Threshold crossings shape us

Threshold crossing is a part of regular life.

We cross the threshold from sleep to awake. From morning to evening. From our private inner life to our outer expression.

There are some thresholds that we skip across, and some that we are dragged across. Some we long to cross, and many that we might wish we had never crossed.

Threshold crossings shape us.

In their crossing, we are reconfigured. There is no path of return to the shape we were before.

We have lost the ritual of significant threshold crossing. Of placing importance on the transformation that our next step entails. From child to adult, friend to lover, passive observer to active participant.

There is a structure to threshold crossing. The opening, that first sense, preparation.  The liminal – the in-between space of unstructured, possibly confusing, free fall. And the closing, where the path backwards is no longer possible.

Intentional threshold-crossing design is a lost art. We might call it an employee contract/induction. A marriage. Graduation. We have superficialised it into a transaction, with or without the romance.

Today, as you leave the sanctuary of your home, consider what thresholds you might be crossing, and how, through attention and intention, they may become deliberate, thoughtful and deeply transforming.

January 17th 2018

Photo taken 12th March 2015