The title is from these familiar words of Jesus,
I am the door: by me if any man enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and find pasture.
John 10:9
My subject came from the following experience a few weeks ago. I awoke in the middle of the night, and while trying to get back to sleep, was startled by three or four loud knocks on my bedroom door, which was ajar.
After reassuring myself that there was no intruder I naturally had to ponder what the significance was. In Watch Your Dreams, there is no reference to a door knock, but there is one for door chimes:
Be prepared to meet the special guest, or the Christ. In the negative, be prepared for a message of death.
I think I prefer the first meaning. We'll see ...
A door is an apt symbolism for an entry or passage to another psychological living space. If we dream of a door to an unknown room in our house, which is not too uncommon in dreams I have heard from others, it means to discover new levels of the mind. Ann Ree mentions several virtues and practices as being a door to greater things.
Jesus said,
In my Father's house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
John 14:2
Imagine being in a mansion with many rooms and many doors to those rooms. Now imagine a person never opening the doors, even out of curiosity. Or imagine him entering another room half-heartedly, looking briefly, and returning to his familiar room. As ridiculous as it sounds, that is, in fact, the way many of us are about life. There are plenty of doors to new experiences, but we never make the effort to seriously explore them. We keep the doors shut.
Yogananda wrote of the approach of his Master to the spiritual life and the physical life:
Master found no insuperable obstacle to the mergence of human and Divine. No such barrier exists, I came to understand, save in man's spiritual unadventurousness.
Autobiography of a Yogi 121
I can only conclude that the narrow acceptance and application of spiritual truths in the world likewise come from a lack of spiritual adventurousness. The majority of persons in the world stay in narrow orbits because of doubt and inertia. Those who make their mark on the world are driven by some special quality that stems from a divine dissatisfaction with appearances.
Imagine being told a great treasure is behind one of the doors before us. If we truly believed a treasure lies somewhere behind, we would enter each room and make a thorough search inside cabinet drawers, under piles of clothing, behind mirrors - in every conceivable and inconceivable place.
Our spiritual practices and our initiations on the path are the doors. And grace is the treasure. Ann Ree writes,
There is a door to the Path where stands the Lord, but he who is fantasized in the thickets of ignorance knows not this passage-way, neither can he find it. His intoxication of self and self-desiring extends his time, or units of measure, and as a wastrel he wanders, seeing not the Path or the Door or the Way.
The treasures in life are often hidden in plain sight. They are behind doors we see but leave shut. Even though the prophets foretold of Jesus and how to prepare for Him, there were those who had a fixed idea of what the Messiah would be, what He would look like, and what He would say.
Is not this the carpenter's son? is not his mother called Mary? and his brethren, James, and Joses, and Simon, and Judas?
And his sisters, are they not all with us? Whence then hath this man all these things?
And they were offended in him. But Jesus said unto them, A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house.
Matthew 13:55-57
I recently visited a church so that I could be part of the group energy of other worshippers on Sunday. While I was glad that there were seekers who had any belief at all, and glad to share in their devotion, I was also somewhat saddened by what a narrow box the church had put the greater teachings of Jesus in. Jesus is knocking on the doors of churches, but many do not let Him fully in.
Some initiatory doors need a key to be opened. This protects the spiritual aspirant from prematurely entering into trials he is not yet prepared for. But the time comes when he is given a key. In spite of prevailing spiritual apathies, I hope the time is at hand when the truths brought by Jesus will be opened in their entirety.
I close with these words of one of Ann Ree’s mantrams.
My soul is a household awaiting its master. My soul is a threshold inviting the stranger … My soul is a door awaiting the key.
