Through the Gate

On learning to live in two worlds.

Almost three years ago, I was at Ghost Ranch, a retreat center in a stunning part of northern New Mexico.  Georgia O’Keefe territory.  Canyon territory.  I had gone there for a ‘spiritual’ retreat, feeling anything but.  I don’t remember what was happening in my life, just that I was in a bad mood, irritated even by the bumpy dirt road leading into the ranch.

In spite of my sour attitude (or maybe because of it?), it seems I was ripe for a shift.  Because over the course of the next four days, something pretty big “loosened” in me.  Something relaxed…surrendered…opened.  So many words come close.  And so many don’t quite describe it. 

It’s easier for me to use an image.  Picture an average backyard with a fence around it.  It was as if, having spent my whole life inside that backyard, I suddenly discovered a gate, and walked out into a beautiful open field.  A field that appeared to go on forever.  A field that had always been there, but I had never noticed.  A field that felt…different.  Where I felt different. 

Because in that field, I knew that everything is fine.  Everything.  I knew that everything is whole despite all the apparent brokenness of our world.  And that everything is connected despite all the apparent separateness.  I knew I felt peaceful.  Joyful.  Kind of giddy, actually.   And alive.  Like really alive.  And present.  So present.  The moment in front of me was the only thing that was real.  And my usual energy of striving, controlling, and managing my life (along with the underlying stress and worry of that) were gone.  Clearly not needed. 

Maybe you’ve felt something similar.  I suspect most of us have had moments, maybe when we’re watching a sunset or standing by a mountain lake, when everything else falls away and we feel a wave of deep contentment, or overwhelming wonder.  And, for a moment, we are barely aware of ourselves and our problems.  But since these experiences usually don’t last long, and we’re soon back in the ‘real’ world, we tend to write them off as just moments of grace, beyond our control.

But what if those moments are actually glimpses into the truly real world.  A world that we usually can’t see because we are so consumed with our own agenda and worry.  But a world that is always right here, waiting for us to walk through the gate.

After I left Ghost Ranch, unlike times in the past, the gate didn’t close.  Not completely.  And for the past three years, I’ve been curious (okay, kind of obsessed) with how to navigate back and forth between my “regular” life inside the familiar boundaries of the “backyard” and this whole other world, this whole other way of being in the world. 

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in the events and demands of the backyard, I completely forget about the gate.  Sometimes I remember it, but for the life of me, can’t find it.  Sometimes I can’t find it, but life is still better because at least I know it’s there.  And sometimes it’s so easy to walk out into that field, I don’t know why I don’t do it all the time.  In those moments, I know the truth is: the gate is always open. 

Which is why, by the way, when it came time to give this newsletter a name, I called it: The Open Gate.  And more and more it seems to me that this is what religion is really about.  Not a set of beliefs.  Or a set of ethics and morals, as important as those are.  Religion is most deeply about discovering this gate and then learning how to live in the backyard of our regular lives from the deep peace of knowing that, truly, everything is okay, and that whatever all of this is, it is much bigger and more beautiful than we usually glimpse.

And I would love to write more about all of this.  Why, sometimes, can’t we find the gate?  What gets in the way?  Why does the ‘backyard’ have such a strong pull if the ‘field’ is what we’re really looking for?  And how do we learn to move more skillfully and faithfully between the two?

But I don’t know if any of this makes much sense.  So, if you have time, I would love some feedback on this post.  [I love feedback on any post, btw, since this whole endeavor, unlike preaching in a church, feels a bit like throwing a message in a bottle out to sea!]  But especially this one - does any of this resonate?  Does is sound crazy?  Have you had a similar experience?  Would you describe it a different way?  Even if you haven’t had an experience like I’m recounting, is there something about this that feels intuitively true?  I would really enjoy reading anything you’d like to put in the comments, and I bet others would too.

Till next time,

Ian