Sometimes there is a clear end to something.
Maybe we have left a house, a relationship, or returned from vacation.
Maybe we have left a job or finished school, or we are simply done with a habit or pattern.
But the new thing, the new way has not arrived as yet.
So, we stand in limbo, knowing that the past way or thing isn’t for us, but not exactly knowing which way to go, which choice to make.
This can be exciting. It can also be awkward, uncertain and even sad at times.
We may be tempted back to things, people, places and ways that are comfortable to us, simply because they are familiar. We may try and push against that feeling of not knowing or that we are incomplete in some way.
A big piece of this is our identity.
If you’ve lived in a city your whole life and are moving to smaller community, you likely have conscious and unconscious identity patterns associated with living in an urban setting. Even if you’ve dreamed of moving to a small town and this is fully what you want, from this established urban identity comes our expectations, dreams, desires and the interface between who we think we are and our environment.
So, when we move, all of this and more gets shaken up.
Maybe we miss the loudness and bustle of the city for a few days as the quiet pierces our brain.
Maybe we wake up in the morning with the heavy emptiness of the question: “What should I do today?”
Maybe we have sudden cravings for cuisines that our new small town just doesn’t offer.
This is us recalibrating.
Liminal Space
Whenever I find myself in limbo, I really want to get out.
I effort a lot in figuring out what to do next. And I’ve recently learned that there is a joyful surrender in not knowing.
To be clear, as of today it doesn’t feel particularly joyful to me, but somehow I know this to be true and this piece is my exploration of the unknowability of today.
The feeling of limbo or liminal space is that uncertain blank for an unknown time period. It serves us deeply and greatly. It is the interval in between musical notes that allows us to savour the reverberation of what was and helps us transition to what is coming.
My problem with it, like most people, is that the uncertainty is maddening at times. I get antsy, restless and I want someone to tell me what to do.
This is because, in the matrix of the falling world, we have valued action and doing, more than savouring and being. So as our past, our yesterday-self falls away, what is also falling away is how we were, what we valued and why we did what we did.
Liminal space is a place of incredible power. The power of not knowing.
The power of not knowing, is relational and connective. It is different that the power we see and have seen in our world, often around money and status.
What do you do, when you do not know?
Do you freeze?
Fight the moment?
Ask for help?
Seek?
Ponder?
Reach out your hand?
Panic and run back to the safety of what you once knew?
Listen deeply within to your Spirit’s guidance?
Some combination of the above?
Liminal space allows us to the space and time to integrate and understand how and why we do what we do.
This is valuable because it is here where we can truly integrate our past and let it go, and fully open to what is here, what is now and what is coming.
This is only possible once we stop forcing ourselves backwards and forwards and ground for a few moments in the now. The desperate awkwardness of the push-pull can causes us to sometimes seek comfort in places that aren’t good for us or we may seek counsel for immediate gratification. This causes us to move backwards and we feel resistance and frustration because ‘life isn’t moving forward’…. or so we complain to ourselves.
This is another gift of Liminal space.
It is in between worlds, and reminds us that it is only our experience of time that is linear.
Time itself is what we make of it.
Rushing, forcing and doing many things are not features of Limbo.
It is just space and time for us to use how we will.
That reveals to us, our will, unsuppressed and now disconnected from past paradigms.
This can get scary. To know your will, the true force and power of you that comes from reconnecting, recalibrating, exploring and re-orienting in dynamic ways throughout of life experience.
Because once you know your will, it isn’t as easy to deny or ignore.
We know we will be pushed beyond comforts.
When we are actively moving out of a situation, we are engaged it in consciously and are moving through it. Once we are in between what was and what is, we get another chance to mine the experience for our authentic truths and motivations. From here, we get to decide what and how to create from this day and this moment forth. This is a strength building, trust-creating time for us. As we will need this in order to have faith and belief in ourself and the Universe as we act upon our renewed knowing.
We get to forgive, grieve and let go in joyful gratitude the version of ourself, the people, the situations, the learnings and the things that were a part of our yesterday.
This is a gift.
For in Liminal space we also get to re-birth ourselves for the new day that comes.
Imagine you hold a lot of anger in your life towards your family or certain people.
And at some point you decided to work on this.
And you did.
