Threshold
The beginning of a new experience, idea, of life, or decision. It can be the point of balance between opposites or different situations or functions. To cross the threshold is to begin the new thing or make a change that also means commitment or difficulty in going back. Traditionally a wife is carried across the threshold to prevent her stumbling, turning back, or escaping.
There are so many thresholds though – that between waking and sleeping. So strong in some people they can’t remember dreams. There is the threshold of difference between the sexes; the threshold between childhood and teens; between life and death. So, you will need to look at the other features in your dream to decide what the threshold is.
The word Thresh means to separate the grain or seeds from (a cereal plant or the like) by some mechanical means, as by beating with a flail or by the action of a threshing machine. Also, to beat as if with a flail. So, a threshold can mean you pass through a vigorous experience that changes you or prepares you in some way, maybe by taking away things that you protected yourself with.
In the inner world there is also what has been called The Guardian of the Threshold. This is a concept which was originally defined in the Esoteric study of Freemasonry. It is that which has to be faced before any candidate can become an “Entered Apprentice” on the path of Initiation. The student can only manage this task to see the TRUTH of all his personalities under the supervision of a master Mason.
Through sincere attempts to advance on in their inner growth, the student evokes the Dweller. He or she is also unconsciously, or consciously, calling up the negative aspect of their karma from previous incarnations. To achieve our goal of adeptship we must first work out our bad karma. When this dark cloud, which stands between us and the Sun, is dispersed, we can bathe in the Divine Light. In facing our Dweller, we draw the poison element out of our past lives.
As this is gradually achieved, we are left with the positive experience of past incarnations. We have learnt to resist the destructive, and now we have achieved the creative. This will manifest in our life as the seeping through of past powers, abilities and knowledge. We often do not know just how much this is true until we come to some emergency or crisis in life. Then, to our great surprise, knowledge, power and ability flow through us to a degree we never realised we possessed. But we find ourselves not in a struggle against darkness, or the urge to merge with the light, but a state of balance between the two.
Example: Before I went to New Mexico I had a spontaneous realisation about Lurch in my House of the Ancestors dream. I realised that of course, Lurch in that comedy series is representing Frankenstein’s monster. And Frankenstein’s monster was a composite made up of many dead bodies, dead people. So of course, he is a wonderful depiction of the Dweller of the Threshold, the karma from past lives, the bits that need to be faced, healed, or met and integrated.