Gate 53 — Development — Development as structured forward movement, constant and continuous

Full breakdown

We'll be looking now at the pressure of collective formats, and we'll start with the abstract pressure found in gate 53. When we looked at gate 41, we already noted that on the experiential path, the abstract path, we're dealing with an evolutionary process that belongs exclusively to human beings. Coming back to format, it touches every aspect of life. Channel 42/53 is called Maturity. One of the absolute laws of the universe is that everything with a beginning has an end. Everything that lasts, whether we look at it as a linear process or a cyclical one, moves step by step from a beginning to an end, along a path we call development and ripening. That's life, for every one of us. It fits between birth and death, and there's nothing we can do to escape it. It's a process of maturing.

Gate 53, Development, is the gate of Beginnings. I often tell people that when picturing gate 53, it's worth not losing sight of the fact that this format belongs not only to humans but to every mammal. Looking at this gate in a mammal's design, it's the gate of Freedom. Don't chain these creatures up. Don't lock them away, don't keep them behind fences and enclosures, because the gate of Beginnings is the gate of the freedom to begin a new experience. Without that freedom, there's no evolution. The need for freedom sits deep within us. This is cyclical energy, and the pressure here is to complete, to see things all the way through. It's the gate of any and every beginning, but the pressure demands: "Let's not just begin — let's go all the way through to the very end and complete it, so we can achieve maturity, develop, and grow up through this process." The quality of the fuel is active. It creates stresses. Looking at the root center, biologically it corresponds to the adrenal system. These are the stress hormones. Of all nine gates in this center, gate 53 turns out to be the only one where the fuel dynamic actually involves the notion of stress. Of all these gates, this one produces the greatest stress of all.

Anyone with gate 53 who's unable to start something new ends up overloaded with stress energy. People like this take a job and then want to leave it in order to do something new. If they can't leave to get something new, they carry an enormous stress inside, because they need to be free the same way a dog can't be kept on a chain. Chain them up, refuse to let them start something new, and these people sink into depression. Remember, the pressure in every format gate coming out of the root center can lead to depression. Here, that depression shows up when there's no freedom to begin a process in a way that will actually let it be completed. The stress continues for as long as there's no completion.

Over the lines it speaks of development as structured forward movement, constant and continuous. As for the abstract process, we all know how hard it is for a person with abstract definitions — an abstract being — to actually carry a process all the way from beginning to end.