I have crossed many thresholds in my life. None of these personal experiences have ever been rooted in comfort. Yet the nature of this discomfort has always strengthened my resolve. The greatest disservice that I could do to myself is to not learn from the time I spend in the liminal space between what was and what will be.
One of my personal experiences of moving through this liminal space was my coming out as a gay man at the age of 18. My coming out was rooted in shame and fear, which became an established premise in how I approached my experience of the world. Those feelings were a result of my coming of age in the 1980s, during the height of the AIDS crisis.
In retrospect, I can now see the value of the experience, and how it informs my present experience of life. The value for me is the capacity to move through feelings of discomfort with ease and grace.
How do we as a society move through the current threshold we are crossing with ease and grace? It’s a question I have been posing to myself, and therefore to my spiritual community for the past several weeks.
The collective consciousness of this country is currently deeply engaged in an extended period of living in this liminal space. The inconveniences of the pandemic, the discomfort of addressing systemic racism in our societal structures, and the ease with which many can disassociate have reached a boiling point. We are collectively living in anticipation for what will be but have not yet let go of what was. It’s a collective rite of passage.
This rite of passage may be that we are collectively living a coming out story as a society.
We are living a challenging identity of having been less than that which our society once promised and moving toward being a greater expression of humanity. On the other side of threshold is a shift toward something. What that something is, that is entirely up to us.
We can decide if we will shift toward a better world. Will we be the ones who welcome a new world, or will we be the ones who fight it? Will we be the ones who choose to express more love, light, life, kindness and compassion? Will we live in progress, or be rooted in a regressive consciousness of fear, which leads to distrust, and the destructive behavior we are witnessing?
We have the capacity to create a more just and equitable world if we decide to. It will take the collective to address the systemic changes required for such a world. For each of us the call is to live in action.
We can move through this threshold and emerge on the other side a better version of what we once were. Do you have the willingness to do what it takes?
I was recently inspired by the question, “What is your verb?” Who you are is God in form, what you do is the activity of the Divine. How will you choose to act today?
Leave behind that which no longer serves you (irrespective of the comfort it may have once brought). Lead with love in your heart, and gracefully move through this threshold with all of us. Emerge as a better version of yourself, rooted in compassion.
Decide today to stand up.
Decide today to step out.
Decide today to contribute to the collective breath the world needs.
You are the starting point from which our collective life gets better.
