The road to getting what you want, the road to success (no matter what is it) is not a straight one. It is full of twists and turns and ups and downs and challenges and times when you feel like you are back at square one. Most people don’t find out what will be required of them in order to get what they want, until they are far enough down that road to find it out for themselves and not in a particularly conscious way. Today, I’m going to reveal this untold prerequisite for getting what you want, so that you can be more prepared and have a far more conscious relationship with this road to getting what you want and the many “gates” you will encounter along the way.
It’s at this point that you might be asking “what is a gate?” A gate is a barrier you must pass through in order to advance forward. As it applies to this conversation about getting what you want, a gate is an obstacle that acts as a barrier to us moving forward towards our aim and thus, that prevents us from getting what we want. Each gate is different. And our task is to find out how to pass each gate we encounter. In fact, our personal expansion depends on us doing so. Each gate represents something within ourselves that acts as an oppositional factor to what we want. Just so that you can get an idea of what I mean, let’s say that a person wants to win a world title in a sport. They may hit a gate that pertains to them having no support where the only way to pass through it is to go above and beyond what other athletes have to do to train and enter competitions, demonstrating perseverance where others might quit. And then they may hit a gate of self-criticism, where the only way to pass through the gate is to integrate their inner critic. And then, they may hit a gate that pertains to success causing them to lose belonging in their family. And so, the only way to pass through it, is to be able to choose to move forward, despite the consequence being to lose closeness with those people around them who will not be advocates to their success and surround themselves with people who will. And then, they may hit a gate where they are injured and so no one believes in them anymore. And so, the only way to pass through the gate is to tap into an inner resource that acts as a drive to rehabilitate and try again, despite being up against the pressure of everyone’s doubts and the attention and celebration being geared towards other athletes. And then, they may hit a gate where the barrier they hit is their own shame about needing and wanting support, where the only way to pass through the gate is to work through that shame and admit to needing and wanting support and then learning how to take it in, etc.
Obviously, how big gates are, how hard they are to pass through and how many of them there are tends to correlate with what one’s desires actually are. And tends to correlate with the vibrational distance between where a person is and where they want to be. You will hit these gates no matter what your desire is. But, imagine that what you want is to find a job somewhere that really values your presence and contribution. You are likely to hit less big deal gates than you will if what you want is to reach a state of enlightenment by integrating your ego. Each time you hit a gate and do what it takes to pass through it, you are growing. You are developing. You are strengthening. Your deepest values are being revealed. You are becoming more aware. You are refining yourself. You are transforming. You are being forged. You are expanding personally, as well as causing universal expansion. And in this way, desire plays an absolutely massive role in expansion. Desire is not the cause of suffering. People suffer because of not making peace with the fact that there is no end to desire. You will always want something else and something more. And people suffer because of hitting their gates. And even a person whose desire is to rid themselves of desire, will hit gates on the road to that desire. On the road to getting what you want, you will encounter every oppositional factor that exists within you to the getting of what you want.
One common gate that people hit on the road to what they want, is the resistance to going through so many of these gates on the road to what they want. A common way that people work through this resistance, is to give up on what they want to the point where they don’t really want it anymore. By doing so, they are no longer in resistance to the not getting of it. And so, the gate swings open. This is why you may have observed that people often get what they want, when they don’t even really want it anymore. It is also why the author of The Never-Ending Story chose to make this the final test for Atreyu.
The thing that almost no one on earth knows and the thing that no one will tell you is that when it comes to getting what you want the very most, the final prerequisite, the final gate, is to choose the very thing that you have been avoiding your entire life in order to get what you want. And this, is the most difficult gate of them all. Often, when it comes to our deepest desire, we are compelled towards that thing, at least in part because of a trauma we suffered and therefore, something that we are desperate to get away from and avoid. And the day will come that rather than avoid it, to get what we want, we must be willing to experience it. We must say yes to it for the sake of what we want. And often, when we hit this gate, it feels VERY counterintuitive.
So that you can understand this better, here are three examples: Jeremy grew up in a very poor household with a very dysfunctional family where the only way to have a home was to become whatever pleased and placated his mother. His deepest fear has always been to be homeless without physical resources and without people to come home to. Jeremy’s big desire in life is to live an authentic life, to be himself. At this point in his life, he ended up where he lives by becoming what his partner needed to please her, moving into her house, putting himself in a support role to her company and by acting compatible to everything. This, is a precarious position he has put himself in. Revealing that he is not who he said he was and must change everything in order to be true to himself means he will have to quit his job working for her so he will have no income, she may kick him out of her house and she may want to end the relationship because he isn’t who she signed up for, so he will have no one to come home to; which is a special hell given that Thanksgiving and Christmas are just round the corner. Now, in order to get what he wants, he must actually decide that being authentic is worth the risk of being homeless and choose that risk, even if it means temporarily experiencing that.
