Gate 20 ⌇ The Gate of the Now

The first line gives you the foundation. It is called ‘Superficiality.’  Many people have problems with this first line.  A reliance on shallowness.  If you own a cat, it is easy to understand. The cat is sitting there in the now and is really looking disinterested in everything. It seems to be totally disinterested, but it is not. It is being very superficial on the surface. It looks very shallow at what it is doing. But all of its antennae are ready and alert for anything, at any moment. This is not about being in the now and walking around, trying to swallow everything. This is the recognition that you are always in the now, and you can go about the business of your life because there is this force inside of you that will make contact with the periphery. 

Venus exalted, The raising of superficiality to an art form. The sloganeer. Or in terms of the white book, Superficial expression as an art form. These people are very aware of what is going on the mundane plane around them. That is their superficiality. They are very clear about what is going on in the world around them, because the primary nature of this is to keep them alive. So they are aware of what is going on around them, but if you have a conservation with them, it will be very superficial. It is like "do you notice the change in the weather? Just a little while ago, there was a change in the pressure." They talk about the kinds of things that they are aware of in the present, and they will seem very superficial. They are not. Don’t confuse the way in which these people project out their "I know" as if they are really only on the surface. They are not. There is a great deal going on underneath. 

The Moon in detriment is The superficial expression of the personality. In the white book, The expression of the superficial personality. These people look like only being on the surface and anybody who knows these people, they all say the same thing, "They are very superficial." I want to tell you something. You put these people in a situation of life and death and they are anything but superficial. They are aware in the now. They have this mechanical capacity in the now to respond to what is there in the now. But on the surface, they are on the surface almost all of the time other than in those moments of threat. That is the nature of being in the now. There is nothing to do except in the moment of threat. To respond and to be able to protect yourself in order to survive, is the capacity in this gate.

We get to the line of projection. These people are projecting out their existential potential. They are projecting out that they know who they are. "I know I am" or "I know I am now" is the voice. This line is called ‘The Dogmatist.’ Restrictive and intentionally limited understanding. These are people in the now, but what they are projecting out in the now is a narrow field. They see certain things in the now, but they do not see everything in the now, because they do not have all of this periphery. Due to that, they can be very dogmatic about that now and that view that they have. Restrictive and intentionally limited understanding, limited perspective in that sense. 

Venus exalted, The limitation, if personal and exclusive, is less negative through ascetic withdrawal. In the white book, A restrictive awareness in the now. What happens to these people is that they are going to bang into a lot of difficulty, because they are individual after all. Individuals always attract attention and individuals have to explain themselves. They have this narrow view. What happens to them is that other people try to bring them out into the periphery, and they are very uncomfortable and back away. They back away because they are only interested in those people that are interested in their dogmatic view, because that is what they need. They need people who pay attention to that. 

Moon in detriment, The power to lead others down a narrow path. Everybody that carries the 20, carries with them the possibility to lead people in their survival process. These are people that can guide you down a path, but it is a very specific path. It is very narrow. By the way, narrow is not a pejorative. Narrow is not a bad word. To be led down a narrow path – If you have somebody who is teaching you how to be a neurophysicist, you don’t want somebody who teaches you Jimi Hendrix every half hour. You want this narrow path, so that you can go down that road and learn from that. The gift through expression of leading others down a narrow path.  "I know right now what is good for you." Again, they may or may not. They may really know what is going on in the now or not, because they can be a paper tiger. It is all a projection going out. Their favorite expression is, "My way or the highway".

We are dealing with an individual process here, so we are not dealing with the collective process. We are not dealing with anything other than this deep empowerment to be individual. In the 12.3, there was this potential for exaggerated self-hatred due to the trial and error process. Here we have ‘Self-awareness.’ These are people who are only conscious of themselves in the now. They are always seeing their own process going on. So they are very self-conscious. They are really there, existentially watching their movie. Out of that can come great wisdom. If you really watch yourself, you see what happens to you and what happens to you as your life. It is something very valuable. Understanding derived from analysis of personal actions and effects. 

The proper attunement and development of the personality through self-consciousness. On the other side we have, Self-consciousness in the extreme that hampers development. People are so concerned with what they are doing in the now that they don’t function properly anymore. This is the other side. They are so concerned about what is going on around them in the now, that they literally don’t have the ability to maintain their individuality or individual integrity in those situations. The expression of self-conscious awareness in the now  or  The expression of self-consciousness in the extreme. These people are very uncomfortable. You don’t see yourself. After all, the individual is projecting out from inside of them, just like everybody else. What they are watching is the wave effect between themselves and the world. In doing so, individuals discover that most of the world does not want to have anything to do with them, because they are strangers by their very nature. 

