At this point in the seeker’s journey, reluctance has been overcome, the decision has been made, and the purpose and intention have been set. Supernatural Aid has been found, and the quest can begin.

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and the Crossing of the First Threshold is the first step on the journey. Although there is still a long way to go, at least the quest has begun. At times when you feel overwhelmed at how much still remains, just remember to focus on one step at a time. If you are walking a thousand miles, and you focus on the fact that you have a thousand miles to go, you’ll get so discouraged that you’ll never take the first step. But if you just focus on the first step, and nothing but the first step, then focus on the next step, and only on the next step, and so on, the thousand miles will be over before you know it. It may help to remember that life is a journey, and not a destination. The key to walking in the Way of the Coyote is to enjoy the trip, in the present moment.

The whole purpose of setting out to answer the Call of the Coyote is to partake in a process of self-discovery that leads to the ability to live fully according to your own true nature. To answer the Call and to follow the Way means learning who you are, and what your place in the world might be. It is a quest to seek power of a spiritual nature.

The Way of the Coyote is the way of personal spiritual power. Such power is not power in the way the world conceives of power. It is not power that is involved in the accumulation of material possessions, or power that seeks to dominate and destroy other people. It is power that operates in the spiritual realm. Such energy is the power to master the self, to heal, to nurture, and to gain wisdom.

As you set out on the Way of the Coyote, you are leaving your old life behind. This means that you have already learned everything your old way of being in the world could teach you. Sometimes the baggage we carry from this older life as we cross the threshold can hinder us. Sometimes it can help us. In either case, the old way of being is part of your own personal mythology. At some point, this personal mythology has either failed you, or no longer satisfies you. If it did, there would be no reason to answer the Call of the Coyote, and you would have never begun this journey.

As you look back on the story of your life up until this point, consider why you find yourself now on a new path. What did your personal mythology teach you about the path you now seek to walk? If you are like many others, you may have been told that the Way of the Coyote is a dark and dangerous path. You may have been warned against following such a path. It may go against your religious upbringing, or it may seem too “weird” to some people in your life. People in your life may have actively discouraged you from answering the Call of the Coyote. Perhaps you were told that life is about the accumulation of material possessions, and not about answering a spiritual calling. Maybe you learned this from people whose idea of success is the accumulation of property rather than the accumulation of personal power. Maybe it’s just frightening to contemplate going off on a path you know little or nothing about. If these or any other reasons are conspiring to keep you from crossing the first threshold, don’t despair. With much risk comes much reward. As Mark Twain said, “Why not go out on a limb? That’s where the fruit is.”

4.5 Time is an Illusion

By the time you finish reading this sentence, the experience of reading it will lie in the past. At which point does the present become the past? Now? How about now?

How about never?

Where exactly does the past lie, anyway? Once you have finished reading this sentence, the only place it will exist is in your memory. This means that all of your past experiences, all of those journeys you have already taken, only exist in what you remember about them. The past is a product of the mind.

Let’s turn to the future now.

Without turning the page, do you know what lies ahead in this book? You may have read the table of contents, so you might have a general idea of what is to come, but can you, without turning the page, tell me what the fifth word of the second paragraph on the next page is?

Of course not, because you haven’t experienced it yet.

The problem with catastrophizing about what may come is that such thinking tries to predict the future. We are quite good at negative thinking. This is because negative thinking helps us to plan for the future. We look towards what might go wrong as a means of being prepared for any contingency. Without a little planning and prediction, we would never make any progress. If I don’t plan to make the house payment, I may not have a house in the future. If I don’t plan to eat today, and the next day, and the next, I might eventually starve to death.

But there is a difference between planning and catastrophizing. Catastrophizing involves focusing our attention only on the bad things that might happen in the future. I sometimes refer to it as musturbating, because it often takes the form of phrases like, “I must do this,” or “I must not do this.”

The difference between planning and catastrophizing is that planning involves setting concrete, measurable goals for the future while catastrophizing often ends in a storm of musterbation. Planning is a way of relieving anxiety, not of causing it. So if you’re feeling anxious while planning, you’re probably musturbating.

When you find yourself anxious while planning for the future, check to see if you are indeed catastrophizing or musterbating. Planning for the future is a way of anticipating negative outcomes and preparing for them so they don’t catch you unprepared further down the river. It is a way of relieving anxiety by minimizing future catastrophes. When planning for the future, watch out for statements that focus on negative outcomes rather than positive ones. This doesn’t mean that you cannot anticipate and plan for negative outcomes. If it did, nobody would ever buy health insurance! What it means is that you’re planning for negative outcomes in order to prevent or guard against them. When discussing possible negative outcomes during planning, it is as a means of having positive outcomes at a later time.

