Liminality

Warning….this post contains reference to the weird and wonderful, to the things we may not be able to see or touch but which on some other level we know are there. Stop reading now if this has no appeal!  

So, in February I began my on-line Transpersonal Coaching course with the Alef Trust ( https://aleftrust.org ) and for the last six weeks it has been absorbing much of my time and attention. It is rich in alternative and extended ways of thinking about who we are, the ways in which we are all  interconnected and how, in a coaching relationship, you might be able to help someone to move out of a fairly limited to a more expanded sense of self.

One of the concepts I have been reflecting on is that of liminality. I am choosing to share it here because I think it refers to an experience that many of us might have but for which there may not have been any language. Having the label helps in recognising the state when it arises and perhaps in understanding its potential.

A liminal space exists when some old way of being or thinking is dying but the new has not yet been born. It may be experienced briefly as the gap between thinking of a problem and the emergence of a solution. But perhaps, more commonly,  it is experienced over a more extended period of time when an individual  feels themselves to be in some sort of transition.  I know that when my husband was in the final weeks of his illness I experienced a very deep sense of liminality. I cannot speak for him. It is a space in which you can easily feel lost and yet it is also a space of great potential and it exists beyond conscious thought.

Many years ago I read a book by Guy Claxton called ‘Hare Brain Tortoise Mind: Why intelligence Increases When You Think Less’. His argument was that the solutions to many problems do not arise as a direct consequence of consciously thinking about the problem but rather in moments of rest or relaxation. Whilst the conscious mind is resting, the unconscious is still working on the problem and solutions can surface in the most unlikely moments. This is not to deny the value of conscious thinking but rather to put it in its place. I suspect that one of the factors contributing to the present mental health crisis is the fact that so many people seen unable to stop thinking. 

In a liminal space there can be a sense of floating, of waiting, even of wanting to hurry to the solution, to the future time when the discomfort will be over and the problem resolved. Yet sometimes hurrying to find the answer may lead to a less than satisfactory outcome. The liminal space is one of creativity. It is the space from which the artist derives her inspiration it is the great empty nothingness from which something emerges. It is a space in which to swim, to rest, to be.

In our fast paced life where we expect instant solutions and instant gratification of our desires perhaps there is something to be said for learning how to rest in the not knowing, to listen in the silence for the quiet whisper and to have faith that on some level there is a deeper knowing, if only we can get out of our own way enough to engage with it.