The Seven Gates: Seven Steps Beyond Self-Awareness

By Dr. Frances Yahia

This book is a 7-step model that teaches you how to take your power back. Unknowingly, we give away our power day in and out due to subconscious programs inherited since conception. Any situation can be worked through with these steps. The model provides an understanding why you attract patterns in your life and explicit steps on how to shift the subconscious so you stop repeating unhealthy subconscious patterns you probably aren't even aware of!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Apr 30, 2019
• ISBN: 9781528961462

Dr. Frances Yahia

Frances is an archetypal astrologer, shaman, akashic records' reader, and spiritual counselor based in South Florida. She earned her Ph.D. in Mental Health Counseling and Educational Leadership from Barry University and has studied and taught metaphysics for over two decades. She combines her background in mental health counseling with spiritual components to help her clients gain personal insights and unlock the power of their own intuition.

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About the Author

Frances is an archetypal astrologer, shaman, akashic records’ reader, and spiritual counselor based in South Florida. She earned her Ph.D. in Mental Health Counseling and Educational Leadership from Barry University and has studied and taught metaphysics for over two decades. She combines her background in mental health counseling with spiritual components to help her clients gain personal insights and unlock the power of their own intuition.

About the Book

This book is a 7-step model that teaches you how to take your power back. Unknowingly, we give away our power day in and out due to subconscious programs inherited since conception. Any situation can be worked through with these steps. The model provides an understanding why you attract patterns in your life and explicit steps on how to shift the subconscious so you stop repeating unhealthy subconscious patterns you probably aren’t even aware of!

Dedication

To my three little birds, who make everything all right.

Copyright Information

Copyright © Dr. Frances Yahia (2019)

The right of Dr. Frances Yahia to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9781528916127 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781528916134 (Hardback)

ISBN 9781528916141 (Kindle e-book)

ISBN 9781528961462 (ePub e-book)

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published (2019)

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd

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E14 5LQ

Acknowledgement

To my parents, thank you for giving me life.

Preface

Cracking the Snow Globe of My Delusion

This book is forty-three years in the making, so I suppose it would be an understatement to say that it took me a little while to get here! By way of explanation, I once gave a psychic reading to a client and I saw her in front of a giant auditorium giving a lecture about a book she had yet to write. My guides, speaking through me to her, told her that she wouldn’t write her book until she had finished her story. That’s exactly what happened to me! These past forty-three years and my lived experiences have all culminated to create my story—what I call my ‘stone soup’—this book!

I was born into what you could call a modern-day cult. The cult leader was a medium, and she channeled a spirit (Francisca) for whom I am named. Shortly after I was born, when my mother was leaving the hospital with me, we took a ferry to the house of the cult’s leader. You see, each child that was born to one of the cult’s members had to be ‘presented’ to Spirit right after they were born. (If you’ve ever seen The Lion King, the presentation ceremony was the same.)

Throughout my life, repeatedly, I heard how I was the only child in the cult who’d had to cross the ocean in order to reach the cult’s leader. Growing up, I thought about this ‘crossing the ocean’ story frequently. I finally decided on what it meant. It reminded me of Jesus walking on water, and the ego now termed my ‘Jafar-complex’, I would learn to tame. It was also like the unpredictable ocean and its storms and its waves, my life would end up being stormy and unpredictable until such time that I would reach my final destination: the serenity and calm of my own inner life.

Stories that we hear about ourselves throughout our childhood, like the one I continued to hear about myself, form part of our subconscious. I call these the creation myths in our subconscious. How the subconscious is formed and how we remain children and honor these stories is the reason that most of us, as adults, are unfulfilled and incessantly seeking something outside of ourselves to fulfill us. This, in a nutshell, is the primary premise of this book—one that I will break down in a seven-step process for easier accessibility and comprehension.

I had been named Frances Carol after the medium’s guiding spirit, and this was something that shaped my life as well. Everything has energy and a vibration. The name Frances means ‘freedom’. And although I have been seeking freedom my whole life, I recently learned that freedom doesn’t come from financial gain, working from home, or not answering to a husband. Freedom is an inner space we create by questioning our thoughts, releasing limiting beliefs and values, and becoming adults who fulfill the purpose we were born to fulfill. Before realized all of this, I was an escape artist, escaping or fleeing from my life, not living my life the way it was meant to be lived. I find this to be true of most spiritual aspirants I counsel as well as most people I know in general. Most of us wish to grow up and ‘leave home’ but don’t know how, so we ‘free’ ourselves by not committing, by being unfaithful, chasing wealth, abusing drugs and alcohol, or checking ourselves into a psych hospital or an ashram.

