Some of humanity’s oldest myths contain the same warning: not to look back. Lot’s wife looks back at the world she was leaving and turns into a pillar of salt. Orpheus looks back for Eurydice before they have completely escaped the underworld and loses her. In Japanese mythology Izanagi looks back at Izanami in the land of the dead and discovers that the woman he remembers no longer exists. Different cultures, different stories, but all have the same message….that there are thresholds in life that can only be crossed by accepting that what was behind you is gone. This doesn’t mean we have to forget the past. But it does mean refusing to live there. The past can teach you, shape you, and become material for the Great Work, but it cannot be inhabited again. We become frozen when we keep trying to resurrect an old relationship, an old life, an old identity, or an old version of ourselves. Transformation requires something to die so that something else can be born. Sometimes the final test of an initiation is simply this: can you keep walking without turning around?