The GateHealing Blog ~ Jonathan F. Anderson, MA, LPC

I LOVE to write and share thoughts on reality. But there is a risk that people may get their brains in a mode of only thinking in metaphors and psychobabble. Remember, we have to live a very real life, with very real dynamics to be navigated. If you use anybody’s words/metaphors to just make excuses for non-action or unhealthy living, then you’ve missed the point completely.

Fists, umbrellas, oceans, drops, etc are all just words. It is what YOU choose to do with your REALITY that matters. Use the words as tools and guides and you’ll be better off than if you use them as excuses or distractions from real life.

We’ve been duped! We’ve been taught that fear and confusion are bad things to be avoided. If you’ve read the posts further down this blog, you can already see that I believe that all discomfort is just providing motivation to do something to return you back to a state of balance.

Regarding fear: it is a survival instinct. It is designed to keep you safe, to make healthy decisions by ‘alerting’ you about when you are in danger. You don’t drive on the wrong side of the road. Why? Because fear tells you that you could get hurt, hurt somebody else, or get a ticket. Fear is NOT meant to paralyze you; rather, it is there to give you guide posts in life—reminders that get more intense depending on the danger you are facing. Use your fear to guide you, not paralyze you. This is the difference between ‘Awakened’ fear, and ‘Asleep’ fear: when you are Awake, fear guides you to safety and comfort—it is seen as something to be grateful for BECAUSE of its discomfort; when you are Asleep, fear paralyzes you by putting you back into your thinking mind.

Regarding confusion: It is also a guide—but more from a tempo stance. When somebody is confused, it is usually because they are facing some sort of decision—usually an important one; and since it is not possible to make a well-informed decision while you are confused, confusion motivates you to slow down and take stock of your situation. Like fear, confusion is misunderstood. When you are Awake, confusion helps you to understand that you care enough about yourself to slow down so that you can make a healthy decision; when you are Asleep, confusion simply seems to create a fog that covers up the useful information all around you. So WAKE UP!

Find gratitude for your ability to experience fear and confusion—because they are just trying to help. Gratitude will help you avoid being lulled asleep by unconscious living.

Can you watch the Olympics and CHOOSE to appreciate the athleticism, dedication and courage, in spite of any controversy, politics, accusations, etc.? Can you see each performance for it’s success and grace rather than focusing on errors? For some, this is natural, for others, it can be quite an exercise itself.

When you begin to consciously shift your awareness from the ‘negative,’ aspects to the positive, you change the wiring in your brain to a more healthy state. To change any part of the brain, you have to somehow directly stimulate it, and I don’t suggest sticking electrodes in your brain! So, stimulate it through direct behavior/thought change. This has the same basic effect, without all the headache and scars. Practice this shift from the negative to the positive repeatedly, and it will become more second nature.

Neurophysiology research is showing that the old patterns are more likely to be re-activated during stressful times (Neuropsychotherapy, Klaus Grawe, 2006). If you’d like to minimize that possibility, then practice the shift more often, and with more mindfulness in the beginning—I mean, really choose it; whatever the behavior/thought change is. . . if you want it to truly be a lifelong change, then you will likely need to engage it whenever you can. And when it comes to being more healthy, positive and happy, why not practice it as often as you can? Certainly remember that it’s inappropriate to be grinning from ear to ear in certain situations. But even in sad situations, can you find the peacefulness? Can you remember the better times and choose to do whatever you can to move yourself towards new better times? Please note, this does NOT mean not being present, or denying the situation for what it is—as a matter of fact, what I am suggesting pretty much requires you to first be mindful of the present reality as it exists; THEN move into shifting of your focus . . . Accept the reality, then change the focus. For most, this shift won’t seem to work every time you try it, but it does become easier to access, even if delayed.

The GATE is intended to help you remember how to recognize when you are out of your center (and this usually means more likely to focus on the negative), AND how to return to your center. I am going to post more on the GATE concept/philosophy soon; in the meantime, please visit www.gatehealing.com/thegate.htm. GATE is an acronym: Genuineness, Awareness, Trust, Empathy.

Knowing when to reach out takes more strength, courage and wisdom than it takes to burn yourself out by living in pain. Here’s another post of a parable further down on this blog . . . for those who are trying to decide whether or not to ask for help, please read this post carefully, then make a wise choice:

Two people are trying to survive a trip across the desert—each has 2 broken legs. One person is of the mindset that asking for or accepting help is a weakness. . .the other person, while not liking to be in a position to ask for help, is willing to ask for and accept it. A caravan of people happens upon our 2 travelers and offers free passage and medical care; our first traveler rather loudly shouts that he is strong enough to do this on his own and refuses their help. . . our other traveler humbly accepts the help (despite his twinge of feeling weak). The traveler who accepted the help survives the trip and lives a happy life, eventually repaying the caravan’s generosity; the other dies alone in the desert. Ask yourself, “Who is stronger and smarter? The one who allowed himself to be weak during a time of weakness, and is now alive and happy? or the one that did not allow himself to show weakness and is now dead and alone.”