What’s important to keep in mind here is that there is no thread of who you are that isn’t sending you a message. The meaning of your name, the day of your birthday, fragments of your story, every word you say—it’s all bringing together the story of you—the one you were told, at conception, was you.

This book is about breaking out of the template you’ve been loyally dedicated to and finding the true story that you’re here to live—the one you’ve been searching for in church, in meditation, in your dreams, in the perfect job, and/or in the right partner. The irony is, however, that your true story is not found anywhere outside of you; it’s inside.

Once you accept this, and begin the real work of self-knowledge, you’ll see that accessing the real you is easy, but the process itself is hard work. I promise you, however, that if undertake the steps in this book you’ll be able to access your inner guru. When you do, you’ll break free of the need to have others constantly validate you, and you’ll break free of the need to have things like money and possessions validate you. This is the step-by-step spiritual path you’ve been looking for. If you follow it, you can and will become a person you can be proud of and have always wanted to be.

Take it from me, I know. I’ve lived it. I stayed in the cult for thirty-three years, essentially growing up there. I was abused, pulled in and out of schools, had an arranged marriage, and was brainwashed into believing there was something wrong with me that needed fixing. Oh!—and that Spirit loved $100 bills and the more you contributed to the cult the more Spirit would solve your ills. This was basically my life—I’ll spare you the gory details. I hung on every word the cult leader said, did everything she asked, and studied all the lessons she put in front of me. I was the ideal spiritual aspirant, or so I thought.

At the age of thirty-three, after having had three kids and enduring an abusive (arranged) marriage, I started hearing what I now know to be the voice of my intuition (which I now call ‘the jumping jellybean in my tummy’). The cult met every Friday night, however, one day I found that something inside me was resisting this weekly meeting. When this happened, I’d call the leader and tell her I was sick or that my kids were sick and I couldn’t make the meeting. For some reason that I couldn’t quite put my finger on, I just didn’t want to go and every week I came up with a different excuse to get out of it. But then I would begin to cry, beat myself up, and wonder why I really didn’t want to go. I immediately thought it was because evil spirits were taking over me to keep me from the ‘truth’.

I was miserable in my marriage and had relied on the guru for guidance about what to do. Given that it had been a marriage arranged by the cult, of course when I called her to ask, Can I leave my marriage yet? she would say, No. Apparently, it was never the right time to do so because he paid her bills.

One day, I stopped asking for permission, took my power back, and filed for divorce. Shortly after that, I finally left the cult. But in a sense, I went from the frying pan into the fire because I soon found another medium to take her place. This second relationship would last for about four years, until finally, after enduring more mental confusion I left this second ‘guru’ and found myself alone. I looked up to heaven and asked, Why?! I had been a sincere spiritual seeker since birth and now I found myself without any guidance at all.

I went through the spiritual relics in my home—and I threw them all away. And I said out loud, God, if you really exist, show me.

A few days later, I opened the Zohar, the mystical commentary on the Kabbalah. The quote the book fell open to read: There is no coercion in spirituality. When I read that, my jellybean jumped so high I was almost lifted out of my socks! I knew this had to be true and at that moment I realized that true spirituality was something I had never known.

Now, I was getting my Ph.D. in educational leadership and mental health counseling and I had decided to take boating classes as a graduation gift to myself. The classes were near my parents’ house and I slept there each Sunday night waiting for my Monday morning boating class. At that time, every Sunday night my mother watched a Spanish astrology show. I never really listened much, only to the Pisces segment toward the end of it. It always piqued my interest because I am a Pisces too. One Sunday night, I decided to watch the show in its entirety. It featured a therapist who was a Pisces and in her practice, she was using astrology to help people in less time than it took to do so in traditional therapy. Immediately, I wanted to know more and the next day I called to set up an appointment with this astrologer.

What was supposed to be a one-hour session ended up lasting only about fifteen minutes, but it was long enough for me to hear the message I needed to hear, which was news to me! The astrologer said I could be in charge of my own life. I had never heard those words before! I always thought I needed a mediator between myself and Spirit.

When I heard this message, I said, Sign me up! Astrology was the first tool to teach me that I’m exactly who I need to be. It’s a tool that anyone and everyone can use to see their tendencies and to help them determine what they’re here for. I’ve been a professional astrologer for years now and I use astrology in my therapeutic practice to give clients confirmation that their subconscious patterns are, in effect, patterns given to them at conception. As you will see, this is a fundamental tenet of the work I present in this book.