You did the gruelling work of showing up, getting help, receiving that help, asking yourself some hard questions, having even harder conversations, reclaiming your power and innocence, softening your walls, expressing your truth, re-living memories to release and open up to more love and trust.
And now, months and years later, you are more spacious within. You have released and you have new understandings and compassion from this place.
We are quick to want the change within to appear outside. We did all this work and certain we want the relationships to change.
They may.
They may not.
They may change, but not in the way we expect.
They may get better and then worse, or worse and better.
Getting pulled in to what others are doing (or not doing), is us getting pulled back and out of our Liminal space. We unknowingly give them the power over our experience, relationships, what we say and our mood. The thing we did before. But we are not that person now.
Exploring the in between space we have created, allows us to honour that we have changed the relationship equation by changing ourselves.
And now, we observe from a place of neutrality, not pulled by the winds of past dramas.
Staying here, for just a while is key, because it may allow others time to catch up and reconcile with the change that we are. Then, what they do next becomes their choice. It isn’t about us anymore. We have done our work and now we free others by giving them the same choice, by simply standing in our newly created space.
From here, we give ourselves the option of when and how to engage.
Because Liminal space is a well-spring of uncertainty, technically every possibility exists here. What we do next, depends on what we want to do next and the how is something we discover by simply taking a step in the unknown.
If this is a scary proposition to you, close your eyes.
Take a breath. And another. And another
And reach out your hand.
Touch the air, the nothingness in front of you.
You have just breathed in from that emptiness in front of you.
Know now, that as much as we want to think differently, we have actually always moved through life not knowing. We have only ever been conscious of a tiny fractal of what actually is, and based on that tiny fractal, we have created illusions of safety.
In Limbo, in Liminal space, in between days, in between worlds, this illusion does not exist. Here we transcend time-space.
Living Liminally & Choices
No-one lives out of liminal space permanently. I think of it as a place to visit, not to take up residence. Unless, of course that is part of your unique and specific soul journey.
While we are vacationing in liminal space, life still does go on. This brings us to a practical conundrum - making choices and decisions when we are vacationing here.
It’s like checking your work email when you’ve been on a beach vacation, with beach vacation brain for 3 weeks, and your co-worker needs your decision on a project direction. This decision has short and long term impacts that you know of, but you can’t fully fathom or remember because there is sand in your toes, mojito in your body and sun in your eyes.
Maybe you know the answer, but you’re on vacation!
You’re not using ‘work-brain’.
So, of course this place feels weird, as you are thrust into something material and practical rather suddenly.
We can get unsure and experience doubt.
Are we making a choice because we have always made it, because that is what old us would do?
We can get in our heads and the choices can overwhelm us.
Or, we can get stubborn and insist that we are unchanged.
Once again, this happens because we are plugged into an ideology of right (good) and wrong (bad).
If you had a set of choices in front of you, and all were good and all were bad, how would you make your decision?
What metrics would you use to weigh the decision?
What feels right and wrong, in a space and time where right and wrong do not exist in the way you recognize them?
In this moment, do you listen to others, maybe authority figures?
How do you interpret the rightness and wrongness of their input?
These experience with choices are about the how of us, which is evolving.
Maybe, the old version of ourselves made relationships choices because at all costs, we wanted to feel safe and seen, and so we kept the peace between people, didn’t make trouble and ensure that everyone around us was pleased.
But is that us right now?
If not, the motivation behind our choices, words and actions is no longer that of a peace-keeper or people-pleaser.
So, what is it then?
Who are we now?
What are our true and authentic motivations, and do we have the constitution to move from our renewed centre?
I see limbo as a training ground, where we get to have some test out new things and new ways within the safety of ourselves. We get to explore for a few moments or days what it actually may feel like within our bodies to fully inhabit our evolution.
So, it is less about the choice at hand.
It is more about how we come to making choices and taking action steps in alignment with the person we are becoming.
We may cut and colour our hair, or change our clothing or eating habits as an outward expression of our change. This is amazing! Even if we chose not to, we have already changed.
And as we receive the full gift of liminal space, we get to savour it as both the dusk of the old and the dawn of the new, at the same time.
I end this exploratory piece with lyrics from one of my favourite songs from The Cure, In Between Days.
Go on, go on, just walk away
Go on, go on, your choice is made
Go on, go on, and disappear
Go on, go on away from here
Because luckily for us, there exists song-medicine for wherever we find ourselves in life.