Be Here Now - The Power of Liminal Space
“It is difficult and slow to become new. ”
One of the dynamics I see most frequently in myself and with many of the folks I work with is the challenge of making peace with the “liminal spaces” we’re in both personally and collectively.
What is Liminal Space?
“A liminal space” can be defined as “a place of transition, a threshold between two points, the end of one time or space and the beginning of another” (ScienceABC). Carl Jung used the word ‘liminality’ to describe that time in the process of individuation where you know you cannot go back to who you were but don’t know yet what you are becoming. “Liminal” comes from the Latin word “limen” which means “threshold.”
Individually, we’re all undergoing continual changes in identities, careers, relationships, home lives, etc over the course of a lifetime. These changes often leave us in liminal spaces that can last for days, weeks, months, even years, and “comfortable” is not a word I would ever use to describe them.
Collectively, we see structural and institutional change all around us, especially in the past 5-10 years. Institutions and societal norms as we once knew them are fundamentally and structurally different than they were even a decade ago. One only need look at the vast threats and shifts to our sense of democracy in the United States to see this happening in real time. In many ways, we see liminal space in the stability of our planet. I would posture that we’re living through a global sense of liminal space in regards to the pandemic, climate change, and the state of democracy.
Where are you experiencing liminal space in your life right now?
Where are you noticing a sense of liminal space inside or outside of you?
Example of Liminal Space
Back in 2015/2016, I experienced one of the most significant periods of liminal space to date. I had moved to California after realizing that my time in Baltimore had come to a close. I had every intention of getting a job and getting settled in Los Angeles, but the universe had very different plans for me. For nearly a year, I fumbled and fumbled in trying to understand what I was doing, who I was, and what my next steps were in a new chapter of my life. It was painful. Never had I felt so lost in my sense of identity and purpose in life, and I definitely didn’t have a term like “liminal space” to understand what was happening.
Several months into this state of confusion - in a raggedy San Francisco bookstore - I stumbled across the book “Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche” by Bill Plotkin. It was in this book that I would read terms like “rites of passage”, “initiations”, “the hero/heroine’s journey”, and “the art of being lost” for the first times in my life. Where had this line of thought been?! There was guidance on dreamwork, journaling, wilderness quests, ceremony, ritual, and more. A whole new world had opened up for me and I was able to begin making sense of what was going on for me.
Integrating Lessons of Liminal Space
One of the deepest lessons I have learned after going through multiple periods of liminal space is that these periods of time simply can’t be rushed. Sure, you can jump right into the next job that is going to be make you equally as miserable as the last one, you can jump into the next relationship where the same patterns and wounds may come up as the last relationship (and there might be some lessons in doing so), but there is something deeply sacred and soulful about respecting the liminal space that you’re in and for lack of a better way of saying it - letting it do it’s work on you.
Being in the liminal is a very “yin” (receptive, passive, surrendered) state of being to allow your psyche and soul to move through the space you’re in, and unfortunately, our culture tends to want resolution, closure, the next step in the process immediately. There is a ripening and deepening in this liminal space where so much wisdom and healing can be found.
I don’t know that we can ever master these transitions, but I do think we can become more and more skilled at how we handle them. These spaces of time deserve our respect and our humility. We often simply don’t know what we don’t know until we know it, and that knowledge can become embodied wisdom that we can use to support ourselves and others moving forward.
I’ll never forget talking to a trusted spiritual leader in Baltimore almost a year after I had moved to California and describing to him that it had been a challenging adjustment. His response was a very warm and understanding “well, of course.” It made me feel incredibly seen and was indicative of the liminal spaces and lessons he had integrated over time, gradually becoming an elder in his depth of wisdom.
Part of growing ourselves up and maturing through various stage of life is being able to support others in these transitions, to help them feel as understood. This is rare because we don’t respect the process of aging or honor rites of passage in our culture.
As another spiritual teacher says, we have “embodied knowledge” of these liminal spaces after going through them, rather than an intellectual or heady knowledge of them. I’m sure I will go through more of these spaces and will need the guidance and wisdom of elders and guides who have walked similar paths, and I hope to keep giving back to those younger than me in this way as well.
How have you felt supported or not supported during liminal spaces in your life?
How have you been able to support others?
What lessons have you found from these spaces and what redirections did you experience?
If you’re going through a liminal space in your life, I wish you strength, grace, patience, and self-compassion, and the knowing that as John O’Donoghue said, “It is difficult and slow to become new.”
“When near the end of day, life has drained
Out of light, and it is too soon
For the mind of night to have darkened things,
No place looks like itself, loss of outline
Makes everything look strangely in-between,
Unsure of what has been, or what might come.
In this wan light, even trees seem groundless.
In a while it will be night, but nothing
Here seems to believe the relief of darkness.
You are in this time of the interim
Where everything seems withheld.
The path you took to get here has washed out;
The way forward is still concealed from you.
”The old is not old enough to have died away;
The new is still too young to be born.”
You cannot lay claim to anything;
In this place of dusk,
Your eyes are blurred;
And there is no mirror.
Everyone else has lost sight of your heart
And you can see nowhere to put your trust;
You know you have to make your own way through.
As far as you can, hold your confidence.
Do not allow confusion to squander
This call which is loosening
Your roots in false ground,
That you might come free
From all you have outgrown.
What is being transfigured here in your mind,
And it is difficult and slow to become new.
The more faithfully you can endure here,
The more refined your heart will become
For your arrival in the new dawn.”