In any event, after several years of studying astrology and giving readings, I was driving home one day and my jellybean started jumping up and down. This time I heard it say two words, Akashic records. Akashic is the Sanskrit word for ‘space’ or ‘ether’ and simply refers to the energy field that pervades everything and connects everything that is. Akashic records are a recorded compilation of every human soul—past, present, and future—encoded in a nonphysical plane. Human awareness has tried to define this in many ways: string theory, God, angels, spirit guides, energy. However, the semantics aren’t important, for we are all speaking the same language here. There is only one Source.

Trained individuals are capable of accessing and reading the Akashic Records for others who are seeking self-understanding. I had known what the records were and that they could be read, but I had never felt compelled to access mine until my intuition whispered the words to me. The imperative to learn more about myself by way of the Akashic Records was so strong I couldn’t wait. I made an appointment for that week.

In having my records read, I learned a lot of things about myself, but perhaps the most important dictum was, Your purpose is to tell people the truth they can’t necessarily tell themselves. As life unfolds you will find yourself with an Akashic Records practice, teaching universal truths.

Fortunately, this has all transpired, and from those truths, this book was born.

In my therapeutic practice, I had been reading the records for several years and had hundreds of hours of readings on record. When I realized that it was time to write this book I sat down with some friends who had offered to help and—nothing! When I meditated on this, a little something told me it wasn’t the time yet.

Shortly thereafter, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. The initial shock wore off quickly. I sat in my meditation space and heard loud and clear from my guides that this cancer’s origins weren’t physical; instead, they were primarily emotional and spiritual. The cancer was here to teach me a lesson and if I learned the lesson, my life would be spared. I had one month of crazy MRIs, blood tests, hospital visits, and mammograms. I never cried or feared dying; the only thing I was scared about was not learning the lesson.

You see, my whole life had been about seeking spiritual growth. From the moment I opened my eyes I was presented to Spirit, had been surrounded by Spirit, and was named after Spirit. Nothing in my life mattered more than my spiritual growth. I had been a spiritual counselor for years and now I was being given a test and if I didn’t pass the test I would be the biggest fraud and hypocrite in the world. Thus, I had to pass the test.

The only problem was: I didn’t know what the test was or how to take it!

I was so delusional about who I was, what my life had been, and what the reality of this world was about. Cancer came to tell me it was time to finally grow up. The more I looked into the root of my problems, the more my guides started developing the theoretical framework for healing that is detailed in The Seven Gates. This seven-step model, pieced together from years of spirit-guided messages, came into being—and it saved my life. The model that I developed will likewise give you a framework by which to identify your own story—how to recognize it over and over again, how to move from child into adult, how to create a rule book for your life, how to recognize the voices that live in your head, and how to be present at any moment so that you can hear what God is trying to tell you.

My daughter calls me ‘a reality counselor’ because I will tell you the truths you don’t want to tell yourself. However, more importantly, I teach you how to identify the lies that sound good but make you feel like shit. This book is about taking back your power and finding your way back to you, the full you, not the you that others want you to be. My life’s purpose today is to help others take back their power. Nobody knows you better than you. Nobody can tell you what your spiritual path looks like. Healers like me are simply teachers on your path. My wish is to reunite you with yourself, God, your creator. That’s it. Teachers, gurus, priests, and healers are not intended to be in your life forever. They’re intended to give you the nudge and nugget of guidance you need and then send you on your way.

One of my favorite myths involves Hercules in search of the Garden of Herespides. He encounters two different teachers on his path, Nemeus and Busiris. Nemeus simply nods to signal he’s going in the wrong direction, while Busiris encourages him on with an elaborate display of grand gestures. The true teacher and guide is the one who simply points the way and allows you to discover yourself. The Busirises on your path are those that promise you the world, but rarely deliver.

I have encountered several Busirises on my path, who, as a result of these encounters, brought me to become the Nemeus in my own life and my clients’ lives. If you’re ever being told you need someone to mediate between you and the Creator, run. If you’re ever being reprimanded by Spirit through an intermediary, run. These middlemen are not teachers, these are egomaniacs.

I hope this book can serve to guide you on your path so that you may live your life the way it was truly meant to be lived.

Chapter 1

Introduction to the Basic Concepts of the Mother-Father-Child Triad

Children are educated by what the grown-up is and not by his talk.

– Carl Jung

The Seven-Step Model of the Mother-Father-Child (MFC Triad): How to Use this Book.

