The Six Gateways

The First Gateway: Connecting to Spirit

The first gateway is called “Connecting to Spirit,” and is a practice of cultivating safety. It took me many years to feel safe enough to embrace my full power and allow myself to open to connection with others. Attending a pagan conference, I was frustrated by a feeling of wanting desperately to connect, but having no one approach me. And then Spirit stepped in, and I lost a contact lens. Suddenly I was seeing the world with softer edges, and I shifted my energy with my gaze. My whole body became softer, and people began to approach me because I was no longer surrounded by insurmountable walls. Instead, I was forced to find my spiritual and emotional safety through connecting to the Earth and Sky and trusting that they would keep me safe. My first gateway had opened. Through intuition and the wisdom of Spirit, I let go of the huge energy boundary I had been carrying around. I dropped the bubble, and let Spirit take care of me.

The Second Gateway: Breathing Love

It was in my partnership with Steven that I first practiced the second gateway, “Breathing Love.” I knew that breathing was important in my solo practice, and often calmed me and brought sanity into my day. Breathing with Steven was a whole different exploration. I learned to be totally present to the nuances of each moment, to drop into a place of timeless surrender. In this surrender I became truly vulnerable for the first time in my life, and my heart began to open wide.

The Third Gateway: Soul Gazing

Becoming present to a lover who is available to catch and contain the feelings that tumble out of me lets me go into the deep, dark emotions hiding in the caverns of my soul. In the third gateway, “Soul Gazing,” you will explore these caverns, mapping what is there, and deciding what you will carry up into the light for Spirit to heal. Awareness of buried emotion lets you move toward release, and leads to a relaxation of the Spirit. Enormous amounts of energy are freed by emptying our emotional caves. Using the tools of Soul Gazing to release old feelings makes space for you to welcome in joy, happiness, and ecstasy. Amazingly, as you do this the genitals and the heart become more sensitive and alive. When you let go of what you’ve been holding, you become more awake, full of energy, and you begin to experience the true meaning of bliss, and of tears that come from joy instead of pain.

The Fourth Gateway: Waking the Dragon

The fourth gateway, “Waking the Dragon,” opens a deeper layer of being present, moving into an opening of the physical body and the energy body overlaid on it. Waking up sensual and sexual energy as a spiritual practice showed me once and for all that sexual energy was spiritual, because I began to see God while I was climaxing. Every touch from Steven awakened my whole body, and I began to crave this experience of aliveness.

The Fifth Gateway: Weaving the Elements

In the fifth gateway, “Weaving the Elements,” I found balance, through moving into a much deeper connection to Spirit. Balancing your body, emotions, creative/sexual self, and mind leads to peacefulness and an ability to have a balanced life.

The fifth gateway has been a very rewarding solo practice that has helped me to balance out the many activities in my life. But it is even more phenomenal in its power to balance a relationship. In my practice with Steven, we often used the partnered elemental dance to show us where our relationship needed attention. If dancing an element together was difficult, then we presumed that element was showing us a place to work on in the relationship. Doing this work is one of the most rewarding and healing practices a couple can do to grow together and create deeply satisfying connection.

The Sixth Gateway: Divine Union

The sixth gateway of “Divine Union” is a deeper level of Soul Gazing, and the culmination of all the gateway practices that have come before. In solo practice this is where we go within and find a sense of wholeness in our center or purpose. In partnered practice you bring that wholeness into connection and create something that is greater than the both of you.