Gate 22 · Openness

What it is like

When you're in a good mood, you can listen and speak in a way that helps people open up. Sometimes you close off for no clear reason, and that says more about your own wave than about the person next to you.

When someone close has it

This person can be warm and sociable and then, a moment later, want quiet. Ask whether it's a good time to talk, rather than taking their retreat personally.

A question for today

Is my mood letting me really listen today?

The six lines of gate 22

1. Line 1 · On Foot

   This line would rather walk than ride in someone else's carriage. Your openness begins with simplicity: before you let someone in, you check whether you can be with them without pretending and without borrowed ornaments. You give yourself time to feel the ground. Because of this caution people may take you for a closed person, though you are simply waiting for a mood that lets you open up.

2. Line 2 · Easy Manners

   Here openness comes to you without effort. In a good mood you can make people feel at ease around you, and the very way you speak and listen invites them into conversation. You do not plan it, others draw it out of you. When the mood drops, that ease can turn into ornament for show, and people sense that nobody is behind it at that moment.

3. Line 3 · Momentary Glow

   This line learns openness by trying. In a good mood it is easy for you to get lost in a pleasant moment, in a conversation that sparkles, and say more than you meant to. Some of these closenesses last, some fade along with the mood. Embarrassment over words that were too frank may linger afterwards, though it is from them that you learn which bonds will survive an ordinary day.

4. Line 4 · Plain White

   Here openness works through the people you know, and best when it is plain. Among friends you need no ornaments, you can arrive unprepared and with no part to play. Your moods are familiar there and nobody takes them personally. When the mood fades, you may mistake someone's closeness for an intrusion and shut the door on a person who comes in good faith.

5. Line 5 · A Modest Gift

   This line makes others see in your openness something they have been waiting for, a conversation where they can finally tell the truth. You need no grand gestures, a modest gift and a sincere word work better here than ornaments. People arrive expecting you to let them in every time. When the mood does not allow it, someone may easily take it as coldness toward them, though it is only the hour, not how you feel about that person.

6. Line 6 · Unadorned

   Here openness ripens into simplicity. Over time you need fewer and fewer words and gestures to be close, and others learn from you that sincerity does not have to be showy. Your moods still come and go, but you stop explaining yourself by them. From a distance you may open up less often than the people close to you need, and some conversations wait for an hour that does not come.

The centre of this gate

• Solar Plexus

Channels through gate 22

• 12–22 · Openness