Abundance Threshold

Consider abundance thresholds. Points along the wealth quest where you need to cross over a boundary, a resistance, sometimes a whole way of being and looking at the world, leaving the known for unknown shores. You enter a liminal space where you are disorientated, confused. Where all your stable datums are turned inside out and you don’t know where you are, or even who you are. This also happens at times of great shift – psychologically or spiritually – or when you have experienced a momentous event. Sometimes you stop at the threshold and will not cross. You can become lost or frozen. To get from wherever you are to greater abundance, to the next level however, you need to cross that threshold. See it, acknowledge it and then cross it to get to the other side. This is not just a theoretical or symbolic or even psychological threshold, it’s an actual change of everything as you have known it. It is the hero’s quest.

I recently delivered a six-week online course called Wealth Journey – The Hero’s Quest. It was a deconstructed version of the classic Hero’s Quest which typically covers separation-initiation-return. I angled it on the wealth journey and focused on a few of the less emphasised aspects of the quest, like preparation, threshold guardians and the threshold itself.

A brief sidebar for those who may be unfamiliar with the Hero’s Journey. It underpins many of the ancient myths, classic movie adventures and books like Star Wars and Lord of the Rings and, of course, the ancient classics like The Odyssey in Greece and the Mahabharata in India. In the story or myth, the hero or hero-to-be, is living an ordinary life before he gets the Call to Adventure. This may be an invitation by a mentor, like Frodo gets from Gandalf the wizard in Lord of the Rings. It may be something sudden and circumstantial like when Dorothy is flung into the hurricane in Wizard of Oz. It may even be an inner calling, which in Jungian terms is a call for individuation, or in spiritual terms the call of the Divine – the call to connect with and express one’s enlightenment. We see the Buddha heeding that call and leaving lavish life as he knows it to pursue an unknown path.

“The journey of the hero is about the courage to seek the depths; the image of creative rebirth;                    

the eternal cycle of change within us; the uncanny discovery that the seeker is the mystery which the seeker seeks to know.”    Joseph Campbell

All heroes set off into the unknown in one way or another. They are required to separate from the known world, the tribe – hence the word threshold – which I will discuss in a moment. Once the hero has left, they undergo many trials and tribulations. They are tested, thwarted, blocked, helped, by magical allies and foes, supernatural powers, ordinary beings, tasks. They may receive or discover supernatural talismans and gifts, powers they never knew they had. They continue on their quest to find their prize – the holy grail, the golden fleece, the thing that will win the heart of the princess.

At some point in the journey the hero has a great revelation, a transformation perhaps, an apotheosis (divinisation). The hero is changed and it is this changed form that needs to cross the threshold back again to the normal reality, bringing gifts for the world and containing that altered state of being – this is known as The Return. Some heroes never return and some never even leave – they never heed the call, or are unwilling to pursue it.

You can examine our own hero’s journey. You can reflect on whether you are the hero of your tale. What myth are you living? You can ask yourself, what is my quest? Are you in your own story or in somebody else’s tale? Are you living out an ancestral or tribal myth? And, starting with this overarching broad outline, you can go further and consider your wealth journey. What is that about? Are you the hero of that tale? And whereabouts along the journey are you at present?

Where you are is very important, as it will determine what needs to happen next. At any moment in time we are simultaneously at all points along the journey, as time and the journey are circular and holographic. We are always at both the beginning and at the end of something. Battling foes and helped by allies. Important to identify which is which. There is always magical help at hand if we will see it.

‘Each entered the forest at the point that they had chosen, where it was dark and there was no path’ from Quest for the Holy Grail

Seeing is very important. It is said that at some point in the journey you will find yourself in a dark forest. The grail castle is in the centre of the forest for those who have eyes to see it. Many will walk past it unseen for they are not looking, they are seeking. That is part of the training and the preparation – how to see, not with our normal eyes but with the eyes of faith, hope, and imagination. For we are seers more than seekers, yet we spend our lives seeking, always seeking. And when we constantly seek we do not see the thresholds that may be before our very eyes and so cannot cross them.

The threshold is the place that separates ordinary from extraordinary, the sacred and the mundane. In Japanese culture the torii gate marks a boundary between the pure inner and the impure outer worlds. Such a division is also symbolic, demarcating the outside world as well as protecting one’s own inner sanctum. So temples and sacred places have torii gates. These mark the transition point and they draw your awareness to it. The gate reminds you that you are leaving the ordinary world behind and entering sacred terrain. The inner purity of a home is also protected by the genkan, the entryway to a home where shoes are left and the outer world is separated from the inner.

