have been a dream since we never had a couch like that. To this day, I can see this entire scene in my mind's eye with as much clarity as my memory of walking my dogs in the mountains the other day. I recognize this as my earliest memory.

I was raised as a Roman Catholic. But somewhere on the way to my First Holy Communion, things went awry with my acceptance of what I was being taught. When I was seven years old, I was sitting in my bedroom with my door closed. I wasn't doing anything in particular. I recall I was gazing at a lamp shade and my mind wasn't focused on anything in particular. I now recognize it as a state of meditation, though I didn't then. In that mental space, I had a 'road to Damascus' moment in which I knew that I and everything around me in the world was as a dream in the mind of God. That realization, as well as the indescribable feeling of oneness with All That Is - or the Eternal Parent, as I prefer to call It now - set the stage for the rest of my life and put the screws to growing up as a good Catholic.

My parents sent me to Catholic school. Unfortunately for me, I'd already taken an interest in science and made the mistake of speaking what was on my mind about the formation of the universe and the evolution of humankind to the nuns and lay teachers at school. I was ten years old and my pronouncements marked me as someone to be cracked down upon and brought into line. Catholic school, for me, was a horror. Fortunately, three years into it, my father got another job and we moved and that was the end of Catholic school. But it left an indelible mark on me, making me realize that organized religion was...well, bullshit. However, my earlier experiences left me with a certain knowledge that there was something 'real' to be found. I set about finding it.

My experiences with Catholicism determined the path I would take. All things western, in my mind, had become suspect. So, I turned to all things eastern. In particular, Buddhism, Taoism and the practice of Hatha Yoga. I began practising meditation when I was 13-14 years old and my primary goal in life was the attainment of enlightenment. To me, nothing else mattered. I was considered an odd teenager who could be found on the bank of a pond reading Thoreau rather than playing with the other kids. And while I found girls incredibly attractive and newly exciting from a hormonal perspective, I found I didn't have much in common intellectually with almost everyone my age. Still, I found myself - not just in my teenage years, but even to this day - having more female friends than male. I'm not quite sure what that says about me, but that's the way it is.

In the late '70s, I experimented with the use of entheogens and spent a great deal of time out in the wilderness for up to a week at a time, completely away from others. I had many profound experiences during this time, but almost all - not all, but almost all - were with the aid of entheogens. In retrospect, for myself, I came to view their use as a great door opener, but something to be eventually superceded by the practice of meditation.

Around 1980, I became aware of a group in San Diego where I was living called the Teaching of the Inner Christ (TIC). My orientation - learned the hard way from my time in Catholicism - was not to be a joiner; to learn from -isms, but never become an -ist. In that spirit, I obtained the workbook for TIC but avoided actually becoming involved with their group. But as the workbook said, affiliation with their group wasn't required to obtain benefit from the workbook. So, I began using their technique of deep trance meditation; a technique I employ to this day.

Through the use of this technique I had what remains as one of the hallmark experiences of my life. As I sat in deep meditation, a brilliant golden light flooded my consciousness; a light so bright that had I been looking on it with my physical eyes, it would have blinded me. But as an internal light, it had a gentle and kind quality and I became aware that this light wasn't just a light but a Presence that was neither male nor female, but encompassing and transcending both. In Its presence, I knew things. Words weren't spoken, but ideas were communicated. These ideas - which were in confirmation of the epiphany I had when I was seven years old - form the basis of my book Gnosis: Good News for the Third Millennium. The beginning parts of the book were written around this time.

As an aside - the word 'gnosis' became apparent to me around this time in the early '80s. I don't know if I read it somewhere or what. But it was a word that intrigued me, stuck in my mind...in fact, was broadcast in my consciousness from that point forward...insistently. I looked up its definition and liked what I found enough to title my work with it because it represented not only what the work was (i.e. my own gnosis), but what the book was about (i..e. the experience and process of 'knowing'). But it wasn't until many years later that I turned my attention to things western and took an actual interest in gnosticism itself.

Through the better part of the '80s, my single-minded pursuit of enlightenment got sidetracked. I fell in love. I got married. My wife and I started having children who, quite inconveniently, needed to be fed, clothed and sheltered. I began a career as a computer programmer which did all of the above but required 60 to 70 hours a week of my family time. Several years and three children later, my marriage fell apart (I won't go into details..).

For two years after our separation and divorce, I lived the life of a tortured, cloistered monk. It was during this time that much of what I'd come to believe in a mental way became burned into me in a far more visceral way. This was my trial, my dark night of the soul, my season in hell. I lost everything I valued and finding myself left with only myself, found it to be enough. Continually, when I felt myself at the end of my rope, I found more rope. Chogyam Trunpa's Shambhala: Path of the Sacred Warrior was a key influence at that time.

Soon after, the bulk of Gnosis: Good News for the Third Millennium was written in a virtual flood. But after that, it went into a drawer. Occasionally, over the years I'd pull it out to share with a particular person with whom I felt an affinity. Mostly though, the people I shared it with weren't consciously 'on the Path' and I'd get a "that's nice" sort of response. Frankly, I didn't really think anything would come of the book. I wrote it mainly because I felt compelled to write it and I wanted something to be able to give my children so they could know me better.

A few years passed, and I remarried. My second wife, Amy, and I had a beautiful daughter, Sarah, in 1996. My meditation practice flagged and became quite sporadic. It was after moving to Ashland, Oregon in 2002 that I met an old man in my neighborhood who for all the world looks like your basic image of Moses; long flowing white beard and all. I felt an instant affinity with him, and like many I've felt that with before, I handed him my book. Unbeknownst to me, this man was part of a little community of authors in my area. Also unbeknownst to me, he started sharing my work with them.

The reaction I received was far from the earlier reactions I'd received. The interest was intense. Soon after I was talking with this old man one day and he leaned in close, looked me intensely in the eye, and told me that I needed to wake up.

Now, I've met my share of self-styled gurus in my day, and normally, this would have been a big red flag that would have sent me off briskly in the opposite direction, but somehow, for some reason, I experienced a very different reaction. I don't know how to describe it other than to say it was like a door opening in me. In that moment, everything changed. I began my meditations in earnest again. The Light has returned and we commune nightly. I took up an interest in gnosticism and found what I'd written under the name, Gnosis, resonated a great deal with what I've read in the Gospel of Mary Magdelene, the Gospel of Thomas and other texts.

I became convinced to finish the book and get it published. And, as you can see, it has...