It seems to me entirely exoteric, that is, outer, to dismiss Tradition and orthodoxy and dogma as though these hold nothing for the seeker of the esoteric.
But esotericism, deepening, operates on the assumption that within these same wounding or difficult or uncomfortable or unpopular Traditions is the very heart of the matter, the very thing for which one is seeking.
The Traditions rejected in our wounding, whether by semi-informed advocates of that Tradition itself or from our own need, as we mature, to cast off the cultures of previous understandings, hold for us the promise of a rich vein of inquiry. As a child perhaps the priest told you there was no room for you at the Eucharistic table, or that rite x was closed to you for whatever reason. The odds are good that the priest was an ass, and that buried for centuries within the bosom of that same rite is a spark of the Infinite Divine, reserved only for you.
As Gnostics we don't run away from the things that we understandably might. Liturgy and scripture and thinkers which have been in the past weaponized against our Work, our nature. Instead we go further in, deeper, and we dive in the waters rather than getting out of the pool. We examine, play, recontextualize and remix and reconsider and reinterpret the facets of Wisdom we find, buried within the recriminations against finding at all. It's paradoxical, yes, but we neither accept nor reject what others declare to be orthodoxy. We treat the whole milieu as a kind of suspension medium, journeying further in with doubt, with wit, with intuition, with our yearning for Holy Wisdom.
