More From Lynn Kesselman's Five Gates

I write again about my journey through life and how I've been finding help in my struggles and strife.  I've had a difficult journey so far and have found some help that is useful and effective.  Not just some twelve step or wacky psycho babble.  This is real world advice that can be followed and taken in real world steps.  The Rabbi Doctor Lynn Kesselman has a program, he calls it the five gates, by which I've started down the path of understanding my past fears and traumas.  Lynn Kesselman went through a similar journey and has documented the process by which he helped himself out of a dark place.  I'm already starting to understand my past and relive the painful cycle of reliving the past.  Rather than staying in the trauma of my past injuries and expecting things to always be the same, i'm starting to realize that the past is just that.  That I can move forward without the burdens of the past coming up in my every day life.  I also know that I cannot change the past but I must accept it for what it is, what lessons it has taught me, and realize that I can step forward into the future, a future of bright and hopeful opportunities.  I've started to gain faith in myself, faith in the world, and faith that things will be better as I move forward.  Here is what Lynn Kesselman says about Faith, Religions, and God.

For some, religions provide many of the same spiritual

benefits as does the Five Gates Training Program. In a

sense, each religion is a program of recovery. The Program

does not conflict with any constructive and positive views

of any major religion of which I am aware. There are,

however, important differences.

All religions tell us that we need faith to give us the

needed strength to function well in life. When they give

hope to a spiritually bankrupt person, they will take away

that person’s anxieties and depression. But when a religion

is based on blind faith and an assurance that this person

will have a good life once they give their faith to believe in

that religion, it is necessary that the believer continue to

experience a good life or that person will lose his faith and

once again fall prey to the ravages of anxiety, fear and

despair. This is an impossibly difficult test for any religion

rooted in superstition, since life itself as it reveals our successful

and unsuccessful beliefs will always be the litmus

test of our spiritual condition. Their positive principles and

reality rules must prove worthy of a person’s faith as life

itself reveals their truth. If the belief structure fails, that

“believer” will be more confused and despondent than

ever.

Most modern and ancient spiritual teachings tell us

many of the same things: to focus in the present, reject our

judgments and resentments in favor of self‐management

and acceptance, live on the positive side of life’s choices, be

generous, loving, constructive and your life will reflect

back the light you bring to it. All the great spiritual

teachings of this world throughout every epoch have universally

informed humans on the virtues of processing life

focused on the present, with a loving embrace towards all

creation.

The problem is that none of these fine teachings tells us

how we can quickly, without relying upon superstition,

change from being the fear‐ridden, judgmental person we

are to being the more open, loving person whose spiritual

fullness has opened up his or her talents and pleasures

beyond anything possible for most of us today. All spiritual

programs, except those that believe your virtue and salvation

are delivered by an outside magical power, say that

if you keep studying, praying and doing positive deeds,

you will eventually be transformed by this process into a

more effective, happier you.

The method of the Five Gates Training Program can

help you do much of this job more quickly because it

focuses us on the basic ways by which we process reality

itself. The Church of Religious Science, Hindu Ashrams,

Judaism (including the teachings of Jesus), Alcoholics

Anonymous and many others to some extent hold similar

truths to healing the spirit.