This book is about creating awareness and identifying the subconscious patterns you inherited at conception. It introduces a seven-step model to enable you to unify your mind, live in your purpose, and stop repeating patterns that are outdated and no longer serving you. This seven-step model was given to me in meditation and through several channeled readings to help heal my deepest issues of abandonment and cure my breast cancer.

If you commit to doing this work a workbook at the end of this book will be a helpful tool for you. And if you repeatedly do the steps you will find that your core issues are just a few that show up over and over again in your life. The steps are seven and are broken up into what I call the stages of child (the first three steps), teenager (pause mode), and the last four steps, comprised of the adult. These steps and everything used in this model are based on universal truths and metaphysical principles. Whether you believe in metaphysics or not, the model still works. You don’t need any prior knowledge about spirituality or knowledge about the mind, either. You simply need a desire to change and improve your life.

In the model, I call the Mother-Father-Child (MFC) triad, I ask you to discuss the positive and negative traits you remember about your parents from childhood. This is not to place blame on anyone. This is to externalize those criteria inside of you that have mandated that you not speak ill of your parents. Total honesty with yourself is necessary to do this work, so don’t be afraid to be honest with what you think about the two people who raised you. Ultimately, the more honesty you have around the real issues, the deeper your healing will be. The other criteria for this model is an understanding that every person has a shadow, an aspect of themselves they don’t necessarily like, and therefore repress. Part of this work involves getting in touch with your shadow.

Why ‘The Seven Gates’?

The book is called The Seven Gates because it’s based on one of my favorite Sumerian myths about Inanna, who was goddess of the skies. She was asked to visit her sister Erishikgal in the lower world. Upon receiving this invitation, Inanna had to pass through seven gates to reach her sister. With each gate, an article of clothing was removed. When she appeared at the lower world she was naked. This myth is symbolic of the layers of masks and filters we ourselves must remove before getting to the depths of our true selves. To live in authenticity, in our purpose and transparently, we must remove all the layers of delusion that we hide behind.

I have been through my seven gates and have discovered that within each gate there are seven doors. Each door represents one mask of overriding traits that show up in your life. Be patient with yourself during this self-discovery process, for you will, like most people, have a lot of doors to open, many of which have been sealed shut throughout your life because they were too painful to explore. For instance, you may reach the third gate and find you have manipulation as trait; it is one of the many masks we all wear. You may find that you remain at this gate for weeks or months, discovering the various ways that you manipulate the people and situations in your life. As I worked the model, I came to all of my gates. The seven gates refer to the issues in the bad buckets, but the common threads in the subconscious include not feeling lovable, anger, vanity, narcissism, and gluttony, abandonment issues, among others. As I was to learn, my seventh gate was abandonment. Abandonment issues are very common, for we were all abandoned at birth when we were expulsed from the cosmic womb, which was our Garden of Eden.

Cancer and Ayurveda as Metaphor

When I was desperately seeking a cure for my cancer—to avoid radiation, hormone therapy, and chemotherapy, I read about alkaline diets. Much of the information that I read stated that if the blood pH is alkaline, cancer cannot grow. Acidic systems are below 7, neutral systems are 7.0, and alkaline systems are above 7.

According to Keiichi Morishita in his book, Hidden Truth of Cancer, as the blood becomes acidic, the body deposits acidic substances into the cells to remove them from the blood. This allows the blood to remain slightly alkaline. However, it also causes the cells to become acidic and toxic. Over time, many of these cells increase in acidity and some die. And yet, some of these acidified cells adapt to the new environment. In other words, instead of dying (as normal cells do in an acidic environment) some cells survive by becoming abnormal cells. These abnormal cells are called malignant cells, and they do not correspond with brain function or the DNA memory code. Malignant cells grow indefinitely and without order. For optimal physical health, one should be in alignment with the 20/80 rule by making sure the components of one’s diet are 80 percent alkaline and 20 percent acidic.

In the MFC triad, we follow the same rule. For optimal mental, physical, and spiritual health our end goal is to be an adult 80 percent of the time, allowing the child in us to express itself 20 percent of the time. The child is like a malignant cell, it has no order, rather a dysfunctional template from which to react; however, it is within us and allowance for it to exist is crucial for our health and to avoid entering perfectionism and judgement.

Before we can create an internal climate of alkalinity so ‘cancer’—be it spiritual, mental, or physical—cannot grow, we must energetically bring our own internal environment to 1 and go up from there. In the process of healing yourself, you must first go down into the bitter, sour, dirty waters of the subconscious. Then you may begin the ascent up back to 7 and beyond to the Upper World, as I have done—and as all the heroes and heroines of mythology such as Inanna and Hercules, for instance, have also done as well.

