Gate 35 — Progress — By design, progress cannot exist in a vacuum; it depends on interaction

Full breakdown

Gate 35 is the Gate of Life. This gate paves the road of human experience. Unlike gate 16, which opens into the unmotorized spleen system, this gate opens into the Solar Plexus system, with all its tremendous power and its emotional wave. Gate 35 isn't preoccupied with searching for energy — energy always comes to it, one way or another, at one level or another. It's always ready to meet that energy, regardless of whether the center is defined, because that energy is always within arm's reach. Gate 35 is a primary gate of action, and as a result it meets almost no resistance. It's also worth noting that both gate 16 and gate 35, along with their corresponding channels, are connected to talent. Logical talent is tied to repetition and the development of mastery. Abstract talent shows up through the accumulation of experience. Over the course of your life you pick up twenty-five different instruments and can never settle on just one, because your life is full of change and instability. But by the end of your working life, someone may come to you and ask, "Which instrument do you think I should learn?" And your life experience turns into the talent of giving the right advice — you've earned the standing to do it.

Gate 35 is deeply creative by nature. That creativity doesn't show up as grinding away at one thing, or bonding with someone else for the sake of energy. Its creativity shows up in the sheer diversity of possible experience. The gloss over the lines says: by design, progress cannot exist in a vacuum; it depends on interaction. All change and transformation depend on access to Solar Plexus energy. But progress is built into the very nature of this gate. In other words, these are the great gates of change. They don't say, "I'm experimenting." They say, "I feel, and what I usually feel is that I'm changing — I feel that the time for change has come." Usually is the operative, conditioning word here. As long as they don't repeat, they stay healthy. They pass through an experience, but only once. You make love in a canoe. You don't need to do it again. You do it once, you get your experience, and now you'll always know what it's like to make love in a canoe. If you push your luck and try it a second time, you might just capsize and drown. If you survived the first time, file it away, tuck it into memory, and move on to something new.