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The Three Gates as Diagnostic
The Three Gates as Diagnostic
More thoughts on the relationship between the Three Gates (Is it True? Is it Kind? Is it Useful?)…can we tell anything about those who violate them?
I’m honestly not certain. But am sharing my thoughts.
IF one’s goals are purely mundane, and devoid of spiritual content, then you can indeed lie and practice cruelty, and still reach those goals.
One might then modify the usefulness of the Three Gates to suggest that those who Lie, or practice Cruelty, are either ineffective at reaching their goals, or have no spiritual or ethical content to their goals. IF this is true, then it becomes more and more important to select and nurture goals that will transform you into someone you want to be.
In my system, you choose three goals minimum, in each of three major arenas:
- Relationships
- Career
- Physical health
And this would be the way of looking at it that would make sense to me:
- Relationships. Start with self-love. And this needs to be honest, because if not, it won’t hold under pressure. A bunch of ego can produce massive apparent confidence, but watch that person when things go really wrong. Then…extend to one other person, minimum. You can be dishonest here, at the cost of true intimacy, and I hazard that what we want is that deep, connected sense of being seen. That someone, somewhere, gives the final damn…