🌊 The Returning

There are thresholds we cross
because life pushes us.

There are thresholds we cross
because something ends.

And then there are thresholds
we cross because God calls our name.

The Masai Mara was that moment for me.

Not a metaphor.
Not a symbol.
A living, breathing doorway.

A place where the world becomes so silent
you can hear your soul speak without interruption.
Where the land itself feels ancient enough
to remember who you were
before the world placed its hands on you.

I had crossed a thousand thresholds before that morning —
through art, through loss, through reinvention,
through the Twin Towers, through global leadership rooms,
through endings I didn’t choose
and beginnings I didn’t understand.

But nothing prepared me for the stillness of that dawn.

We had been running —
a small group of us —
guided by two Maasai warriors
whose presence felt like protection
woven directly from the earth.

The air was cool,
soft with mist,
the sky still deciding what kind of day to become.

And I stopped.

Something in me —
older than my identity,
older than my work,
older than my name —
wanted to be still.

So I stayed behind.

Alone.
Yet not alone at all.

I stood watching the sun lift through the veil of morning,
pouring gold across the Mara
like a blessing.

And I felt it —
that unmistakable hum in the chest,
that expansion in the belly,
that reverence in the bones
when the Self rises
and you cannot pretend not to hear it.

Then the impalas came.

At first one.
Then three.
Then twenty.
Then an entire river of them —
silent, powerful, breathtaking —
running directly past me
as if carrying a message.

It wasn’t fear I felt.
Or awe.
Or surprise.

It was recognition.

They were showing me something
I had lived before
but never seen so clearly:

The crossing is never the end of you.
It is the moment you remember
you were always more than the one who began.

Standing in that wild expanse,
with the herd moving like a single organism of grace,
I realized:

This is the threshold.

Not the moment you choose a path.
But the moment the path chooses you.

Not the moment you reinvent.
The moment you return.

To the Self.
To the truth beneath the identity.
To the pulse God placed in you
before your life began to shape you.

All the thresholds of my life —
my grandmother,
my father’s blessing,
New York,
9/11,
global leadership,
Sydney,
art,
energy,
Human Design —
were rivers.

But the Mara was the ocean.

The place where all the rivers meet.
The place where nothing is lost
and everything expands.

I did not disappear.

I became whole.

This was the moment I understood
what my life has been preparing me for:

Not to teach reinvention.
But to guide people
back to the edge of their own becoming.

Back to the place
where identity softens
and the Self steps through.

Back to the exact threshold
where God whispers:
“You are ready now.”

This journey is not about the Mara.
It is about the remembering.

And when you feel it —
that quiet, holy recognition inside —
you too will know:

You are standing at your ocean.You are standing at your ocean.

You are ready to cross.

With love and presence,
🌊 Gitanjali

Threshold Journeys
Where the inner crossings reveal the architecture of Becoming.

Leadership & Transformation Coach | Human Design Guide
Founder of Vision. Power. Presence.

If this spoke to you, share it with someone standing at their own threshold.
I write about leadership, identity, and Human Design — where transformation becomes art and reinvention becomes remembrance.

Image Credit: Gitanjali Koppikar, My Mother’s Sari, 2025