Now some of you may be able to string together a response to this parable where the dead one seems stronger and smarter. . . To you, I say that you are either on a spiritual/philosophical level well beyond most of us, or you may be engaging in a defensive rationalization that protects your ego from dealing with whatever issues you may have yet to face. You and you alone know which one it is; there is no reason to prove yourself to anybody other than yourself.

Ing-ing. There’s a fun new word to play with. Think about this: we are always ‘doing’ something, experiencING things, lovING things, engagING things, you get the idea, we ‘ING’ everything by way of perception (that would be perceiving). It’s the “ing-ness” that is experience itself; transient and slippery, yet so obvious that you can’t miss an ing. You can trip over it, but you can’t miss it. My grammar teacher would be proud that I remember the word “Gerund.” A gerund is the active form of a verb—that is, the verb BECOMING a noun . . .when you are loving, you are experiencing something (a noun being ‘something’) . . what are you experiencing? “It” – and “it” is clearly a noun . . .unless it’s a verb, then it’s a gerund verb, which is a verb masquerading as a noun, which is just the ego masquerading as truth. When you are running, you are be’ing’ run; when you are loving you are being Love itself. Is-ness is what Ram Dass calls it. Tao is what Lao Tzu calls it. A non-horse is what Chuang Tzu calls it. Ommmmmmm is what the universe calls it. It calls itself Yolanda, or sometimes dust, desk or car. Yesterday it called itself tubing the greenbelt. Tomorrow it’s called __

This is the title of a great song written by a friend of mine—I added the emphasis on YOU.

You see, we are living in an increasingly complicated, and sometimes more difficult world (and those are probably related). It’s hard to turn on the TV during prime-time and not see a show depicting death (natural, homicide, suicide), rape, molestation, war, crime, betrayal, and the like. I see this as very sad and troubling. I also see it as a symptom of the state of the things—chaotic. There are changes happening to counter-balance this (Please read Eckhart Tolle’s book, “A New Earth” for a great description of this). We can all contribute to this counter-balance with changes in our own lives.

The best way to change this chaos, and I don’t think it’s too late to do this, is to live the best life YOU can. In any situation, ask yourself what behavior would best bring about the most fair, compassionate/joyous, and peaceful outcome—or at least increase the chances of something in that general direction happening. Some situations just won’t follow the rules though . . .then you just have to do your best with intuition of right, wrong, compassion and survival. Then accept consequences, positive or negative, for the decision. If that’s not such a good thing, then learn from it and do your best to let it go.

Why am I here? What happens when I die? If E really equals mc squared (Einstein’s theory of relativity: E=mc2), then do I ever really stop existing? If not, what happens to my thoughts? my consciousness? even my soul? Soul? Do I have one of those? How do I make life matter more? How do I prepare for my own death? How do I make sense of life in terms of death?

Even young children may come up with some existential questions that tie our adult minds in knots. I remember that as a child, I was about 6 or 7, I asked what happened to the me that ‘sees’ things if I die – would my ‘seeing, hearing, feeling’ just pop up in somebody else, as their own ‘seeing, hearing and feeling? Would my experience of life simply ‘turn into’ somebody else’s experience of life? I was hard pressed to find the answers my innocent mind was asking; but it didn’t matter. Mud-pies and dirt clods were much more pressing issues of the day.

It’s this childish nature that seems to sometimes understand that paradox . . . it’s the playful child (or the child within the adult) who responds to the koan, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” by smacking his/her forehead with one hand, not really caring if she/he gets ‘it’ right or not.

These are all questions, just a few of many, many, many others that at some point in our lives, we all wind up asking ourselves. The answers are not always very clear, and most often, they differ among individuals, and even change for each person across their lifetime. Taking the time to consider these questions, and becoming more comfortable with NOT always having a final answer, helps the individual to find a sense of peace and clarity that sets the stage for true happiness and peacefulness.

You shouldn’t live a healthy life to postpone death… Better you live a healthy life so that you can face death with dignity, awareness and serenity.

Two people are trying to survive a trip across the desert—each has 2 broken legs. One person is of the mindset that asking for or accepting help is a weakness. . .the other person, while not liking to be in a position to ask for help, is willing to ask for and accept it. A caravan of people happens upon our 2 travelers and offers free passage and medical care; our first traveler rather loudly shouts that he is strong enough to do this on his own and refuses their help. . . our other traveler humbly accepts the help (despite his twinge of feeling weak). The traveler who accepted the help survives the trip and lives a happy life, eventually repaying the caravan’s generosity; the other dies alone in the desert. Ask yourself, “Who is stronger and smarter? The one who allowed himself to be weak during a time of weakness, and is now alive and happy? or the one that did not allow himself to show weakness and is now dead and alone.”

Now some of you may be able to string together a response to this parable where the dead one seems stronger and smarter. . . To you, I say that you are either on a spiritual/philosophical level well beyond most of us, or you may be engaging in a defensive rationalization that protects your ego from dealing with whatever issues you may have yet to face. You and you alone know which one it is; there is no reason to prove yourself to anybody other than yourself.