Thresholds

Thresholds are activating. No matter what the threshold is, it brings with it change, novelty, and mystery - we are forced to confront our fear of the unknown, our mortality. And we all have sequential patterns or dynamics that play out as we approach a threshold; our nervous system starts sparking and zinging in the particular ways we have learnt to approach different stages of cycles, the way we move between spaces.

What are thresholds?

A threshold is not just a physical doorway. It’s a transitional moment. It’s the delineation between spaces. And by spaces I mean physical spaces, yes, like the door between rooms, and I also mean the other physical, psychological, emotional, energetic spaces that we move in and out of, on both a micro and macro level.

Think of the physical places you move between daily - home, work, gym, cafe, home - as well as energetic and emotional contexts like being in nature, engaging with art, watching a movie. Then there’s social events and rituals around life stages, big and small, like birthdays, anniversaries, deaths, buying a house. A decision is also a threshold. In each of these contexts, we are entering into different layers of energy, power dynamics, connection and relationship. 

Thresholds are part of a sequence

We are also moving sequentially through creative cycles, the cycles of life.

• Preparation

• Beginning

• Middle

• Ending

• Integration

We each have phases of a cycle that we feel comfortable with, and others that we resist, avoid, override and generally try to pretend they don’t exist, because our relationship to them is coupled with powerful experiences that feel overwhelming or unpleasant.

Personally, I love to prepare - learning, researching, organising - but beginning has been so difficult for me. In the last two years I’ve come to understand that I had a difficult beginning in this incarnation, along with a bunch of ancestral patterns which have shaped my relationship to getting started on.. anything.

In the beginning, I become immediately aware of the journey ahead and feel underprepared despite the preparation I’ve done - possibly because the preparation has been mental, and the mental map is not the territory. I wonder if I have enough resources or capacity or if I’m good enough to take the journey or make it to the end. In the past, I’ve used activation, speed and urgency to get over the beginning quickly, and then I wonder why I’m burnt out or not where I expected to be.

Because I haven’t faced the threshold head-on, and oriented to what I’m saying yes to, and metabolised all of the information (logistical and material as well as psychic and energetic) it becomes disorienting and I end up pulling back to reassess, and starting again, whereas if things followed a deeper, more natural course, I’d be building momentum. Which all feeds the fear at the beginning - I got it wrong! Now I have to start again! But I’m stuck! - and creates a lot of urgency, and a lot of resistance to trying something. It felt like each attempt was draining my energy.

I also find endings difficult. I generally jump on a momentum wave and speed up where the natural energy is tapering, or grip and brace and hold on for wayyy too long past the expiry date, especially in relationships. Having access to Fight in my nervous system has helped me embrace endings and have better boundaries.

And I love integration - I can reflect on the lessons I’ve learnt, and the meaning of experiences, and then look towards the future and start preparing, with ease and enjoyment. Optimisation and problem-solving comes naturally to me, but can be influenced by perfectionism, and it’s difficult to begin… see how it flows?

Exploring the foundation of our experience as we transition through these sequential stages, and understanding our personal patterns, helps us to find more ease as we move through creative projects, through relationships, through literally everything in life.

How to restore natural movement

One of the practices I’ve played with lately is tuning into a stage I’m finding difficult, and then attuning to a field that has a wider, more easeful quality in this stage, something that knows how to navigate it.

The process

For example, imagine the way a seed sprouts - it doesn’t think about it, it knows exactly what to do, and there’s also a natural sequence to it that I can use to restore my own sequence. First, the seed sits in soil, brimming with life. Then there’s a split in the shell, and a friction as the shoot pushes through first the shell, and then the earth, and finally breaks the surface to find the sun.

I can see myself reflected in that process, especially in how I’ve navigated this iteration of my business. The split in the shell for me feels extremely vulnerable, as I emerge from a tight little cocoon after a lot of souping, cooking and becoming more potent - me and my idea gestating together.

There’s a strong, sandpapery friction as the new shoot rubs past the shell - a necessary intensity to make sure life can be sustained after the shell, and completely natural, but mate, it rubs! Actually starting, sharing an idea, committing to a direction. - this is where I’d often collapse and circle back on myself, and this is where 1:1 work has helped me to make it past this stage, after a lot of work to build capacity around activation, and grow pathways for sympathetic energy to move in my nervous system.

The environment

Then, the soil represents a nourishing environment with all the right ingredients to support growth, and it totally envelops the shoot - there’s still a lot of contact, a lot of support, holding, containment and stabilisation - to me, this is where I immerse in the right group containers.

There’s also a longer sustained movement through the soil, rather than the short burst to break through the shell, and the right accountability, community and daily practice helps me keep showing up to the journey of seeing if this idea has a sustainable form.

Finally the shoot breaks the surface, where there’s a lot of exposure to the elements and the wider world. To me, this stage is more of the middle, where I am visible, stable enough, and in my business I’m starting to see consistency in my systems and income, and that’s able to grow.

Incarnation

When I look at this sequence, I see how much more comfortable and easy it is for me to stay in integration and preparation, in the underworld or the unformed or the void, and never move into ‘becoming’ - and that’s been my soul journey, leaning how to ‘become’, to instantiate, to incarnate more fully.

Some folks really resist those stages and struggle to ever approach the void. I’ve guided some clients through this process recently and it’s been so insightful - it functions not only as a reading of the current state, but also as an active healing process that can reorganise how we do life on a foundational level.

How about you? What stages of the sequence do you find easy, and which do you struggle with? Let me know - reply to hello@emmashields.com

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