- Our Gatekeeping Selves have mostly been taught to keep them out.
- Our Temple Selves don't know or don't yet trust how healing and rest consistently 'happen.'
Mindfulness practice and Contemplative Prayer both offer degree programs in Gatekeeping and Healing.
When we're new to either practice it can be hard to believe how much good stuff happens when we're simply still and receptive.
At first the course work of being still can feel daunting--we worry that just being still and 'doing nothing' will be about as rewarding as sitting on top of an ant hill.
Or glimpsing our shadow sides (previous stuff we've repressed and tried to keep a lid on) our brains usually release a little dose of terror that says, DON'T DO THIS.
Contemplative practice often bores us and sometimes scares us. But...when we're game to do it anyway, here's the thing--it also regularly delights, enriches, heals and restores us.
So how do we retrain our Gatekeepers?
Here's how.Tell him or her (again and again), "This being human is a guest house--every morning a new arrival! Welcome and entertain them all--even if they are a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably."
Rumi wrote The Definitive Gatekeeper's Job Description. It's what 'happens' when we do gatekeeping 'right.' Or...when we do it more wisely and with deeper understanding and with a little playfulness.
What it boils down to is that we commit to no more door slamming. Whatever thoughts or feelings come to the threshold of our awareness are welcomed in.
At least, that's our intention.
In practice, our gatekeepers are so used to slamming doors that before we even get a glimpse of who's there, bang! the door shuts. And then even when 'we' reopen those slammed doors, whoever or whatever was there has often slipped away.
Yet as we stick with it, there's less and less slamming.
Sit. Walk. Breathe. Be aware. Alone or in company, welcome whoever/whatever comes. No discriminating.
And then...treat each guest honorably....
(More on that, God willing, soon)
