Crossing Life's Thresholds

Essential Keys to Staying Connected to Your Vibrant Stream of Aliveness

Thresholds of great possibility continually arrive in each of our lives...

This coming November 22nd happens to fall upon my 70th birthday. As you can imagine, approaching a threshold of this significance has kindled a season of tender reflections about my mortality as well as prayers for the balance of decades to come. It’s also immersed me in a season of reflection about the longer arc of my life—especially regarding the sacred work in which I’ve made a genuine contribution to the lives of others.

Yes, I’ve been a licensed spiritual therapist and leadership mentor for the last 45 years, as well as designed and facilitated transformational workshops. Yet, I‘ve been guided to contemplate upon the answer to a distinctly inner level of inquiry:

“Throughout the entirety of 7 decades, what core aspect of my work with others has consistently brought me vibrantly alive?”

A profound revelation was delivered to me about the fundamental, underlying current woven within all the transformational work I’ve facilitated in my life. No matter the outer circumstances, my deepest experience of fulfillment have always been sourced in:

Serving as a loving guide to those daring to cross life’s sacred thresholds

This freshly arrived truth about the heart of my life’s expression has further anchored my recognition of the fundamental energies that nourish all truly fulfilled lives:

Profound levels of aliveness unfold to those who have the courage to continually embrace the stream of sacred life thresholds being continuously orchestrated in their favor. In essence, saying “yes” to the perpetual unfoldment of new beginnings, middles and ends.

As long as I can remember, it’s been my experience that our deepest nature, our Soul, is most fulfilled when it is continually embarking upon the new, daring to go where it has never gone before. A brief 3-min. video of my reflections:

Link to Youtube Video

This exquisite stream of ever-emerging transitions plays out in the landscape of both our inner and outer lives—our careers, relationships, creative expression, trauma and healing, health, Self-awareness, financial abundance, spiritual evolution, physical death, etc.

The phrase “threshold” comes from ancient mythology and storytelling traditions, and represents the boundary between the known and the unknown. When someone “crosses a threshold,” they’re taking bold steps into a new adventure, into unfamiliar territory.

Whether it be triumphs, sufferings, blessings or lessons that may have seemed like failures at the time, all our life experiences are opportunities for the Soul to participate in the new—to gain experience, to learn and evolve. Over decades of working with others, I’ve witnessed over and over the refreshing energies of birth and renewal that occur when someone embraces their life as an ever-unfolding evolutionary journey.

Here’s a story about one of my most significant life thresholds:

“Ashamed and terrified. That’s how I felt as I walked onto the stage to receive my diploma after completing a 4-year Masters degree program in Counseling. I was 25 yrs. old and my long-held goal had been to become a licensed therapist and start my own private practice. However, when graduation day arrived, I felt wildly unprepared with the knowledge, skillset and confidence to counsel other people on a professional basis.

“Now what?” was the thought that ran through my mind as I stared at the diploma in my hand. I looked over at my mom in the audience. She was beaming with pride. I….was bewildered and lost. I felt a sense of unworthiness, having secretly concluded that something was very wrong with me. I was not sure where to turn next. Something in me knew there was a missing ingredient—something essential—though I was completely unaware of what it was.”

At certain moments in life, all of us feel an unmistakable pull toward greater aliveness, clarity, and meaning—yet the path forward may be hidden. We can sense a new chapter calling, but the way to access it may feel elusive. Often, these moments are accompanied by emotional pain, a sense of fragility, deep longing, and typically a gradual collapse of an old way of being. There’s an increasing knowing that our life as it currently exists is no longer challenging us to rise to our highest.

These are the times in life when everything we’ve built, believed, or relied upon begins to loosen and drop away are actually the emerging energies of beckoning transformation. This new edge is a doorway...the essence of a threshold.

These are not ordinary transitions—they are pivotal turning points in life where the old can no longer continue, the new has not yet emerged—and we are ripe for Self-discovery, depth and spreading our wings in new ways. Crossing these thresholds can feel both unsettling and full of possibility.

Every Threshold Brings a Life-Changing Transformation...

My transition continues to unfold:

“For most of the next year I walked through my life feeling bereft and disoriented. Looking back at my experience, it is clear now that I’d entered into the initial stage of traversing a transformative life threshold. My previous identity and life passage—6 yrs. studying traditional psychology—was suddenly complete. I had been catapulted into the unknown, yet without solid ground to stand on inside. I felt like I was all alone in the middle of a forest with no map. The next stage of the transformational journey—discovering the expansive threshold I was to cross into the next season of my life—had not yet revealed itself.

“In the months that followed my graduation, I began my research. I found it profoundly liberating to recognize that the BA and MA programs I completed were narrowly focused—solely academic and theoretical in nature (very typical of the 1980’s). Amazingly, in a field in which the fundamental competency of a licensed therapist relies upon the sincerity and depth of their personal healing and awakening journey, over my 6 years of study no opportunity was provided to address and heal my own psychological issues—and there was not even one mention of the spiritual dimension of life. (I grew 

up in a family that was not religious or spiritual in any way—so I hadn’t even recognized it was missing.)

