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The Five Gates
Explore all episodes and download from the full library: https://eattmag.com/free-podcasts-download/ When Pablo arrived home, he placed the bowl carefully on the table. Then he found his large scrapbook. It had been sitting on a shelf for a long time. Some of the pages were empty. Other pages contained old notes, drawings, lists and ideas that he had almost forgotten. He carried the scrapbook to the table and sat down beside the bowl. For a while, he did nothing. He looked at the empty page. Then he looked up at the bowl. He picked up a pen and wrote: Questions for a Long Walk Underneath it, he wrote another question: What are the five most important questions I could ask myself? Pablo sounded the bowl. [Singing bowl chimes] He listened. Then he began to write. Where have I come from? Not only the places he had lived or visited, but the experiences that had shaped him. Where am I now? What was happening in his life at this moment? What was working? What was difficult? What was he avoiding? What am I carrying that I no longer need? Old plans. Old worries. Other people's expectations. Things that had never been useful, or things that had once been useful but had now become heavy. What is genuinely valuable to me? Not what should be valuable. Not what looked impressive. But what was actually valuable. Where do I want to go next? Not where other people thought he should go. Where did he want to go? Pablo placed the pen beside the scrapbook. He read the five questions again. They were simple questions. But he knew they would not always have simple answers. They were not the only questions he would ask. They were only the beginning. They were the five gates. Beyond each gate, there might be ten more questions. Or twenty more. Perhaps there would eventually be one hundred questions. But he would not need to answer them all today. He picked up the bowl and sounded it once more. The sound filled the room.