In Chinese culture too, walls separate the outer and the inner, with many gateways and gardens creating thresholds of protection and awareness. In good Feng Shui a threshold (which can also be defined as a physical piece of wood) marks doorways – especially the front door. This is a piece of wood, three to five cm thick, which requires you to step over before entering that room. This has energetic significance allowing grounding and also good flow of energy.

The inner courtyards found in classical and modern Greek and Roman homes as well as in lots of architecture in Europe, India and Africa point to the deep acknowledgement of the existence of inner and outer thresholds and worlds.

A threshold is a space of crossing over – sometimes from ordinary to super-ordinary reality. It is a separation, as in the threshing of corn to separate the chaff. It represents moving from the known to the unknown. So when you set off on your journey, your hero’s quest, your wealth quest, this crossing has to take place. Something deep and fundamental has to change and there needs to be willingness for this. The hero needs to accept the quest, the calling, the urge.

Joseph Campbell talks about knowing what it is that calls you. “You know what you like, so hold onto that. You don’t have to define it,” he says. Nor do you have to seek the approval of others, who may be acting as threshold guardians.

The threshold guardians create challenges to your crossing the threshold. They may be your common variety naysayers – friends, family, those close to you who may feel that keeping your day job or maintaining the status quo is a safer bet. They may be internal – fears, beliefs, resistance to change. They may be actual monsters and demons when you are on a classic ancient hero’s quest or a modern vision quest in the wilds. In the wealth journey, threshold guardians may be rules and regulations, minimum cash requirements, qualifications and many other different forms of barrier that need to be crossed or transcended in order to start or to continue and, most importantly, to return from the journey. Crossing the threshold is not for the faint-hearted. 

“Heroes are usually wanderers, and wandering is a symbol of longing, of the restless urge which never finds its object, of nostalgia for the lost mother.” Carl Jung

 Yet the hero sets off on the quest, regardless. Foolhardiness. Bravery. Youthful ignorance is needed. What I call believing in the impossible. The great film director and producer Orson Welles was asked to what he attributed his great success. He replied, ‘ignorance’. He went on to say, that the amazing work that he created, which is still considered ground-breaking technically, was done because he ‘didn’t know it couldn’t be done’. He thought he could film whatever he could see. He was unaware of the limitations, so they did not affect him. He had allies too, helpers that reinforced his ‘ignorance’ and supported his vision. His cinematographer Gregg Toland, for example, also had extraordinarily naïve expectations. He told Welles that a shoot should, ‘take a reasonable person half a day, or a day to complete.’ Welles went along with that and so they created work inside impossible time frames. Not just any work, but film that is still revered, nearly 80 years later as a landmark achievement. Citizen Kane, which was Orson Welles’ first film, is studied by film scholars to this day and is considered by many critics to be one of the best films of all time.

So here we have someone who is not only unaware of threshold guardians, he is even unconcerned about the thresholds themselves, so focused is he on his quest. It’s this kind of focus and intent that are needed to fly over thresholds and vanquish threshold guardians or turn them into helpers with your sheer determination and fixation on the quest and your willingness to embark upon and, most importantly, to complete the journey. No matter what. It can never be a half-baked thing. Those who can take the wealth or leave it, who are unsure about what it even means, or how much it is, should rather stay at home for they don’t have what it takes to cross the threshold. They are not ready. Mainly because they do not believe and, when you do not believe, when your mind is not with you, then you will be vanquished by the demons and naysayers, by fears and doubt and you will not cross the threshold. You may find yourself stuck in liminal space – that space between spaces where you, forever after, talk about that dream you had that almost happened, or that one time you earned a few million, or that experience you had where your partner/lover/business/staff let you down. 

Consider which threshold you are at, in this moment. What threshold needs to be crossed for you to go to the next level? Are you ready for the journey? What do you need to do to become ready? Are you perhaps stuck in some threshold or uncrossed rite of passage from the past? What do you need to do to cross over? To mark that rite of passage? To complete and end it. Do it! It’s never too late to mark a rite of passage, or to cross a threshold.

Discover the myth you are living. Become the hero of your tale. If ever the world needed heroes, it is now!

‘The Hero’s Journey always begins with the call.’ Joseph Campbell