Crossing the Threshold

Validating Felt Sensation

It was 2016 and I was feeling unhappy.  Something was amiss.  I knew there had to be more to life than this, but what was it?  If the answer was out there then why couldn’t I find it?  It seemed to be stored away behind some figurative locked door.

Looking to solve the mystery, I was reading books like crazy and paying special attention to any ideas of interest.  And I was remaining open-minded.  Instead of writing off stories that sounded outlandish, I now wondered if they might be true.

I tried to lay judgement aside best I could.  My new answer to the question of “true or false” was “it’s possible.”  Leaving my mind open in this way was the key to the door I was looking to unlock.

It was during this time that I came across a simple Facebook post online.  It was a quote from Paulo Coelho’s book, The Alchemist:  “And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”   

“Could this be true?,”  I asked myself.  “Was the universe conspiring to help me?”  Answering “it’s possible” to this question triggered what felt like an explosion going off inside of me, starting in my heart and radiating out.  It felt like waves of love.

It would have been easy to write this feeling off as whimsy, but something in me would not.   I would not deny that I had felt this “explosion” inside of myself.  Instead, I acknowledged the truth of it.

It was in the validation of felt sensation that I was able to cross the threshold and glimpse what lay on the other side of the door.

Some might call such acknowledgment childish fantasy.  I would agree that it was child-like in that it was flavored with joyous innocence.  But this was not fantasy.  It was subtle and nuanced, but it was real.

For the second time in only a few weeks, I was overcome with a sense of reverence and humility.  I bowed my head in thanksgiving.