In Ayurveda, the concept of the dhatus, refers to the tissues that comprise the body. It is believed that there are seven dhatus, and what you eat creates the quality of these tissues which becomes your physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual health. These dhatus, like Inanna, are also representative of the seven lokas or planes of the Universe. In order to create healthy, vibrant Ojas, the essence, the immunity, the product of the seven dhatus, you must have good nutrition. Nutrition in Ayurveda is anything that enters the senses, be it food, movies, or music. Early in the MFC triad work, I was assigned a ritual by my guidance, where I was to symbolically cut through the seven dhatus to just remain with my Ojas, my essence, and reconstruct myself from there. This was symbolic of peeling back the child layers, the dhatus formed by my parent’s belief system, to make way for my new adult. The seven dhatus are: rasa, rakta, mamsa, medda, ashti, majja, shukra and correspond loosely to plasma, blood, muscle, fat, bone, nerves, and reproductive tissue. By working the seven gates, or the seven dhatus, you will reach the profundity of what is stored in the reproductive tissue that created your subconscious mind. By deeply observing it, you will reach the true essence of you, your Ojas, and from there reconstruct yourself anew.

The Powerful Tool of Astrology

I discuss astrology in this book as a reference point to the cycles of life we are part of. The wheel of the zodiac is a road map of the steps we must all take toward enlightenment. In Aries, we work on controlling thought, the beginning of anyone’s spiritual journey. In Taurus, we work through attachments and values. In Gemini, we control our speech and quiet our mind and body and in Cancer, we leave home (as the child) to seek the individual (the adult) in Leo. Virgo is about leveling the playing field and discovering that we aren’t perfect, just human. In Libra, we struggle with the other versus meeting our own needs. In Scorpio, we’re faced with crisis and we learn how to emerge the victor, which is how we spread our message in Sagittarius. In Capricorn, we realize this journey is a lonely one and we must become our own guru and in Aquarius we give back to the community. However, this is only done once we’ve realized our own strengths and weaknesses, because now we can willingly accept that everyone is in us. In Pisces, we give back as the world servant and finally return home to the Supreme Consciousness.

Throughout life, these are the stages we will go through with any process of transformation. This model helps you have a methodology as you go through them.

The epic myth, and the first story ever told, is of the character Gilgamesh, who was a ruler of ancient Mesopotamia and was seeking eternal life. Through various trials and tribulations, he underwent many of the experiences I have just associated with different signs of the zodiac. In this way we can trace him, as with any hero of mythology, through the zodiac. When Gilgamesh discovered the plant that would provide eternity (in Pisces), however, he fell asleep doing ‘the work’.

This therapeutic MFC model can be picked up at any time in your life; however, my message to you is to please keep working it. If you should, at various times in your life, fall asleep like Gilgamesh did, please wake up! Falling asleep into what I call the snow globe of delusion is inevitable, but as long as you re-awaken, you’re headed home to yourself—back to Pisces and unity with the universal consciousness.

The Gift of Alignment

Whether or not you believe in the metaphysical principles, symbols, or teachings I put forth in this book, if you undertake the work of the MFC triad, they will catalyze your transformation. I went to Vedic City in Iowa in April 2017 to present the MFC concepts at the Global Ayurveda and Psychology Conference. I stayed at the Raj Hotel, which is famous for its Ayurvedic treatments and remedies and I presented at the Maharishi University where Transcendental Meditation had been developed. I sat in my hotel room one evening and started shaking, coming into contact with abandonment issues I never even knew I had. I did not know what was happening and I didn’t know why I was crying and trembling, but I allowed the process to unfold.

On Sunday morning, before my presentation, I learned that the Vedic City had been built on the principles of Vastu Shastra (Indian feng shui / sacred geometry), and what I had experienced was the gift of alignment of my mind, body, and spirit. I didn’t know about the sacred geometry upon which I had slept the previous night, but nonetheless I was forever changed by it.

After I’d written the first version of this book, I channeled Teresa of Avila, the Christian mystic. She introduced me to her concept of the seven mansions. Teresa of Avila wrote The Interior Castle, a book discussing what she considered to be the soul and its journey to God. She equated the soul with a crystal globe made in a shape of a castle. In the innermost mansion, the seventh chamber, was the greatest splendor: God. She wrote, The nearer one got to the center, the stronger was the light; outside the palace limits everything was foul, dark and infested with toads, vipers and other venomous creatures.

Teresa wrote that the obstacle to union with God for the human person is the space that exists between where the soul lives