The 9 Gates of the Body
There is a vedic story wherein which the body is compared to a city, a city consisting of 9 gates (entrance/exits). Two eyes, two ears, your mouth, your nostrils, your anus and genitals. The king in the city is the consciousness, the Queen the intelligence, both married together in this city. The queen or intellignce has bodyguards, known as the senses (smell, hearing, vision, touch, taste). The bodyguards have wives, the wives are the desires. The cobra headed snake is the guardian of the city considered to be your basic life force (prana).
I love this parable because if you start to think of your body as a city and become more strict about what comes in and out of those gates, the better your life will become. The best part being that you control the gates. Most people don’t monitor the gates at all, doritos being stuffed into the mouth, porn into the eye gates, terrible music in the ears. You must be careful with your gates. Or you could end up like Detroit city and wondering why you're so depressed.
You must also be wary of what comes OUT of your gates. Have you ever been around anyone with a leaky mouth gate? So many people losing energy out their mouth. Gossip, talking about people behind their backs, talking about themselves, bragging, vomiting out putrid negativity into whatever space they happen to be in, a veritable verbal poop shoot of verbiage, this behaviour is sadly to their detriment and these people must be avoided.
And of course more examples, women; one baby after another flying out of their vagina gate without the least thought of how this effects the planet, themselves or the kid, men ejaculating all the time, not good. Due to a lack of gate control, a lack of security in the city, a lack of mindful behaviour, suffering for them and those around them is sure to follow. It is all connected, most obviously here; what comes out the bottom gate is connected with the mouth gate, remember that curry you had last week? But also more subtly, what comes out the mouth gate is connected to what goes INTO the ear and eye gates. Did I tell you to be careful what goes in and out of your gates?
All of this is related to the queen of the city or your intelligence, the bodyguards and their wives with their stupid incessant desires, they want cigarettes, a coffee after dinner, want to go to Apollo on a monday night when you have to work the next days, they want to make frozen margaritas, I won't get you started on my genital gates desires. And the next thing you know you start putting these things into your gates and you get sick. Or possibly you have some psychic or physical warts on your gates. Then the city starts falling apart, the gates become harder to control with things flying out and possibly more sickness flying in. And now you're sick all because you didn't control what you let in and out of your city.
Death can be a relief if the city is dilapidated and if you haven't been looking after your city, but let's not get there in the first place eh? Having said that, dying is so easy these days what with the new opiates and the like, it's like sliding down a waterslide, complete oblivion of your soul leaving your body, so don’t worry about that but let's not go before it's our time...
Bottom line? Be careful what you let in and out of your gates. The main thing is to only let into your ear gates the finest beethoven music, and Everest guided meditations. To fill your mouth gate full of air and good intentions with our breathing exercises. To only be touched and touch deserving people. To only let the most sumptuous and nutritious ketogenic food into your mouth gate. To regularly let the EMT sunrise and blogs into your eye gates. If you do these things I promise you, little by little splendid prose of loving kindness will soon be effortlessly exiting your mouth gate for all those around you, and your eye gates will bear witness to the beautiful effect you've had on your surroundings.
