The Three Gates

     Here in America, we have a plethora of what are called “reality shows”.  They seem popular with audiences as well as T.V. executives, who, worshiping their sacred bottom line, find them inexpensive to produce as well as profitable to air.  The basic premise is simple: put a group of people in a stressful situation, watch their phony facades crumble, revealing the “real” person.  The reason I bring it up, is that it is a perfect illustration of how the ego functions and its dualistic world of good and evil.

     The good ego: the happy, confident, in-control façade is revealed as phony, hiding a supposed deeper truth, the “real” person who is hurting, frightened, and hopefully (for ratings and dramatic effect) angry.  This is the “real” evil hidden under the false façade of the good.  The new age, inoffensive and inclusive, refers to this evil polarity as the “shadow” and encourages us to “accept” it.  We all know what they are referring to, and in the ego we cannot accept it for the very simple reason that it neither feels good to be in it, nor is it a place we would willingly choose to be.

     The point of all this is that it reveals a fundamental belief in the ego illusion.  That our “good” is false, and our “evil” is real.  In fact both are false, simply two polarities in the illusionary, dualistic world of good and evil.

     While the “bad” states of hurt, insecurity, and anger are as false as the “good” states of happy, confident, and in-control, nonetheless, the evil end of the polarity is closer to the truth.  It is only in going deeper, beyond the hurt, beyond the fear, beyond the anger, that one actually begins to encounter the truth of who they really are.  Only in going beyond the illusion of “bad” goes one come closer to what has been called the “original face”; that which is beyond the world of good and evil.

     The masters have told us to search for the original face.  What they refer to is what we in the west have known as God.  To search for the original face is the same as searching for the face of God.  Where does one search for this original face, for God?  Well, there seems to be unanimity amongst those who claimed to have found the original face that one must look within.  But if you look within, from the vantage point of the “good”, the “spiritual” ego, what you will see is the same reality that is presented for your entertainment every night: the bad pain, the bad fear, the really evil anger, and in the ego illusion this is universality accepted as real, when in reality they are as false as the ego facades created to conceal them.

     I myself, do not talk that much about the original face, not that it’s not important, or a worthy spiritual goal, but rather that I am more concerned with the how of finding it.  Once found it is self-evident, so the really useful information is not what it is, but how to find it.  If you are seeking the original face, to find it you have to pass through three gates, for the original face has been divided into three faces: soul, spirit, and father God.  These three faces are wearing masks, and the masks aren’t very pretty.  The soul wears the mask of a victim, the spirit wears the mask of a coward, and the father God the mask of a crazed monster.  Going within, you see, and are repelled by the masks, and lost in the grip of the ego, you not only don’t want to go deeper, beyond the masks, but struggle to get back into the world of good; happy, confident, and in-control.  Even if you know it’s phony, it seems somehow better than the “reality” of the bad.  The “bad” ego feels and appears more real and true than the “good” ego simply because it is closer to the actual truth of who you are.  Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not saying you are more evil than good, what I’m saying is that you entered this illusionary, conflicted world of  good and evil through gates hidden in the evil.  The evil within us is no more true than the good, it’s only closer to the gates of truth. 

     Throughout the ages, the self-appointed experts, whether religious or secular, have encouraged us to cultivate the “good”, and it looks so logical.  But cultivating the good is like encouraging you to build your home on a rotting foundation in the middle of a cesspool.  The façade, no matter how pretty, how strong, will stink, and eventually sink into the muck, leaving you feeling betrayed, angry, and bitter.  Many people are critical of my teaching because I seem to focus so much on the “negative”.  In my defense, I have never had anyone come to me complaining of the good in their lives, wanting to work on, or to “fix” the good.  Seems to me, if the negative is the problem then obviously that is where the work is.  I’m a very practical person, trying to help people find their way out of the crazy ego world of good and evil, and one only needs to look, to see that, as far as evolving human consciousness is concerned, the cultivation of good has been a monumental failure.  I don’t encourage people to be good, anymore than I encourage them to be evil.  It is not my concern.  I’m concerned in showing them the way out of the whole ugly polarized ego world, and the exit is not to be found in the good polarity of the ego, if it were humanity would have been enlightened long ago.  The exit is the very place you avoid going: the negative polarity.  The place you entered.

     There is a certain logic to it:  The “good” ego appears as a reaction to, a concealment of, the “bad” ego.  Therefore the negative polarity appears first, the positive a reaction to it.  Since somebody we loosely refer to as “you” is lost in this ego polarity, “you” must have entered it somewhere, and that somewhere must lie in the negative, the bad, or as I prefer, the evil end of the polarity.  This is why the evil feels more like the real you.  It is closest to you in proximity, not closest to you in nature.  It is the place you entered the ego deception, the place where it all began.  Deceived into believing you were evil, it seemed natural and right to move to the other polarity creating a good façade to hide what you thought you were.

     The foundation of this fundamental polarity, from which the myriad polarities in ego life arise, are the three dark veils which have deceived the three parts of the original face.  The three parts of who you are.  Known in the west as soul, spirit, and God, each entered the ego duality through a separate gate. The soul entered the world of evil through the gate of pain.  Once captured, she strove to attain the opposite: happiness.  For lifetimes, she has flipped from one polarity to the other.  From sad, lonely, isolated to its opposite:  happy, in love, connected.  The human spirit entered through the gate of fear and in that false polarity he goes from fear, insecurity, and cowardice to the opposite: confident and brave.  For God it is the same: from angry and resentful to magnanimous and in-control.  But the world grows more perilous, more stressful, and as it does so, more and more will all three parts find themselves in the negative polarities: pain, fear, and anger.  For the good polarity, being furthest from the source of light that animates the whole illusion, is also the weakest, the first to crumble, as we witness all the time.  To live in the evil polarity is to live in madness, but struggling to find your way back to its opposite, you miss the gates, the gates home, the gates to oneness, the gates to the original face.  The three gates to God.  And beyond.