Liminal Space: Dancing In Between
If you follow the breath cycle as it is drawn into the body and then releases, you discover that there is a space or gap at the top and the bottom of the breath. There is a spiritual practice in which you are invited to slip into this gap over and over again.
This is liminal space. The threshold between two realities, between what is breaking down and what has not yet come into being, the medicine of dawn and dusk. It is in this space that the life force gives birth to itself and then returns. Here, creation and Source dance together in some kind of crazy mystery.
In liminal space we encounter how small we are, and the enormity of the forces beyond us. We tend to fear this place of void because it mirrors back impermanence and the illusion of our identity, the lack of ground in the sense world, and uncertainty. It requires courage to take a seat in this place.
But when we do, over time, we realize that this is the actual Ground of our Being, the Source of creation. Shiva. The Godhead. The Ineffable. The Eternal. Or, for those who are more secular in nature, the font of innovation and creativity. It is here that we glimpse the unfathomable interconnected substratum running through the Cosmos. When we touch into this place and emerge from it we begin to trust the intelligence of Creation ~ not as an idea but as a direct experience. We come forth from this place with our mouths wide open with Awe.
If we rush through times of in-between we lose its wisdom. Wisdom is born in the unknowing, in liminal space. Wisdom is different than knowledge, which arises from the mind. Wisdom comes into form when we perceive creation through the gossamer of liminal time.
There are times when the liminal arrives on the wings of breakdown. Sometimes this is a great relief. Other times we are rocked with fear and anxiety. We are in this kind of moment, and I recognize and honor the ferocity of this reckoning.
When we are dropped unwittingly into liminal space we often must pass through a portal of grief. Grief is the gatekeeper, a necessary passage into release, as we let go of the old. Grief is profoundly physical, pumping a river of prana or life force through the heart, washing away debris in the process. Grief is a measure of our love. As Martin Prechtel so beautifully articulates, grief gives rise to our praise.
Collectively, we have been thrust into the in-between, suspended in liminal space and time. It is a necessary suspension. Richard Rohr wrote that “if we don’t encounter liminal space in our lives, we start idealizing normalcy.”
There isn’t a breath of normalcy in the place where we have landed as a culture, a place where we worship at the altar of materialism and unending growth, where we are destroying the earth right under our feet, where many of us have forgotten our ancestors and lost touch with the Sacred both in its Unitive nature and in the particular and precious expression of its myriad of forms. We live in a time when those who speak to the rocks and the trees, who understand the conscious nature of wind, fire, earth, and water are perceived as having some kind of fringe experience, or, even better, as having anthropomorphized the world around them. How did we become so far removed from our direct experience of a palpable and conscious life force pulsating throughout creation, so that we now perceive this as some kind of quaint, Old World idea? When did knowledge begin to reign over wisdom, and in the process, subvert it? How did we lose touch with the beauty of liminal space?
There is an invitation in the breakdown, and it is not for the faint of heart, and that is to find the courage to go willingly into the in-between, and to simply not know. It helps a great deal if we have practiced entering this sacred space through meditation and spiritual practice. When we have learned to drop into liminal space, and the world then drops us into uncertainty, we are, paradoxically, in familiar territory. We say, “I know this place of not knowing, and I trust it.”
We all have the potential to tap into this font of creativity and wisdom. May we have the courage and fortitude to seek this place of refuge within the Self, anchoring to the Still-point within. By doing so, we are better able to release into the relentless cycles of change, opening up the possibility of dreaming in a different way. May it be so.
