Just to be clear, there's a whole lot on the other side of the door. When you walk through, the journey has just begin. From where I stand now, my passage through the door a few years past, I'm pretty sure the journey never ends.
It is a gift that I get to serve as testament that change--big, radical change--remains possible well into our lives. My own first step through the door happened a few months after my fortieth birthday, and the path of change in the years since has been sometimes exhilarating, often frightening, and consistently challenging. It wasn't long before it developed a momentum all its own--it seems that once you sufficiently commit to the path, there's no stepping off it.
On my good days, it's all a shit-ton of fun, this adventure toward a better life. Yes, I have to wrestle every day with habits that go all the way back to childhood, and habits that old get deeply embedded in the body and don't let go easily, having served us in their way for a long, long time. I bring consciousness to trying to change, and then something happens and I fall right back into my patterns. Okay, then, I'll try again. I bring consciousness to trying to change, and then something else happens and I fall right back into my patterns. It's kind of like a dance with my past self. For a long time, he led the dance. Now I do.
I think of it as my character. And I try my very hardest to see myself as the player, and sometimes I make great player choices and am rewarded with (the knowledge that I am an infinite being of light and love) exp.
Xo