Will You Cross The Threshold?

 

One morning in practice, I find myself standing on the threshold between two rooms while I face in the direction of the rising sun. I had not intentionally positioned myself there. Yet, the physical placement of my body speaks volumes about the internal choices before me now.

Will I orient in the direction of the new day? Towards what is possible and fresh? In other words, will I cross some internal threshold and choose to face in the direction of the Light? Or will I continue to live at war within myself? Fighting old battles and living in the Darkness of my fears while remaining stuck between two worlds?

It is said that as within, so without. I am feeling this. I am feeling all of the ways that when I look out into the world, I can see my inner battles mirroring the outer battles being waged around me. From forever wars to intractable party politics to so-called incompatible ideologies to the wars being perpetrated on the human and the natural. It is everywhere you look.

And while many of us would state that we want things to be different, that we want to heal the divide, too often, our version of this equals believing the other side is the reason for the conflict. That it is another that must change, or right the wrong.

By holding this attitude we miss what we bring to the table; blind to all of the ways that what we accuse others of is exactly what we are doing, thinking and feeling. We can see the blindness to ourselves in the need to be right. Or our distorted perception that we must take down another to right the wrong. That we must fight, defend, prove and justify to protect ourselves and what we value.

As I explore this within myself, I find that at the heart of what creates the war within me is fear. Fear that my needs won’t be met. Fear that I’m not going to be seen. Fear that another’s opinions will annihilate something that matters to me. Fear that I will be judged and found lacking. Fear that my sensibilities and what I have to offer won’t be valued.

And so I fight.

I do this with the fake conversations inside my own mind, and with the tension that gets generated within my body. I do this with all of the ways that I drag yesterday into today by identifying and rehearsing myself against the ghosts of the past. And I do this with all of the ways I guard against the possibility of being rejected over who I am and what I most need.

We all do this.

We don’t really want to, but it is how we have been taught and how we figured out how best to keep ourselves safe emotionally, spiritually and physically. But our deepest selves yearn for something else. They yearn to heal the divide and to live in harmony within ourselves and with those around us.

But it can feel like a big, vulnerable leap to admit what your heart desires given how many of us got our hearts broken around this as kids. That’s why it can feel insane, naive, or even dangerous to open yourself up like this.

If however, you are feeling the call to be part of helping to mend the world, the first step here is admitting to yourself what it is you really want. By that I mean, what kind of a person do you really want to be, and what kind of a world do your really want to live in?

From there, it’s simply about noticing when your thoughts, words and actions are at odds with any of that.