Meet Me in the Liminal Space

Today, many of us are leaving our place in the production of the crowded world and moving towards the green fields and open seas of leisure as summer vacation arrives. As the Nordic flock of people wanders through seasons and life stages, I am reminded that we all pass through liminal spaces.

These are the spaces where some of our dreams, ideas, fears and behaviours are left behind, while new ones begin to emerge.

I find this a suitable time to bring my attention to our behaviour in the liminal space.

A liminal space can be understood as the state we enter when we are leaving one reality without yet having arrived in the next.

We feel it now, leaving the steady flow of everyday tasks and moving towards a holiday state of mind. We shift gears, but rarely as smoothly as a vehicle built for the very purpose of adapting its engine to the required velocity.

We humans tend to adapt more slowly.

In a sense, the logistics of changing location, going somewhere south and arriving with family and luggage intact, gives us the relief of a rite of passage.

The tactics are quite similar to what we already master: getting the job done, keeping our conscious minds occupied in the well-known rhythm, and maintaining a certain distance from the heart and the more sensitive parts of our minds.

And then we arrive.

We do the things that need to be done to claim the safe space of this new territory. We unpack. We orient ourselves towards the surroundings. Maybe we even shower and cleanse our souls before gathering people and senses at the dining table.

We have done our part now.

We have landed in the state of leisure, and now we eat. Hopefully, we enjoy how new flavours and smells open our senses and allow us to taste and feel more than we usually do.

Slowly, we find the tactics of leisure.

We stay up late. We sleep a little more. We find small spaces in this new rhythm where we can arrive in our own peace. Maybe we even sense a whisper from the heart telling us things we have missed in the passing of chores.

We meet family or friends in conversations without beginnings, directions or purpose, and new horizons emerge.

We set ourselves free in the comfort of knowing that we will eventually return to the everyday life we have so carefully curated.

Of course, this liminal space has its challenges, as all liminal spaces do.

A displacement from one state to another not only implies a change in velocity or location. It also requires a change in behaviour and tactics.

All of us pass through liminal spaces in our lives. At times we feel it more strongly and as we move from the known towards the unknown, we may get frustrated.

I often meet this in people who have obtained a new level of awareness in the outskirts of the conscious mind. They have learned something, often through failure, that makes it clear to them that they cannot continue as they did before.

It simply does not work anymore.

Small events of inadequacy occur, both within them and in their surroundings. Most of us become impatient and frustrated at this stage. Somehow, we are so entangled in this condition of involuntary displacement that we fail to realise that much of our human growth must be initiated from this very condition of inadequacy.

The same tactics, used with a new level of awareness, only produce insufficient effects. And so we go hungry for a while, not quite arriving at the sense of satisfaction we once knew.

These discrepancies between state, behaviour and tactics always reside on the doorstep of new endeavours.

The choice to pass through them is not always made by our conscious minds. Usually, other parts of us take the first steps, and the conscious mind must follow, more or less willingly.

We need to trust this stage, because a wonderfully rich state of insight may follow. Once we accept our incapacities and unknowns, they tend to transform, quite willingly, into the very talents we desired.

This is the step before the leap.

As an advisor, I have come to enjoy being a guide in this land between lands, because we grow so beautifully here.

I like the stage before the flower blossoms.

Once we arrive in the next reality, where awareness and tactics are once again aligned, we will be fed once more.

At least until our appetite changes again.

— Mia