Liminality All Over Again and Again...

I wanted to post this again for a couple of reasons.  First, the word liminality, came up in a conversation today and a light bulb went off.  I went to a meeting about reinvention, where I find myself yet again.  And in explaining the place I am in, how I feel, after closing my business last fall, and wondering what I was going to do when I grow up....again....  I called it the space of nothingness between the old and the new that has not showed itself yet but is busy crafting itself within me.  

My friend was told that this place is called liminality.  Of course!  The space in-between!  I have been here before.  I said that to her.  It was a Duh! moment.  This is the place where your old life has crashed and burned and your new life isn't apparent yet.  It is in this place that we must keep walking.  You may not recognize yourself at this point. It is a volatile feeling, this unknowing.


I have come to the conclusion that in this lifetime of mine, this is where my soul is growing and changing at the speed of light.  I don't know how many liminal periods we are allowed in one lifetime.  I can't count them anymore.  It actually feels like I am dying all of my past lives all in one lifetime!  It is exciting, scary, exhausting, emotional.  You cry.  You laugh.  You're loud.  You're quiet.  You're up.  You're down.  You want this.  No, you want that instead.  I say, just hang on.  That's really all one can do in these turbulent times.  Of course, this is all inner work.  I can only imagine what I look like on the outside with all this chaos happening within!


These aha moments have a calming effect, though.  At least I can name the demon in my head that is running amok!  Okay, not a demon.  Growth, change, rebirth.  I just wish with each rebirth I could delete a few years off my age.  Become a younger version of myself at this ripe old age!

There is gold within these Shadows.  Embrace the gold and release what is not.
Just keep walking...

posted 10/20/2010

Reality is the place between the sea and the foam. Irish Proverb

Dictionary.com defines it as:

the transitional period or phase of a rite of passage, during which the participant lacks social status or rank, remains anonymous,shows obedience and humility, and follows prescribed forms of conduct, dress, etc.

It is defined as the space in-between. It is emptiness and nowhere. It is a place of dying and rebirth, the space between death and rebirth, something that cannot be seen. Liminality is where transformation occurs. It is when we are betwixt and between, and by definition, not in control. An uncomfortable place to be if you ask me, but a place of impending change, which to me is exciting.

In the book, Crossing to Avalon - it is described as passing through a gateway, a threshold - an in between zone where we are neither who we used to be nor who we are becoming. We are standing in a doorway between two phases of our own life.

In this liminal phase we are vulnerable, thin skinned, which means we are open to new growth. T.S. Eliot wrote about a point of intersection of the timeless with time. It is a place where eternal and ordinary perception overlap the spiritual world and visible reality come together. Only in periods of availability will a person respond to a call to adventure or love and the lessons they bring.

Okay, so what does this mean and why even talk about it? I came upon notes I had taken from books and other readings, which are shared above, at the right time in my life.

As I came back from a spectacular trip to the Omega Institute for a Women's Leadership conference, thoughts were screaming in my head, copious notes had been taken the whole weekend, I rewrote my ideas for a retreat center, cleared out some old personal "garbage", and was ready to take on the work of my next incarnation.

And I got home and none of this happened. I couldn't write, my thoughts were unclear, my head foggy. I got sick recently, which put my head in an ever worse fog and I wondered what happened to that energy and spark that was on fire in New York. Even my meetings with people I met on that trip didn't spark anything new or exciting. What was wrong with me?

Then tonight, as I tried to free write in my journal (with no luck), I came across old notes and writings, which included liminality. And I realized where I was at this moment in my life. Funny, once again, if you look for the signs, they are here in front of you.

I guess I, too, am in another state of transition, that place in between. I am letting go of the old and worn out but the new has not presented itself yet. Jung calls the psychological journey to wholeness as individuation, a task of the 2nd half of life.

So, again, I wait, quietly, because I know in the quiet and nothingness, things are happening that are out of my control, out of my realm of thought. It tires me, this non-work. But it also excites me, as I know out of it comes newness, new thought, new direction, new beginnings, new you.