Thresholds of Human Experience by Ona Wetherall O’Hara
“Anthroposophy is a path of knowledge that would lead the spiritual in the human being to the spiritual in the cosmos.” Rudolf Steiner
Thresholds as a Metaphor
On our path to knowledge, during the course of human development, we continuously cross thresholds that lead to the realization of pre-birth intention for cosmic attunement. Organizing this evolution through the image of thresholds is simply a metaphoric way of comprehending human experience.
Etymology of "Threshold"
To help grasp the image of a threshold experience, we can first look at the root of the word. By definition, the noun, threshold, is “a piece of wood, metal, or stone that forms the bottom of a door and that you walk over as you enter a room or building.”[1] It can also be considered “the magnitude or intensity that must be exceeded for a certain reaction, phenomenon, result, or condition to occur or be manifested.”[2] According to the Oxford English Dictionary on Historic Principles,[3] threshold is made up of two words: thresh, to tread or trample; and old. “Old” was often spelled “wald” or “wold.” Wald could often mean govern and wold is another name for wood or forest. So, “threshold” can simply mean that which governs what we tread upon or treading upon wood. Thresh is a verb, also known as thrash, which means to separate grain from a plant. In the seventeenth century English version of the King James Bible, the place where grain was gathered after reaping was called the “threshing floor.”[4] This could lead to the term being used to describe the piece of wood that held threshed grain in a barn in its holding area and the idea that this is the origin of the word. The Old English version prescold, “door-sill, point of entering,” can simply be seen as “something to tread upon” from the Old English word version of thresh, prescan, with its original sense of “tread, trample.”[5]
Experience of Thresholds
The threshold can be seen as that which not only marks the crossing from one physical or spiritual realm to another, but also as that which holds something, protects us even, from the flood of the input of an experience. If we envision a threshold as a convexity (something that is curved or rounded outwardly) – anything from a hill, to waves rolling out at sea, to our hips, to an actual threshold between physical spaces, we can see that these do not have very marked beginnings, middles, or ends. The experience of creating an actual threshold acts out this experience, as one strives to create a shape that begins at virtually nothing, gently rises, and ends at virtually nothing on the other side. With this way of perceiving, we can see threshold experiences from the microcosmic level to the macrocosmic level, and can also see them in ourselves as microcosms within a macrocosm. Thus, just as human beings are living metaphors and thresholds are metaphors of human experience, one could say that human beings are threshold beings.
As threshold beings, we continually cross thresholds through experiences and then need to comprehend them, to reintegrate with gained perspective for a metamorphosis of our human condition. When we cross thresholds, we are activating our sympathy and antipathy – our positive and negative feelings. Our interest engages our memory, which invites us to cross thresholds through pictures and forms. Repetition engages our will and repetition and rhythm invite us to cross thresholds through all our senses, gaining personal and spiritual integration and evolution. In this way, we can see that thresholds are crossed in many different ways and from different directions and lines in space and time, in a sort of spherical metamorphosis. In some respects, we get lost in order to find and find in order to get lost; we forget to remember and remember to forget; we awake to sleep and sleep to awake; we are born to die and die to be born.
Threshold Crossing: Wish, Intention, Resolve
Because a threshold is convex, there is a point at which the ascent becomes a descent, the in-breath becomes the out-breath, the rolling of the foot becomes another step forward, and so on. In the scope of the complexity of human experience, it is a very small eye of a needle to thread for a threshold to be crossed in the best possible way. One can easily be carried over, pushed over, trip and fall over, or jump over a threshold, and miss much of what can be experienced and gained.
So how is a threshold crossed and experienced in the best way possible? That question is, in essence, a way of describing the human path of understanding and the cycling of pre-birth intention to cosmic attunement. Although it would seem that how a threshold is crossed would depend greatly on the nature of the threshold being crossed, the overarching healthy process is always the same. Thresholds, physical and spiritual, must be crossed with all the senses available and integrated for the fullest effects of comprehension to be gained. No matter where in space and time a threshold is crossed, if a process of wish (feeling), intention (thinking), and resolve (doing/willing) is present, all senses available will be engaged.
Understanding how thresholds are perceived is also an anthropological study because human sense perception, and the way we perceive reality, has changed dramatically throughout history. Ironically, as we have evolved, what human beings generally perceive as reality has been drastically reduced. This, in turn, can cloud the crossing of thresholds, making them less significant, more overwhelming, or confusing, with a loss of potential and healthy influence to our being .
Accompanying the Thresholds: The Guide and The Witness
There is another threefold aspect of threshold crossing to consider. In addition to a threshold crossing being experienced externally (doing/willing), there are also the internal aspects of guiding (feeling) and witnessing (thinking). A key piece in the exploration of thresholds, and in all human experience, is how, for ourselves and others, we invite guidance and witnessing. Our past experience, observation, and intuition can support guidance. The role of the witness, whether for ourselves or for others, provides objective, uninvolved and unaffected feedback along the way, which informs and also supports the guidance and threshold experiences.
Threshold crossings often revolve around gaining orientation, especially gaining orientation within our life and death processes. These can be at the time of a birth or death and can also be at many other times like saying goodbye to childhood and entering puberty, our child going to school or childcare, the first time one loses a tooth, or moving to a new home. The support of guidance and witnessing can help ease the disorientation, and the sometimes associated fear that comes with it, and support a relationship between intentionality and destiny.
Go With Love
As we begin to associate the inevitable changes that continuously happen to us and all around us with an understanding of threshold experiences; we can unpack and embrace our human experience in a new way that we can naturally comprehend through metaphor. And, we can take comfort in our personal, microcosmic journey reflected in the macrocosmic evolution. As we move through threshold experiences we know there is transformation afoot, we can work through the climb, the peak, and descent, and we can offer love. We can do this because we are interested. Interest inspires understanding, understanding evokes love, and love illuminates intention and informs purpose.
Ona Wetherall O’Hara is a Lead Pre-K teacher, Early Childhood Leader, Governing Team Member, and Parent at Kimberton Waldorf School. She has been a teacher for seventeen years, having received Waldorf Early Childhood Teacher and LifeWays training, and the full Anthroposophical Psychology training. She believes that through relationship-based education that includes a holistic picture of human development, she can support children and parents in their journeys to becoming self-directed, conscious, and compassionate human beings.
[1]The Britannica Dictionary, “Threshold,” https://www.britannica.com/dictionary/threshold.
[2]Hershberger, Leslie, “Thresholds,” https://lesliehershberger.com/thresholds/
[3] Sir James A.H. Murray, et al., eds. Oxford English Dictionary on Historic Principles(Clarendon Press, 1912). https://archive.org/details/oed01arch
[4] American Bible Society, The Holy Bible (King James Version), 1816. Ruth 3:2, p. 268.
[5] Wordfinder, “Threshold,” https://findwords.info/crossword/3299810