Tag: Thresholds
Stepping Through the Threshold

Stepping Through the Threshold

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If you follow my writing you’ve been reading about this Threshold I’ve been at for way over a year. I could feel a part of my work and life here on the Gulf Coast winding down but the next step wasn’t getting clear. It has been an intense time of waiting, listening and waiting.

Recently clarity about my life’s work has come and it came very powerfully in a sudden ‘whoosh‘ of awareness. It felt like the puzzle pieces just clicked together perfectly and it felt absolutely right.

About that same time the women’s circle I facilitate met and one of the members said the most beautiful invocation for selling my home and moving forward with my life’s work. Three days later, before yoga practice on the front porch, I said, “Hey there Great Spirit. Please give me a clear sign that my home will sell soon.” A few hours later I met the people that want to live here, in this amazing live oak forest and in this beautiful home.

Everything is coming together in perfect, Divine order. And not just for me. A friend of mine in New Mexico has been going through a similar struggle to find her place and life’s work and just today everything finished coming together for her move back to Alabama. We were sending smiley face and heart texts this afternoon….lots of them with gratitude to the Universe for the support and love we’re being shown.

So, what will I be doing after I move back to the NC mountains? I want to help people find ways to cope with our increasing grief, fear and frustration over climate change and social changes. I will be offering retreats and one-on-one consultations for those wishing to find healthy coping methods and who wish to deepen their connection to Nature. We need support during this intense time of change with so many unknowns and I suspect the most important action we can take is to listen to the Earth, to go deeper in our connection with Her.

I’ll be updating my website soon and details will be forthcoming. Tonight I am simply grateful to finally…..finally be stepping through that Threshold time of waiting and listening. I can feel the movement after a very long time of stillness. Thankfully, my dear friend and wholeness coach Rose was an amazing witness and guide through this process of waiting. I am truly grateful to her…and to all those who have encouraged me, supported me and sent up prayers for me.

I am ready to step through.
Other Side of the Threshold

Other Side of the Threshold

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On the other side of the threshold lies unlimited possibility. I see an endless sky filled with stars and a single, brilliantly huge star leading the way home—hovering like a diamond in the night sky over mountains calling me home. The embrace of those ancient mountains calls me hometo myself…to frolic in my own freedom.

On the other side of the threshold lives the truth of my being in this world. No longer chained or imprisoned by the push for always something more I can do, be, create I relax in the infinite wisdom that I am…enough. Right now. There is no need to strive for anything more….ever. It’s all here now. I am. Here. Now.

On the other side of the threshold is a different way of being in the world where I no longer feel guilty for resting or sitting in nature with no goal or pen or paper or camera. I am free to meld into the woods, into rock, into the very mountains themselves and simply listen to what they wish to teach me.

On the other side of the threshold is recognized Oneness with all life…from the tiniest grain of sand, to the mightiest humpback whale….from the homeless young man to the executive of a corporation….from the saint to the sinner and despot.

Unbridled compassion for self and others awaits me; tender kindness for all life anticipates my arrival; beauty and grace prepare a place for me….as I step through….

Now.

_______

All photographs copyright Simone Lipscomb.
Tairseachas

Tairseachas

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While singing during the morning session of the Celtic spirituality retreat I went into meditation and saw myself wearing a dark blue cloak with a triple goddess spiral clasp at the throat. I was wearing tall boots and splashing in huge puddles that created rain when I stomped. I was near the bee hive hut where I first met Fiona, the white horse.

Fiona was the name I ‘heard’ while our group was with her the day before and it wasn’t until I was researching the origin of it that my jaw dropped: it is a Latinized form of the Gaelic word meaning ‘white’ or ‘fair.’ Maybe I remember Gaelic after all.

Back to the vision…

When I met Fiona I jumped on her back with no reins or saddle because no self-respecting free spirit would ever allow herself to be controlled. With her mane and my long hair flying we flew through the star-filled sky. Freedom and power!

The stomping in the vision was a proclamation of power. This is who I am! This is the leaping-off place! 


After the gathering, each of us went off on our own for a Threshold walk. In Celtic Spirituality, Thresholds are important markers. They are inner doorways, places between two worlds, transitions from one place to another, but there are physical expressions of them: mists, doorways, gateways.

On my walk I was greeted by a sweet black and white dog and so turned in the direction he led. Immediately after turning I saw a beautiful dapple horse on the hill near the cafe. Down the lane and past the Irish Cob and her filly….my feet carried me to see Fiona.

After walking down the steep hill and through the stile in the rock wall, through small rock-enclosed pastures I came to the bog just before the bee hive hut. Water was standing almost knee-deep in places due to heavy rains. I was just one pasture away from the hut so the only choice was to move forward.

Rain gear keeps rain off. Gore-tex boots are waterproof….unless water is over the ankles. As I splashed through the water, lifting my feet high for efficiency, I remembered the vision and the powerful stomping. This is who I am! This is the leaping off point!

Photograph of Fiona taken on a sunny day….

After sloshing and stomping through the bog I crested the small hill to find Fiona waiting for me. I fed her sweet grass and then ducked into the stone hut, where a monk from perhaps the 8th century had lived and others after him, and squatted out of the rain.

Fiona stuck her head inside and whinnied. She wanted so badly to be out of the rain. I fed her large handfuls of lush grass from another pasture before leaving her–consolation for her lack of shelter. And I thanked her for being a guide to the Otherworld for me and assisting in my moving through the Threshold to freedom.

…

Tairseachas….Gateway….Portal…Threshold

 
Threshold Friend

Threshold Friend

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It’s not about what I should do. It’s about what my passion calls me to with such force and magnetism that I am lost and starving without It.

It can be a lonely path, for those not equally moved fail to understand the depth of commitment required to move, step-by-step, toward that invisible, unnamable voice that whispers…Come.

But in this journey, one is not abandoned. The pilgrim is never alone. Each threshold brings a new ally, a new soul friend.