The Five Gateways

What Are The 5 Gateways?”

Humans grow and evolve physically through clearly identifiable stages. We star off barely being able to turn over or toddle around the room, and we end up the same way. Our growth through these stages is inevitable. We cannot skip any stage unless we die prematurely.  Let’s call this Physicals Growth.

As we get older, we trade physical ability for life experience. Although we all accumulate some form of life experience, our emotional and spiritual development are not enviable. We can (and many of us do) get stuck along the way and start to get rigid emotionally.

Many people have studied both physical and emotional growth, and often give names to the stages they see.  I have looked at many of these models and discovered a simple pattern that tends to correspond to Abraham Marlow’s Pyramid of Needs.

As I studied Maslow, Jung, Wilber and many others, I realized that there is a simple way to understand and teach how emotional growth shows up And, more importantly, I realized that growth through the early stages can be taught and learned.

The First Gateway

Metaphor: Garden with many plants and flowers of many shapes and colors.

The first stage is simple self-awareness. If you don’t know who you are and what makes you tick, you can be a walking time bomb. So developing self-awareness is the first challenge to growth. To understand this, imagine yourself standing outside the fence around a beautiful garden. Perhaps you want to see the garden more closely,, but you discover a locked gate. The ere is a sign on the gate that says, “The Key Lies Witching You“/ This is the metaphor for the first gateway. Self-awareness lies within you  It’s there for you to discover.

The Second Gateway

Metaphor: House of many mirrors

As you wander around in the garden, some feelings arise. You realize that something is not right in your garden. Perhaps you discover little stone benches that each have different messages. The first one says, “Are you aware of how you are seen by others?”

The Third Gateway

Metaphor: Beautiful, sunny beach, with lots of groups, but you do’t fit in… yet