Five Gates? What the heck it that?

You might be wondering why you should care about this blog, about me, about my journey of self discovery? I hope you do care, at least to some small extent. I think what I'm trying to do is worth noting, and at least being some what quizzical about. I"m using an approach of self discovery that the Rabbi Dr. Lynn Kesselman devised, after himself reaching the end of his rope. He wrote a book about his process, that he calls the Five Gates Program. It's a system to rediscover the points in our life where we formed some of our dark cycles. The patterns that keep us from being the people whom we are meant to be. The people we know we should be. We instinctively know that we're deviating from this true self whenever we use drugs, drink and drink, or have promiscuous sex. Or if when we keep people from being close emotionally, keep from being honest with others about our state, or use anger or desperation, to keep people around and in our lives. These are all the ways in which I've tried to keep control of the world and the people around me. I guess it's sorta served it's purpose... but at what cost? I've lost so many good friends becasue they can't stand to see me abuse myself physically and emotionally and whenever they started to express genuine concern for my well being, i've lashed out at them or just left them all together. I"ve desperately wanted to find love and be in a close intimate relationship, find a man who can love me for who I am, and help me be better but this is obviously just a fantasy because It's my own work to figure out my past. But at least I know I can do this with some help. THe help that Lynn Kesselman's Five Gates Program offers is a solid way to look into my past and try to fish out these critical moments where these habits, that now cause havoc in my life, stared and then figure out how I can accept them as the past and realize that In this present I have control. I've had a few Aha! moments already. And After the first few discoveries, I'm starting to feel the growth. It's really liberating to realize that my life is actually in my control. As I find these key points, and wrestle with them, and dig deeper, I've been following the path from teh past to the present and understanding the links in between. I'm starting to realize how something from my childhood has affected key moments in my life. That time I had a huge fight with my best friend and nearly killed myself. The time I ran away from home to punish my family for not listening to me. So many of these traumatic events start to fall down into place after I've removed a few lynch pins that have held up the deck of cards that is the dark cycles I keep repeating.

The real power to Dr. Lynn Kesselman's Five Gates, is that it focuses on alleviating the source to my habits and defenses. It's amazing how quickly going to the source can have an immediate effect. It's something that I've been working with and people are already seeing some of my changes... I'll stop bantering on now. Let me tell you a bit more about exactly what the five gates is.

The Five Gates Program is more than a recovery program—it is a way of life. It gives us a new way of seeing ourselves, how we became who we are and how we can transform ourselves into the person we want to be. The Five Gates Program transforms us through sequenced thoughts and actions which are designed not so much to treat our symptoms, but to permanently heal us by removing the root causes of our anxieties, depressions, addictions and the destructive effects of our dysfunctional beliefs. It generates from within us a natural and lasting spiritual awakening based on easily understood logical truths, many of them taken from our personal life experience. It teaches us powerful living tools for navigating in the present. The Five Gates “Core Training” has two parts: the Mental Awakening (Gates One, Two and Three) and the Spiritual Awakening (Gates Four and Five). Following the Fifth Gate, we begin “The Life Practice,” our lifelong program of self‐monitoring and improvement, which is even more empowering and pleasurable. Most people who take the Five Gates Training Program have tried several other programs that didn’t work. This does not indicate they have less chance of success in this program—often just the opposite. Most programs operate from the facilitator’s perspective and do not intimately connect with the perspective of the person seeking help. Too often other programs put off the person needing help by being judgmental, illogical and superstitiously based. The Five Gates Program is a not only a powerful tool for correcting dysfunctional beliefs of those needing help, but it is a seamless, logical and powerfully intimate progression of healing truths and easily understood methods to cement and improve upon our progress. Most people who seek help in this area suffer from some degree of loss of focus. The Five Gates Program overcomes this problem by quickly cutting to the root of how we process reality. The speed at which we heal is not only convenient to our natural impatience, but also takes advantage of the fact that slow healing is more difficult in that it causes us to live in negative perspectives which provide no immediate relief. Because the Five Gates Training Program positively transforms the way we process reality, it is a valuable tool for anyone who simply wants to feel better about him or herself and life. It often helps boost our intelligence by greatly improving our self‐esteem and concentration abilities.