Across the threshold

How we experience life and its inevitable changes are a mirror of our inner world

In one way or another we’ve all crossed important thresholds in our lives. From needing to welcome our younger brothers and sisters into the world when we are used to being the apples of our parents’ eyes, to transiting through the school and higher education years, getting married and having our own families and the more difficult times of illness, divorce and worse. Endings always make way for new beginnings, but that doesn’t make them easy or pleasant. How we live them depends very much on what is in the depths of our inner world, often hidden from daily view and our awareness.

2025 is a year of major change in my own life. Light and love suddenly poured into my system through new connections and practices, illuminating parts of my life that were no longer serving my or others’ highest good, and I could only stand by and watch them unravel. To ad-lib the famous sentence, resistance would have been futile. The unwinding process actually began at the start of Covid, with the disappearance of my work and the inner knowing that it was not to be just replaced with more of the same. Then it became how I make and spend my money, and some months ago, my marriage, where I live and who I believe myself to be. It’s intense, liberating and painful, all at the same time. Deep healing, fast-track illumination as the Light gets through the cracks, as Leonard Cohen sang to us.

Perhaps this depth and breadth of transformation should come with a ‘Don’t try this at home kids!’ warning on the box! Sometimes though life picks us up and washes us out, then puts us down in the sun to dry for a while before the next spin cycle begins. And things often seem to come in threes. There is also something wildly incredible, even magical, about the peeling away of layers of our identity - the sense of self we walk with through the world that keeps us connected, safe and secure in the culture that surrounds us. To ensure we are one of the tribe, even if that means bending ourselves into shape and hiding our light to belong.

One of the main things that keeps us bound to the tribe is how we produce and use our money. I recently took part in a wonderful online class about reclaiming the things we project onto money with Debbie Henderson and Nadja . We looked at the stories we carry with us and tell ourselves about money, and how those stories reveal limiting beliefs and patterns of thinking that we unconsciously project onto how money is created, spent and invested in our world. We have created a financial system that might be described as a product of the Shadow Masculine - extractive, exclusive and hugely damaging to both society and the biosphere that sustains it. The Feminine is largely ignored, devalued, considered something that needs to be given free, for love. Our best laid attempts to reform the financial system or create alternatives so far tend to hold the same patterns and beliefs. Money is just an energy flow and it amplifies some of our deepest, most intense needs for love and belonging, for survival. That’s hardly surprising when money is so core to our existence and our roots. The class was a real revelation to me about how my own unresolved feelings about not feeling safe have been playing out in my ability to make a decent living doing something I really love. The Shadow Masculine alive in me too.

We don’t need to be as passionate and determined as I am in this search for Truth, Love and Freedom. I don’t have children, a full-time job or property to take care of. I made those choices many years ago. Work shrivelled of its own accord as it always will, and I chose not to substitute it with something that kept my bank account full and flowing. That was one of the increasing dissonances at home. Spending more time in non-human environments - the mountains, woods and lakes near where I used to live - in the studio with my clay (I love to sculpt) and on my yoga mat prompted a process of collapse from the inside out. Different life stages, desires and needs for the next chapter prompted dear hubby and I to part ways, and it wasn’t pretty. All I could really do was to let the river of change takes its course. The Sacred Feminine joining the dance to heal the waters and open the next chapter of life.

Clearly thresholds are life’s invitations to be open to change. I have found in my own journey that we cannot open to what we are not ready for. So even when change appears to come from outside, often out of nowhere, if we look more deeply and honestly about how we are moving through life, we will always find the seeds of it within. Life is not something that happens to us, we co-create it. This kind of knowing, experience and understanding are good friends when we have to deal with things that we may very well not want or like. So does an open relationship with Source, the Generating-Organising-Destroying force of the Universe, Nature, Gaia…whatever we believe in and experience as something bigger than ourselves. Assistance is always available, especially if we ask for it.

To cross a major threshold, we first have to accept that it is here, not try to sidestep it or take another route, even though many of us will have been taught and trained to do everything to keep life stable. Divorce is rarely easy, even when you agree to it or at least understand why the relationship has come to that point. It too touches the most tender parts of ourselves and our needs for love. Leaving your home is full of paradox. Anyone who has ever moved house has perhaps experienced the strange phenomenon that once their living space is free of all their personal belongings, it becomes simply a building. The home is naturally what we create with our loved ones, those belongings, the shared memories of being in that space together. We chose to empty our rented apartment in Milan during the hottest months of the year, simply because we wanted the flexibility of being able to move quickly if it was re-rented. Instead our hard work turned into a surprisingly cathartic part of the whole shebang. It was suddenly abundantly clear to both of us that there was little shared life left, beyond what remained in our hearts and souls. We had literally thrown it out because it no longer served us. The entire experience was deeply moving and freeing, all at once.

We also need support for these challenging moments of our lives. And they are, ultimately just (a series of) moments. That is not to diminish them in any way, more a reminder to be in the moment as much as possible - a good antidote to overwhelm. Guidance, counselling, psychotherapy, legal advice, financial advice…whatever we need, let’s ask for it and trust that it will be provided for. There’s the Sacred again. Personally for me, it’s all about creating space and money for retreats. A guided space where I can explore the more tender parts of myself, those that kept me small, and what arises when that scaffolding falls away. And good friends who can make me giggle, hold me up and be honest about what they see, sit with my tears, not walk away from my emotional outbursts, be with me through all. They are few and far between, and most precious. You know who you are, I am deeply grateful to you all.

Reframing of what is happening is also a great help, so that we can see the gifts that appear at our personal and professional growth edges. Perhaps they are evident, near the surface of our consciousness, ready to be harvested and put into practice in our day to day lives. Or maybe they lie hidden from view, to surface as real gold in the alchemical crucible that transformation offers. Then we need to dig a bit deeper, to sit with what arises when what previously sustained us falls away. We may need to be with the heartache for a while, before we can see the deeper patterns and the perfection in what has come to be. Rapid change brings us opportunities for deep healing, for shining light into what prompted us to unconsciously create a world where we still believe we are separate from one another and our beautiful planet. It gives us the chance to begin to experience unity.

We regenerate from the inside out. Only then do our worldview and priorities expand enough to include everything and regenerate what we see around us. Otherwise we bring our unconscious projections - onto love, relationships, work, money, financial systems, education…all of life. As Einstein so famously said - or at least that’s how the legend goes - we cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.

Happiness is an inside job.

William Arthur Ward

If you would like support crossing a current important threshold in your life, try one of our new short online programme - ‘Get out of your head and into your body.’ You’ll discover a practice for becoming more present in your own skin, instead of living in your head as we so often do. Then you’ll reflect on your experience of it and discover why presence is so useful and indeed essential in the face of change. And finally you’ll choose how you are going to take what you’ve learned back into your everyday life.

Or if you feel ready to be accompanied as you navigate that threshold, I’d be honoured to be your guide. Find out more here and let’s organise a time to chat!

Thank you for reading.