Afifa comes from a culture where women are typically obedient and subservient to men. Her father, who was particularly tyrannical, had all the power in the household and he was very abusive whenever he felt that his power was challenged. As a result of this, in order to be safe, Afifa disowned her personal power. She has lived her life from this place of prioritizing safety over everything. Afifa really, really cares about safety. However, years ago, Afifa became so sick of being disempowered. She decided that she desperately wants to be empowered. As a result, she has made a lot of progress doing little, empowering things. Things like getting a certification so she can make some money and pay for things she wants. And learning how to fix things around the house herself. And working through her inability to say what she wants in any given situation. But now, she has hit the gate where becoming more empowered means being unsafe. Becoming empowered means making decisions and doing things that will set off her father’s tyrannical fury. Becoming empowered means upsetting the people in her culture, which is likely to lead to them causing her pain emotionally and even potentially physically. And becoming empowered means changing herself in ways that go against all of her life long safety strategies, such as becoming someone who takes charge, when taking charge was the sure-fire way to be attacked. In order to become empowered, Afifa will have to consciously choose unsafety.
Mia was a child who was very nerdy and pensive. Not exactly the kid that had the easiest time fitting in. She found herself in so much pain due to exclusion and rejection in her early school years that she chose to abandon her authenticity and copy-cat other popular girls, so that she could get belonging. This social camouflaging strategy is something she has used her entire life in order to get belonging. But now, Mia is all too aware that she does not have true belonging if what she has to do is pretend to be the same as other people are, something other than who she is, in order to belong. She sees that in order to find true belonging, the gate she must pass through is to face and choose likely rejection and ostracization. The very thing she has spent her entire life trying to not experience.
Dewei was deeply alone for the first half of his life. He was the scapegoat of a very emotionally cold family. And to make matters worse, he was prevented from having friends. His deepest connection was with a parakeet the family owned. He spent 20 years building very deep friendships, cohabitating with many people and partnering up with people on various endeavors. As an adult, Dewei is on a big mission. He is a political activist. He especially believes in freedom of expression and does not believe that the government should be able to suppress and imprison those who speak out against the government or their various agendas. Dewei has had to pass through a boat load of gates on the way to what he wants, which is to change the way people in his country are governed. But now, he has met the most dreaded gate of all. Six months ago, he organized a public assembly to protest the imprisonment of a man who spoke out against the ethnic persecution being carried out in a province of their country and with it to demand the right for free speech. This assembly turned ugly. Police and even military arrived and started beating and detaining people. It was so traumatizing for everyone involved that everyone started questioning their commitment to the cause, as well as their association with Dewei. Many of the people who lived with him, moved out for their own safety. All but one of the people who partnered up with him to bring about a cultural revolution, left the cause, pledging their support only in their desire for him to succeed. The person who stayed, spends their days questioning whether it was the right decision and whether they are strong enough. This person is in such a bad place emotionally that he is emotionally disabled from really being fully behind the cause he believes in. And Dewei’s wife ran home to her family and has expressed her family’s disapproval of what he is doing. She has told him that if he continues, she must divorce him because it will mean that he does not care about her or her family’s safety. Dewei has now found himself in the position where to advance forward and have a chance at getting what he wants, he must actually choose aloneness for the sake of what matters most to him.
When you hit this gate, you will struggle to accept it. The position you are in will feel so impossible to face and experience, it will shock you. Every single adaptation that you developed within yourself in response to that dreaded thing or in order to avoid that dreaded thing will be called into question and either let go of or altered. You are likely to feel like the universe is cruel. You will feel like you are in the worst lose-lose of all time and therefore ripped in two. And you will feel like you are at square one. And you will have to make the decision to go through this gate by being willing to say yes to the very thing you have been running from your whole life, without knowing whether or not it will lead to any results. Whether or not it will actually get you what you want. Your vote for what you want has to be this strong. Strong enough that the choosing of it is not conditional upon whether you actually do get it or not.
Many people (especially those who cannot accept painful truths and realities) believe that getting what you want is as simple as focusing upon it, visualizing that you have it and taking inspired action towards it. As if doing so acts as wings to fly you past any and all gates, so you don’t have to encounter any of them. But this is not the case. What will happen if you take this approach, is that you will eventually hit the gates of not being able to get what you want because of your avoidance of the negative, the gate of fantasy, which involves the refusal to face and accept reality and the gate of the coping mechanism of denial.
The very design of this existence is to allow desire to lead you through a process of self-transformation, by virtue of you hitting these gates. It is these gates that are the alchemizing force behind all evolution, both at a microcosmic level and macrocosmic level. And knowing this will enable you to move through these gates with far greater mastery because you know to expect them. And when you encounter them, you will know what is happening. You will know that the only way forward, is to consciously take on that gate with your own free will with the willingness to engage in that process of the alchemy of self.
