November 13, 2023
Creating Endings, Starting new Beginnings
By Amba Gale
Given today’s turbulent external climate, being centered, present, and leading ourselves and others from our center, from our Source, our light, is so very critical. As we brighten our own light, we brighten others’. So being awake, being aware, being honest, and being real as we accept our current experience and ground ourselves underneath the confusion that lives on the surface of everyday life is critical.
Today, in behalf of opening space for you to do some direct inner work, if you’d like to, I’d like to share with you the first three paragraphs of the introduction of my book, Crossing Thresholds, Island Reflections, as what I wrote at the time, pre-Covid, still seems so relevant today. Each paragraph points to an inner journey we are being invited to lean into on behalf of creating a sense of equanimity, of peace, within ourselves. In this roller-coaster world of ours, pausing, reflecting, and addressing certain questions can be a gift we can give ourselves.
The book, which is comprised of poems, photographs, and reflective questions, came out of a breakthrough passage my own poetic Muse took me through in the summer of 2019, when I very much needed to create a new and deeper connection with my own, now adult daughter, who I had still been seeing, and treating, as a child. After all, I know best, don’t I? (That ought to give you a hint of what it was like for her….)
If you want to do some work around the themes that each of the first three paragraphs open for us to consider, you are welcome to. I will be inviting you to reflect upon some relevant questions. I view these questions you can contemplate as “inner work.” I warn you: in the rush of fulfilling today’s commitments, truly engaging in this work will warrant that you gift yourself with the gift of time.
All right? Here we go!
Paragraph 1:
“We human beings seem to have an addiction to certainty, to stay with what is familiar, because it is safe, with what is predictable, controllable, and certain. We are resistant to change, and yet, sometimes in life, we come to those special times of threshold crossing in which accepting a change of what is occurring externally while crossing inside a threshold within is just what is called for.”
Inner work: In times of outward change, accepting our circumstances and embracing our circumstances are keys to living a meaningful and fulfilling life.
You could ask yourself: What change is occurring that it is time for me to accept, or, even, hold as a gift?
What is the next inner threshold for me to cross?
Paragraph 2:
“Perhaps it is a crossing to another way of being, or another way of knowing, or another way of relating. Perhaps it is, simply, a ‘letting go’—a letting go of a certain way of life that is changing its form, or someone dear to you who is leaving, or we are leaving them, or a letting go of a way of being, a letting go of something that once worked for us but now no longer does.”
Inner work: ask yourself–
Where in my life is “letting go” being called for?
What is there to let go of?
Paragraph 3:
“Our lives are not really one continuum if we truly examine ourselves and notice our development, but ongoing small deaths and rebirths, if we are, indeed, committed to growing. Who we were in one iteration of our lives is not the same in the next. Once we cross that threshold into our next new life, we see the world with new eyes. And new perception means new possibilities, new horizons, new opportunities, new presents, and new futures.”
Inner Work: ask yourself–
Who am I now?
What new beginnings and new horizons are in front of me now?
What new possibilities? Opportunities?
I invite you to insert some time to reflect upon these questions, perhaps through journaling, perhaps through meditating, perhaps with a thinking partner, with someone you love, with your own inner guides. If you go still enough, deep enough, your wisdom Self will speak to you and guide your way.
And, as a gift, I have invented an eleven-minute guided visualization for you to engage in lieu of a poem this week, where you will create a sanctuary for yourself and meet a wisdom guide who can address these same questions with you. If you do choose to do this work, let your inner critic go, and take whatever comes to you.