“Less than a year later, I miraculously ‘stumbled’ upon a series of transformational workshops facilitated by those who embodied a powerful presence of love and wisdom…levels of heart expression and leadership that I didn’t even know existed. I was supported in opening to profound, direct experiences of psychological healing and spiritual awakening. I began releasing the layers of trauma I had experienced in my teens reckoning with my sister’s 17-year addiction to heroin and my brother’s 15-year path of murder and violence as a white supremacist gang leader in the California prisons.

“I also enrolled in the most progressive counselor training program in the country: the University of Santa Monica’s (USM) MA Program in Spiritual Psychology. New doorways opened one after another. The culminating moment when I definitively crossed my life-changing threshold and entered a whole new season of my life is emblazoned in my heart’s memory.

“One day in class, it was my turn to counsel a fellow student—not role playing, but a real session working with her painful struggles as an elderly woman in her 80’s. Our session was being observed by the rest of the class. Although I was initially quite nervous given many eyes were watching us, I soon became aware of a deeper presence and inner knowing guiding me. I held a space of immense respect for her as she sat in front of me, opening her heart and expressing her pain so vulnerably. I felt a newly awakening gift of intuition and confidence open and flow through me in the most natural way. Though her life experiences were very different from mine, her Authentic Self was deeply familiar to me. I knew it held the answers she was seeking, and I helped guide her to honor her deeper voices of love and truth.

“The world around us seemed to disappear and time stood still for almost an hour as we worked together to bring healing to one of her core limiting life patterns. Compassion and love were present throughout the session, and I experienced the unmistakable presence of Spirit flowing through me. I had never been so immersed in this level of natural trust and mastery—it was a powerful culmination of two years of wholehearted investment in my psychological and spiritual growth.

“When we were complete and turned to face the others, having forgotten that they were even in the room, everyone was in tears. The class facilitator and each student provided rich, affirming feedback about the depth of love and effectiveness of my counseling skills. With my own direct experience of the session, combined with powerfully being “seen” by others, my heart received profound confirmation that counseling individuals and couples in their process of healing and awakening was my path of service in this lifetime.

“The incorporation of the spiritual dimension as the foundational ground of my life and deeper experience of myself had changed everything. My upside down world was now squarely right side up. This experience of initiation brought with it an abiding sense of comfort, completeness and belonging. Not only had I finally found a true calling in my life, but Spirit was my faithful partner in its unfolding. Shortly after this experience I was invited to join the USM faculty and began my first of 16 years co-facilitating weekend classes for the University’s Masters degree program in Spiritual Psychology.”

An Invitation for Discovery - Journaling

If you’ve read this far, thank you for taking in my new realizations and personal sharing. It is my sincere hope that by reading these words and experiences that your own personal insights and inspiration might be stirred.

With an intention of inviting you into self-discovery and embracing the uniqueness of your life journey, I would like to offer two journaling possibilities for you to explore. I invite you to take some spacious time and consider capturing in writing your relaxed, spontaneous responses to them—and simply see what comes of it:

• Identify one profound life threshold from the past in which you successfully crossed into glorious new territory of aliveness and fulfillment.
  Reconnect and consciously anchor this life-changing experience by capturing in your journal your memories, thoughts and feelings from that time. (If you are called, give yourself the gift of identifying and journaling about additional major thresholds from your life.)

• Are there any dimensions of your current inner or outer life where you are already immersed in crossing an initiatory threshold (in the process of leaving the old and embarking upon the new)?

An Exquisite Life is One That Embraces Thresholds…

As I enter my seventies, I’m taking advantage of the surprising insights that flow from hindsight. Recently, I captured a list of all the major life thresholds I’ve crossed in my lifetime. I have given myself the gift of spending treasured time contemplating and journaling upon this lifetime strand of profoundly felt passages. They continue to reveal their previously “hidden in plain sight” secrets about the beauty and divine orchestration that has always woven its way throughout my journey. How sweet it is to bring a presence of healing and nobility to all my triumphs, all my pains…all my life experiences. They reflect the unique legacy of my Soul’s evolution in this lifetime.

As many of you know, over the last 2+ years I’ve opened wide to many new major life thresholds: meeting my beloved life partner, Joy Taylor; moving to the glorious landscape of Mt. Shasta; celebrating our marriage; taking her last name as an expression of love, reverence, and equality; and recently purchasing the sanctuary home of our dreams. Joy and I have also birthed our work together designing and facilitating workshops centered upon attracting and embracing evolutionary romantic relationships.

For 45 years, as a licensed spiritual therapist and leadership mentor, I’ve had the privilege of guiding individuals and couples as they bravely navigate major life-changing transitions. My work carries a rare field—rooted, deeply attuned and wise—with a spiritual gift for facilitating life-altering openings. While each client and each threshold is unique, I carry a seasoned, intuitive understanding of how to support those who are poised to make a leap forward in spiritual growth, psychological maturity and manifesting abundant success in their outer life.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve completely updated my website to incorporate the new revelations about the underlying nature of all my transformational offerings.

My practice has always been blessed and sustained by virtue of heart-to-heart personal referrals, for which I am immensely grateful. I invite you to visit my site and, as you are called—passing word along about my unique work to anyone traversing a powerful passage of life change and might benefit from my seasoned support.

Lastly, I genuinely welcome receiving your personal reflections here on Substack, as it is my intention to nourish over time a vibrant sacred community of kindred Souls, students of life, devoted to lives of remarkable fulfillment and contribution.

With much thanks & warmth your way, Gavin