Notes From the Pathway of Wonder and Awe - The Gateless gate

22 hours ago
6 min read

The Gateless Gate

13:21

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Hagia Sophia illuminated at blue hour beneath a deep indigo sky.

This month our lunar practice is Express Yourself.

To truly express ourselves, we must know ourselves. But knowing who we are does not mean limiting who we might be.

The Great Way has no gate;

there are a thousand paths to it.

— Wumen Huikai

Part of the mystery at the heart of the Gateless Gate is that we often don't know when we are passing through.

And every time we do, we change again.

Hagia Sophia

I’m feeling a little dazed as I head towards the great plaza, the bright light almost blinding after the cooler light and grey greens of west Ireland. I follow the stream of people until it spills into the central area, where the crowd is moving in every direction. A little disoriented, I pause.

In that moment I hear a sound that is music to my ears.

Australian accents.

“Is that friendly Australian accents I can hear?”

A group of smiling faces turn towards me.

“Are you going into Hagia Sophia?”

“Yes, we are,” one of the women beamed back.

“Would you mind if I joined you?”

“No, not at all. Come with us. We’ve got a guide.”

And so, for fifteen euros plus the entrance fee, I joined the gang.

It was another of those big, fat magical signs that appear at exactly the right moment. Even being in Istanbul had come about that way. One thing leading to another. I had said to a friend that after so many years of travelling, there weren't many places left in the world I felt compelled to visit. Turkey was one of them. Two weeks later, when I was arranging a work trip to Europe, my travel agent told me Turkish Airlines had a great fare. Because they only flew into Australia on certain days, the ticket included a two-night stopover in Istanbul.

I didn't have to think about it. I was going to Istanbul.

Then three different people told me I must go to Hagia Sophia. I decided, if I did only one thing while I was there, that was it.

Michelle smiling inside Hagia Sophia with a Byzantine mosaic of the Virgin and Child behind her.

And now here I am. I had no idea what to expect. I only knew, deep within me, that I had to go. One friend had described it as an ancient place of the Goddess. My husband said it was an extraordinary building. Another dear friend simply said it was her favourite place in the city.

Nothing prepared me for its splendour. And without that guide I would have missed so much of the story. Hagia Sophia was completed nearly fifteen hundred years ago, in 537. It has been a Byzantine cathedral, an Ottoman imperial mosque, a museum, and a mosque again. For centuries people have travelled from across the world to worship there.

You can feel that intensity when you enter, and with it a deep sense of timelessness. In the upper gallery, some of the great Byzantine mosaics have survived. Gold and colour illuminate the walls. Christ, emperors and empresses, the Virgin and child.

Mary, Mother of God

It doesn't feel like any church I have ever known.

And then I encounter Mary. And I am stunned.

She is unlike any Mary I have encountered before. Not simply serene, loving or contemplative. Her presence is palpable. She is Mary, Mother of God. Theotokos — the God-bearer. Above her are the ancient Greek letters ΜΡ ΘΥ — Mother of God.

She feels alive. Warm. Engaging. Luminous. There is spirit coming through her. The gold background is pure illumination. It seems to exist outside ordinary time and space. And I am immersed in it.

Byzantine mosaic of the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, with the Greek letters ΜΡ ΘΥ above.

I’m pulled back to the present moment as our guide calls us over to the parapets saying almost casually, ‘Oh, and here’s some Viking graffiti.’ I’m thunderstruck. Viking graffiti?

And there, scratched into the marble of one of the parapets, are runes. I could hardly believe it. What were Norsemen doing in Hagia Sophia?

The guide didn't say much more, but I was spellbound. My imagination was in overdrive. Imagine that. A Norse traveller standing beneath that immense dome, in that extraordinary meeting place between worlds. Where I am now.

To my eye, some of the marks looked almost like a bind rune — individual runes joined into a single form. The northern traditions are deeply interwoven with the Gaelic traditions I come from, and their mysteries have long been part of my own spiritual pathway. Runes carry more than words: sound and meaning, memory and identity, and magic.

And in that moment, time collapsed. Someone from the northern world had stood here and made those marks more than a thousand years ago. They had been here. And now I was here. A thousand years didn't feel very long at all.

Later I learned about the extraordinary journeys Norse people made to Constantinople, which they knew as Miklagarðr — the Great City. They travelled immense distances along the river systems of Eastern Europe in search of trade, wealth and opportunity. Some came as warriors, serving the Byzantine emperors in the elite Varangian Guard; others as traders and pilgrims. More than thirty Scandinavian runestones commemorate journeys to Byzantium, while inside Hagia Sophia itself, their runes and ship graffiti remain etched into the marble to this day.

The place holds all these worlds at once. Its great dome has fallen and risen again. Empires have come and gone, faiths have met and overlapped, people have come from every direction. Norse travellers stood beneath this dome and left their marks in the marble. And now I am standing here too. Somehow, it is all present.

Marble columns and intricately carved capitals rising above a glowing chandelier inside Hagia Sophia.

That evening I went up onto the rooftop of my hotel and sat in the cool air with pomegranate cordial and soda water as the great moon rose over the Golden Horn.

I was still under the spell of the beauty. Her beauty. I looked across the water to Hagia Sophia, her dome gleaming in the moonlight.

And without fear or struggle, without knowing it was happening, I had passed through the Gateless Gate once more. This time with wonder, not fear, as my companion. And the beauty of the thousand paths took on a whole new dimension.

Across cultures and centuries we have found countless ways to approach the mystery — different ways of knowing, creating, worshipping, reading the living world and relating to the Divine. Unity gives birth to diversity.

Earth expresses herself through an astonishing abundance of forms. Forests and oceans. Fungi, flowers, birds, animals. Each distinct. Each participating in the great web of life. And diversity can lead us into a deeper experience of unity.

A flower's beauty is not simply decoration. Colour, form and scent communicate. They create relationship. They call in the pollinators through whom flower becomes fruit, fruit becomes seed, and life continues. Beauty bears fruit.

Mary as Mother of God — the God-bearer — embodies this. Her beauty carries a potent transmission. I remained firmly grounded on my own path while something within me expanded. This is how the beauty of the thousand paths bears fruit.

But there is another mystery within Wumen's words. What if the thousand paths don't only belong to all of us? What if they can belong to one life?

Spiritual Wayfinding

A lifetime contains many paths. Some we choose. Others find us. Through love and loss, dreams and beauty, animals and wild places, the risks we take, the traditions we encounter, the magical signs we follow.

This is spiritual wayfinding. The great ocean wayfinders read stars, winds, swells, birds and the changing light. We don't need to see the whole way. We need to pay attention. To recognise what holds meaning. To find our direction.

The path changes us. We see what we could not see before. We discover what we did not know we could do. We enter the world more deeply. We never pass through the Gateless Gate as the same person twice.

To know ourselves is not to define ourselves. We know what is true. We express it. We live it. And we change again.

Our journey through life is our spiritual expression.

The Great Way has no gate;

there are a thousand paths to it.

If you pass through the barrier,

you walk the universe alone.

–Wumen Huikai

Much love