Living in Liminal Space: Enjoy the In-Between
by Penney Peirce
Normally, I am one of those people who is “in the world but not of it,” but lately, my consciousness has been drawn as though by gravity into the practical, logistical, physical world where I have become a captive of daily detail. At times, life has even seemed to retract like a surprised turtle, offering no fluidity at all. I have not been traveling to distant lands or addressing large audiences or reaching into the higher realms for inspiring subjects to write about. The shift from being out in the world and free-flowing to being contained and isolated has been dramatic.
I obviously must need to pay attention to something smaller and deeper, something only reachable through stillness, something present even in the mundane. One part of me pushes restlessly against the walls, while another part senses that behind it all a wave is coming to lift me, and all of us, into a new kind of lit-up self-expression, to a new level of energy that we’ll come to know as normal. Perhaps we’re cocooning, preparing, gathering ourselves. I learned from a science documentary that the caterpillar, when it enters the pupa stage, actually liquefies itself before the raw material of its body reformulates as the butterfly. That’s what I feel I’ve been doing internally — melting down.
This melting process is really a key part of transformation. I recently participated in a group dialogue about the concept of “liminal space” — and the term intrigued me. “Liminal” relates to the idea of the threshold. In fact, it pertains to the space on either side of a threshold. That caught my attention because usually we think of what comes before a threshold is reached, and not so much about what comes immediately after, before the new form solidifies.
So many of us are in liminal space right now. Perhaps we’re about to cross a threshold, or have already crossed it but don’t quite know it. We all interpret this experience differently, of course, but you can count on a few things: you feel “in-between,” that you don’t know, that the old way is boring or damaging to your body and soul, and that you are out of your comfort zone. You haven’t found an answer yet, can’t seem to imagine your “future,” the Flow seems to have stopped, and you’re losing meanings and security.
If you are a left-brain dominant person, your left brain will go nuts in this undefined state. It wants to know what to do, what to emphasize, what to plan for. It wants to figure something out. It does not tolerate anxiety and ambiguity but wants facts. The left brain may label this as a time of chaos and negativity, or it will throw you into irritability, reactionary behavior, panic, avoidance, addiction, manic activity, numbness, or depression — just to have something to do. It might prefer to fill the liminal space with hyperactivity, drama, trauma, or an accident or illness — anything but nothingness! Many people I talk to are identifying with these left-brain coping mechanisms, thinking they themselves are crazy, incompetent, unevolved, unworthy, or a failure because “life isn’t working.” They say they feel stuck. I think this is the left brain talking, not the soul. The soul is never stuck.
If, on the other hand, you are more practiced in perceiving from your right brain, body, heart, and intuition, you will probably feel liminal space as a sort of sabbatical or important pause. You probably trust the Flow and the evolution process, and are more comfortable being with the moment as it is, knowing there is wisdom to be had by paying close attention and feeling into your experience. Waiting doesn’t cause impatience. Being quiet doesn’t feel like the Void. Feeling spacious and full of potential is downright pleasurable. This is the soul perceiving liminal space.
In liminal space you are being directed into the nonphysical world to clear old patterns so you can receive your new set of instructions, your new imaginations, and more of your true self. You, the soul, are opening a path, a clearing, so the spiritual can flood into the physical and you can learn to be your soul and be soul-directed. In liminal space you are being asked to occupy the present moment fully, to be still and transparent. Here you must be comfortable being timeless, you must become the pause.
Liminal space acts like a magnet. Its very openness and peacefulness can catalyze the experience of compassion if you drop into it and be with it purely and innocently. It can also draw forth everything that is not in harmony with spiritual truth and unconditional love — the clutter in your personal field that prevents you from experiencing yourself as the soul. If a disturbance occurs while you’re in liminal space, it certainly points to a deeper issue you are trying to see through to and dissolve. If you wait and watch or feel for the tip of the issue, you may sense it as a glimmer in the space. If you give it attention it will come to you and reveal itself to you so you can understand.
If you choose to trust what emerges in liminal space, you can actually enjoy the dissolving — or in caterpillar terms, the liquefying that is the pre-threshold experience. You won’t make judgments about how what comes is “bad” or that you are failing somehow. Earlier this year, and even now to a lesser degree, I began to feel like a stranger in my life. “Who is driving this car to the market?” I’d think. “Who needs to buy food and eat? Who is walking this body down the hall? How did I come to live in Florida instead of California? How did I get here?”
I began to feel that my story, my history, was not mine, or that I didn’t care to recite it anymore because it felt boring. After all, it could belong to anyone! I wondered: Was I preparing to die? Then life sent me to work in some of the cities where I had grown up, which I hadn’t visited for many years. I touched in, took photos of houses I used to live in, integrated something ineffable of my developmental process into my present moment, and let the memories go. They’re all still there but I’m not holding them.
As that stage unfolded, I found myself wanting to sleep in the guest room of my house for a month, joking to friends that, “I am a guest in my own life.” Truthfully, I enjoyed the feeling of visiting this new place and perspective — opening to my up-and-coming life. Perhaps this was my version of a universal process — how we become more of an observer and allow our identity to shift to a higher frequency. I’ve also found that certain people who I’ve counted as friends seem to be separating from me, or I am softening and loosening my attention on them and on any need I had unconsciously attached to them. Perhaps relationships are shuddering into new alignments, as though receiving chiropractic adjustments from the energy field, so they can convey a bigger truth and enter a new phase.
But you know, the great thing about liminal space is that it contains the good stuff and it knows what it’s doing. Somehow, those melted down caterpillar particles know how to recombine into the butterfly. It’s an amazing sort of intelligence! All we need to do is clear the clutter. Be willing to be. Welcome the surprise of the new arising, the threshold crossing, and the new baby-like state of the fresh self. We are not stuck except for adherence to old left-brain habits, fixed ideas, doubt, and lack of imagination. What shape will my liquefied self be magnetized to take? I have faith that I will discover it just as it occurs.
The new physical world will soon appear on its rebooted, refreshed screen, and it will show us what to do. We’ll know because it will feel fun and it won’t exhaust us. When I think of liminal space, I think of that wonderful line from Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land: “Waiting is. . .” Waiting without wanting. Falling into waiting to see what’s there. To know the magic firsthand.
www.penneypeirce.com
