01

We aren't here to get anything out of it, to have something to show for it. We are here to bring the best we have to offer to bear on the context and circumstances of our life. What we can enjoy while doing it is entirely up to us. And there is a lot more joy involved in living out of the right kind of emptiness, stillness and silence, than living to conquer, triumph, win, subdue and prevail. What is our life calling for? Asking of us? We have to listen and look in order to know. To run past the opportunities to do so is to miss something important on our way to making our mark.
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02

The Gateless Gate is the gateway to enlightenment and mystery within mystery. Enlightenment is the realization of mystery at the heart of life and being, and on every level of life and being. Enlightenment is knowing that understanding is beyond our grasp, and being comfortably at one with the mystery and the conundrum of living with contradictions that cannot be resolved to our satisfaction. There is a region of Wyoming and another of Colorado that hold a strong attraction to the wealthy and well-heeled. Their willingness to pay any price to live there has raised prices to the point where the people who trim the lawns and prepare the food, and serve the tables, and keep the houses, etc. cannot afford to live there. "Poverty with a view," they call it, on their way out of town to lives they can afford to live in other parts of the country. Leaving the wealthy and well-heeled with being able to afford to live in beautiful surroundings with no supporting staff to tend their needs. This is not, as they say, "a third-world problem." But. Even the third-world has problems like this in a different context. We want things that interfere with other things we want, and "Why can't we have it ALL???" Entering through the Gateless Gate enables/requires us to be at peace with the way of things that present themselves like this: "This is the way things are, and this is what you can do about it, and this is the way things are." One thing rules out another. If we can make our peace with that, we have it made. Acquiescence and accommodation, Kid. Acquiescence and accommodation.
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