So there is this inherent self-consciousness in all individuals. All individuality carries within it this self-consciousness, this concern that the world does not pay any attention, or the world will not notice you, or you are not able to give an explanation. These people can carry this to the extreme, constantly watching, constantly being on the alert in the now. I had one person with the 20.3 who told me, "I don’t like what I see". There is nothing to do because this is a mechanic. I told him, "If you don’t see what you like, also see there is nothing you can do about that. Anybody that is here in the now gets to see everything." It is not about saying that this makes life horrible. 

The trial and error in this process is that while you are watching your own movie you learn so many things, because it does not always work. Every time you are trying to watch yourself, your whole self-analysis is going to come out of interaction with others. We are talking about the 20th gate alone. We are not talking about it being connected. It is always looking to the other side, yet it does not know that it is there. So it will always bump into it. What happens in that case is that when they meet somebody who rejects them because they are individual, they watch that in the movie, they take all that on themselves. They become uncomfortable with the fact: Why didn’t that work? Why was I made so uncomfortable? and that restricts them the next time, or it adds to their experience and they learn to recognize who they can be "I am in the now" with. That is part of their learning process. It is a feedback process and you don’t know it, because you are not always connected to the rest of it.

Here in the upper trigram we are dealing with externalization. We are dealing with this one-track-process. We are also dealing with the nature of opportunity and this gate is going to meet the 10.4, the potential for awakening. That potential lies in recognizing the right opportunity. This line is called ‘Application.’ Recognition and awareness that can only be transformed into action in cooperation with those who have the ability to act upon understanding. This is one of the keys to pure individuality. The pure individual says, "I know I can integrate with you only if you can follow my knowing. If you cannot understand my explanation, this is not going to work.” This is the whole thing about the knower. The knower can have a wonderful relationship with those that can grasp the explanation of the knowing. This is the nature of what application is about. 

Again, here we have a gate in the Throat that is open to all kinds of things, and in and of itself, it is still limited. The 4th line knows that there is a 57th gate that has the awareness, so it can say "I know I am now".  It knows that the 34th gate is there with its energy so it says,  "I know I am doing now."  When the 10th gate is there, it can say "I know what I am doing for myself now." Built into that mechanic is the recognition that all of those forces are there in various combinations, waiting. This application has two sides. The Jupiter side, The teacher whose students transcend him/her  and the Mercury side, The tendency to prefer theory to application. They are not very different because this is the knower that says, "I know, but I need you to recognize that knowing and if you do so, it is a value for you. I may even give you enough value as a base so that you can transcend me, or that person, as a teacher. 

In the white book, Where the expression of awareness can only be turned into action through others. The teacher.  Or, The expression of awareness as theory with little interest in its application.  Well, it is not important for that knower who does not have his own energy. I know many people with the 4th line detriment; they are people who know things in the now and have all kinds of theories that have come out of that recognition in the now. But they don’t care what anybody does with it. The exalted has the same experience - experiencing things in the now, knowing something about that and immediately wanting to be able to empower others with that knowledge. Both of these sides of a line are teachers. The exalted teacher always gets exactly the right students, and the detriment teacher gets the students that they know can’t really grasp it, and who will never be able to transcend them. So they are just happy enough to offer the theory.

The 5th line is called ‘Realism.’ This is a line of universalization. It is a line that gets projected on, and it is a very difficult line. Everybody is projecting on this line that these people know. Everybody is projecting on them that they are the ones that know what is really going on in the now. They may or may not. The first thing that the 5th line of the 20 knows is, that  Contemplation, in and of itself, is no guarantee of success. It is not enough to be existential. If you don’t have any power, what will you do with what you recognize in the now. If you don’t have any awareness, what can you make of it?  And if you don’t have any identity, who are you in the now. These are three other gates that the 20 points towards. The 5th line recognizes that, because it is deeply aware, that there is the other side. All three of those gates know that they are out there, and know that being in the now is not enough. You can be in the now. You can stand there and say, "Oh, there is a car coming towards me" but if you don’t have a motor, you will die. It is not going to help you to be conscious of that in the now. It does not help you to be existential, if you can’t get out of the way. 

