Gate’ Gate’ Paragate”

Winter, 2010 Features
Author: Bill Chisholm

Gate’ Gate’ Paragate” taking a ride on the tri-spherical Mobius strip by Bill Chisholm As a young Catholic boy I use to lose myself in the midst of the hell fire brimstone sermons of our Irish padre by focusing on the concept of “world without end, Amen.” I was pretty young and that notion really intrigued me, so I would focus on it and ride the concept out and out and out until my circuits would blow and I’d find my self back in the pew or up on the altar in a bit of daze. I would sit there a bit bewildered by the journey, but it didn’t keep me from going back. Eventually my journeys out and out and out would bring me back in less and less dazed and more in awe of how I had gotten back in when I was going out. I didn’t dwell on this, I had no frame of reference in which to discuss the experience and I knew no one else that was doing the same thing. There was no talk and certainly little questioning going on. So I just kept an open mind and open eyes. One of the things that came along now and then was an incredible sense of peace and oneness while I was up on the altar. These moments didn’t seem to come at any particular time in the liturgy, just at moments when I was paying close attention. A few years after I had graduated from college and moved beyond the Catholicism of my youth to a more catholic view of spirituality; I experienced that same feeling of peace and oneness sitting in my car in line at a drive-in restaurant off a busy street in Boise, Idaho. I had recently gotten into yoga and it was probably one of my last stops at a fast food restaurant. I was just sitting there looking and all of the sudden things just changed around me. It wasn’t much longer and the same thing happened to me again, only this time I was high up in mountains of Washington, mopping up a forest fire. The crew was spread out, I was by myself looking around at the view and that same feeling came over me again. I went “Wow, there it is again.” I was struck not only by the feeling, but that it had happened in such diverse settings. A year or so later I was on a date when some stranger walked into the bar, came up talked a while about the craziness of the world and then left and came back with Ram Dass’ Be Here Now. It was in Be Here Now, that I was introduced to Gate’ Gate’ Paragate’, Parasamgate’, Bodhi Svaha, meaning gone, gone, gone beyond, gone beyond beyond, hail the voyager. That was me, the voyager. I was that kid again, back in church, pushing the limits, only this time I looked in as much as out. I could go in deep and came out more clear in the world, or go out and come in more clear to myself. As an activist, I was always trying to find the source, the cause of our collective dis-connect, why we were so bent on creating problems rather than solutions. I often quoted Einstein’ “We can’t solve our problems at the same level of thinking at which we created them.” I jumped on that and rode it out, what was it about our level of thinking that kept us trapped? It was linear in nature in a spherical reality and only focused on our desires on the physical plain. Being a yogi, I looked there. Yoga was about balance of the mental, physical and spiritual. I put those concepts in a mode of thinking I dubbed tri-spherical thinking. In the physics of tri-spherical thinking for every action there is a multiplicity of reactions, mental, physical and spiritual. To make good decisions, to solve out problems we need to expand the arena of our assessment. It had to be spherical in nature and be balanced mentally, physically and spiritually. My curiosity about the world, about universe kept me going, kept me searching, Gate’, Gate’ Paragate’………became my mantra. I took a lot of trips on many levels and through many medium in the quest for understanding, some legal some illegal. It has been a mental, physical and spiritual journey. It has taken me into the realms of neuroscience and quantum physics and deep into the valleys of myth and religion. I have expanded my awareness of the relationship between my physical body and the physical world and the realms of thought and belief. I start each morning in my creekside, mouth of the canyon, natural hot water pool with prayers, yoga and deep presence. We are living in seem pretty wild times and my awareness is cranked up. I certainly have been impacted by my reading of Eckhart Tolle, my study of the Mayan calendar and other interlacings. Sitting in my tub on a beautiful, cold morning, the silence of the canyon surrounding me, I went out and out and out and then smoothly came through and went in and in and in and rolled back out to that same sense of peace and wonder. It truly was a mobius strip, there was no inside or outside; it was one and the same. I did some stretches and started singing a song that goes, “Earth my body, Water my blood, Air my breath and Fire my spirit.” And then with ducks and geese flying overhead and landing on the creek behind me, it dawned on me that what was true for me was also true for them and all life. The notion that nothing is really solid came into my head, that what exists is mostly space with scattered sub-atomic particles of vibrating energy. Following that thought the canyon walls, my concrete tub, the water and myself all disappeared and then it came to me that we weren’t just riding some sort of singular dimension mobius strip, but that it was a tri-spherical in nature, like a ball of snakes, only they were all connected, in this ever moving, ever changing ball of mental, physical and spiritual energy, form then formless then form….., creation then dissolution then creation….. I came back to center, the canyon walls, the pool, the water and my body came in to attunement, in to at-one-ment. Gate’, Gate’, Paragate’, Parasamgate’, Bodhi Svaha. Hail the Voyager, I had to laugh, shout a primal scream. Life is good.

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