What if we do find ourselves catastrophizing? How do we escape it?

It’s called “catastrophizing” for a reason. It focuses only on potential future catastrophes. But unless you have a crystal ball, you cannot know the future with any certainty. This can be a scary proposition for people who have experienced catastrophes in the past, but if I find myself anticipating further disasters in the future, that possible future only exists in my mind. It is just as likely that something good might happen in the future. But if I’ve set my perception filter to only anticipate and look for bad outcomes, will I see a positive opportunity even if it presents itself?

Our perception filters only exist in our minds. The good news is that we are in charge of how those filters are set. We can choose which events in our lives to pay attention to.

The past only exists in memory, and the future is just an educated guess about what may or may not happen further downstream. Both past and future are nothing but products of the mind. We can consciously choose in the now which thoughts and feelings about past or future to give our energy to. When we do so, we are living in the now.

When we have anxiety, stress or depression, it is almost inevitably because we are dwelling on the past or on the future. As you read this sentence, are you having any stressful thoughts or feelings? If so, how many of those stressful thoughts or feelings are about what is going on right now, as you read this? How many of them are the result of things that happened in the past, or how many may or may not happen in the future?

To dwell on memories of the past, or projections of memory onto the future, is to be trapped by the mind. In the now, we can escape the mind trap and make conscious decisions on how much attention to give to those thoughts and memories. When we escape the mind trap, we step outside of time to the now. Here in the now, the past and the future cannot touch us unless we choose to let them.

In the now, we recognize that time is just the mind’s way of keeping everything from happening at once. Once we grasp the concept that time is just an illusion, we are free to connect with our True Self, in nature, and in the present moment.

4.6 Reality and the Now

“Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

-Phillip K. Dick

As we discussed in the previous section, the past only exists in memory, and the future is just a projection of our memories. This means that both the past and the future only exist in our minds. The present moment is always becoming the past as we continue to move forward in time, and the future is always becoming the now as we continue to move forward in time.

Is time real? If the past and the future are products of memory and projections of the mind, do they have any real existence outside of this present moment? If so, how? Can a thing exist only in memory?  If the past and the future are just imagined experiences created by the mind, then we are free in the now to create different experiences.

“Time is an illusion. Lunchtime, doubly so.” – Douglas Adams, Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

If there is any such thing as real time, then it can only exist right here, right now. If there is any such thing as free will, then it too can only exist right here and right now. This is because the past is gone, and the future is not here yet. We cannot travel back in time and exercise our free will about conscious choices in the past, because it no longer exists. Likewise, we cannot travel forward in time to choices that have not presented themselves yet because the future isn’t here yet.

But here in the now, we can make choices. Here we may exercise our free will to believe anything we want about the future…or the past. That is because this present moment is all that is real.

4.7 On the Nature of Fear

We’ve often heard the saying that the only thing to fear is fear itself. Our brain can conjure up scarier monsters than actually exist in real life. When our brains do this to us, we sometimes do well to prepare ourselves for the worst case scenario. Supposed a battered wife needs to leave her abusive husband. If she doesn’t think about the possible things he could do to drag her back, she may find herself in a dangerous situation. In such a case, fear of the unknown has a basis in reality.

But much of what our imagination doles out when facing the unknown can get in the way of progress unless we deal head-on with it. This is what crossing the first threshold, psychologically, is about. Until we look closely at the dark stuff that stands in our way, we may not realize exactly why we can’t progress. We may make excuses of limited time, money, energy, or choices when really we’re suppressing our will to overcome all odds and make things better for ourselves.

We have to cross thresholds into the darkness of the mind throughout our lives. Does it get any easier? I think it does because we learn to surrender. “Here we go again,” or, “Get ready to feel crappy.” In such a scenario, we are not acting out of personal power, but out of learned helplessness. We’ve grown so accustomed to the way things are that we no longer believe we have a right to something better.

Of course, we all have dark times, and we all feel like giving up from time to time. But the passage through the dark places always brings light and strength if we have the patience to endure. Without darkness, you could not know the light. Without the bad times, you could not acknowledge the good times. Although sometimes we must walk through the darkness, as long as we keep sight of the path, we may emerge on the other side wiser and stronger.  If we can remember to trust the path in spite of our fears, we will have crossed the first threshold into the Belly of the Whale.