This is what the 5th line understands. It understands the cold, hard reality of what life is and there is nobody else in this life that you are going to meet, that will point to life and show you all of its beauty and all of its ugliness. That is what they see. They see the reality of what things are. This is not necessarily pleasing. Saturn exalted,  Where concentration on details results in a perfected form.  Perfected form is part of the whole Integration process. These people recognize after a while, that it is not enough to be existential.  "I have to find out where all these other sources of energy and power and awareness are, so that I can access them in order to get to the perfected form of survival." 

Uranus in detriment, Where reality creates dissatisfaction and adds to instability.  Uranus stands for suddenness and unexpectedness. These are people that walk out of their house in the morning and they see everything that is ugly. They see the garbage that was not put in the garbage can. They see the drunk that is sitting in the doorway. They see the rust eating away at the bottom of a car. They see what needs to be repaired. They see the grayness in people’s faces, the coldness in their eyes. They get the whole movie with one breath. It is a real gift that these people have. But unless they are connected to awareness, unless they are connected to the motor, unless they are connected to the identity, they are deeply uncomfortable with this capacity to see the world as it is. They are not believers. These are not abstract people. They don’t have any faith. They are not logical people trying to find a pattern and project into the future. They just look around and see what they see. 

The success of expressing awareness through detail or The expression of awareness in the now through dissatisfaction with the reality one sees. These people sound like whiners but they are not. They really do see what is ugly. For them that is quite a burden in their life, because it is very hard for them unless they are integrated to the rest of this integration system. It is hard for them to see, why life is worth surviving.

We come to the 6th line. Like all 6th lines, there is something else that is at work here. This line is called ‘Wisdom.’ It says,  Contemplation which results in the ability to apply understanding. That may or may not be the case. This is a deeply individual line. Any individual line says, "I am now." I have this line and I have the Venus exalted, so I am very fortunate in that. This line does not care about the world, and this line can be misread that way. I certainly never cared about the world, nor did I ever have the idea for even a fraction of a moment, that what I was going through in the now could be of value to anybody. This is typical of the 6th line. What is there for me to say to the collective if I don’t know anything myself, and all knowers are like that. They know things and they don’t know things, and they go through their life. 

This line is about the individual staying with their individual process. There is within it The ability to transform individual awareness for general application and understanding.  Don’t stand in line and wait for that. The fact that there is an ability does not mean - like all 6th lines - that that is going to come out, and very often that wisdom looks very dumb. This is one of the jokes about all of these things. Because these people are not necessarily going to put that energy out on you and take their individual experience and try to turn that into a direction for you. It is very difficult for the individual to do that. They have to know, they have to be able to explain it, they have to have those that are willing to listen and ultimately those that can actualize it, before there is any certainty in any of that. 

Venus exalted, The establishment for the benefit of society, values, ideals and their patterns, and how they can be understood and applied. The Mercury in detriment is not any different. It is the theoretical. The same as above, but motivated by the self-satisfying mental challenge rather than altruism. These are very individual people living out a very individual process. Because there is no such thing as personal karma, these people can be pulled into the needs of others and if they live long enough and their existential process has been broad enough, they may be able to make a contribution to the totality. But all 6th lines wait for some kind of force that projects that on them. I got that in a very clear way in my confrontation with the voice. I had to deal with something that imposed upon me something that was not there naturally. The mutation was brought to me. Otherwise, none of that stuff would have had any value. It is true for all 6th lines. 

I am not saying that you can’t experience a 6th line unless you have some kind of science fiction event. That is not true. What I’m saying is that there are only very special circumstances in your life that are going to bring out the potential of any 6th line. When you have children - that is my concern - that have a lot of 6th lines, or they have a Sun/Earth configuration that is in the 6th line, you have to recognize that you may never see their potential. You can never allow these children to feel uncomfortable because of that. The reality is that they are gifted, but it is up to life whether or not that gift has any real value. We all have special attributes, but it is a question of what life demands, and not what we have. So many people are deeply frustrated because what they have they want to push out into the world, but if the world is not ready for it and the world doesn’t want it, the world will not take it. This is just the way things work. All 6th lines in that sense are waiting for a sign from the gods, whatever that sign happens to be. It does not have to be spiritual or mystical. It can be a car accident. It can be all kinds of things that trigger the potential that lies inside all of these 6th lines.