Wisdom From One of My Favorite Mystics on Crossing THRESHOLDS byJohn ODonohue

 

Wisdom for those Going through Change, or Feeling a Change is Needed
Thresholds by John ODonohue

This week I stepped over the threshold to move to the Pacific Northwest, on this island I am pretty sure is the Shire, off the coast of Seattle for the next year. Noah and I signed a lease on a home on the Puget Sound. So for the next year I am here, at least.

This threshold for me has been so much more than about moving, as thresholds and changes are. 

When you have the awareness to see that the change that is occurring or that is beckoning you to make is not happening TO you, the change is happening THROUGH YOU… 

You gain power + presence + peace. 

If you resist or bargain, like I see many people do (and like I have myself), you suffer, you short circuit and you cut off the possibility to create MORE of what you really desire, at a heart and soul level. 

During threshold crossings and personal changes that are asking us to catalyze ourselves and our live we need more support, not less. Or we can get stuck, lost or worse we go back to the ‘old’ ways.

So from my heart to yours, one of my greatest teachers and supporters, although not here in physical body any longer, is very much still in presence through his words which have guided, held and led me, John O’Donohue, Celtic Mystic, poet, priest and who was also a sought out advisor to companies and leaders about how to keep the soul alive in systems that have often been led astray to suck out the soul, vs support it to thrive.  

Thresholds

“The beauty of nature insists on taking its time. Everything is prepared. Nothing is rushed. The rhythm of emergence is a gradual slow beat always inching its way forward; change remains faithful to itself until the new unfolds in the full confidence of true arrival. Because nothing is abrupt, the beginning of spring nearly always catches us unawares. It is there before we see it; and then we can look nowhere without seeing it…

Change arrives in nature when time has ripened. There are no jagged transitions or crude discontinuities. This accounts for the sureness with which one season succeeds another. It is as though they were moving forward in a rhythm set from within a continuum.

To change is one of the great dreams of every heart – to change the limitations, the sameness, the banality or the pain. So often we look back on patterns of behavior, the kind of decision we make repeatedly and that have failed to serve us well, and we aim for a new and more successful way of living.

So often we opt to continue the old pattern, rather than risking the danger of difference.

We are also often surprised by change that seems to arrive out of nowhere. We find ourselves crossing some new threshold we had never anticipated. Like spring secretly at work with the heart of winter, below the surface of our lives huge changes are in fermentation. We never suspect a thing. Then when the grip of some long-enduring winter mentality begins to loosen…

We find ourselves vulnerable to a flourish of possibility and we are suddenly negotiating the challenge of a threshold. 

At any time you can ask yourself:

1.At which threshold am I now standing?

2.What am I leaving?

3.What is preventing me from crossing my next threshold?

4.What gift would enable me to do it?

A threshold is not a simple boundary; it is a frontier that divides two different territories, rhythms and atmospheres.

It is wise in your own life to be able to recognize and acknowledge the key thresholds;

To take your time to feel all the varieties of presence that accrue there;

To listen inward with complete attention until you hear the inner voice calling you forward.”

 

** Words from John O’Donohue

 

To learn and receive more of John’s work visit his website below. Love love his book Anam Cara and Eternal Echoes. 

https://www.johnodonohue.com/

 

Photo by: Caleb Jones on Unsplash https://unsplash.com/@gcalebjones

 

To receive some courage and clarity during a threshold crossing, tune into Feminine Power Time with Christine Arylo – here’s a good episode to start with: 

FOLLOW YOUR HEART, NO MATTER WHAT: STEPPING INTO THE CHANGE WITH COURAGE – click here.