Transformation
I have been working in the void of transformation, a liminal space. It feels sticky, gelatinous, and hot, and it has been very uncomfortable. We are all somewhere on the edge of our own Liminal Space, a deep place within us capable of radical change. Unfortunately, many people create boundaries and limits around how much they are willing to transform, which often creates a safety net around the hot mess that is… transformation. Dodging our evolution becomes a prescription for a drug you know you shouldn’t be taking. It is easy, often addictive, and creates long-term side effects you often aren’t willing to face.
Liminal Space
Liminal space is a void where “something” is being dissolved, but the outcome is not yet revealed. This space elicits discomfort, ambiguity, apathy, fear, and confusion on a massive scale. Humanity has been in the collective birth canal of liminal space throughout the pandemic. Many are emerging from this liminal space restless, anchorless, and seeking space to understand the transformation.
Author and Franciscan friar Richard Rohr describes this as:
the very vulnerability and openness of liminal space allows room for something genuinely new to happen. We are empty and receptive—erased tablets waiting for new words. Liminal space is where we are most teachable, often because we are most humbled. Liminality keeps us in an ongoing state of shadow boxing instead of ego-confirmation, struggling with the hidden side of things and calling so-called normalcy into creative question.
Idealizing Normalcy
Before my great descent into liminal space, I had become heavily entrenched in idealizing normalcy. The pandemic helped me reach a very safe approach to life and how I show up for myself. My higher self kept telling me, “See not the outcome, but the process.” The outcome is something I could focus on outside of the present moment—the process equating to the here and now. I continued living outside the present time, either focused on the future of possibilities or memories of the past. Seeking an outcome, I felt safe; it kept me out of Liminal Space until it didn’t, and I was forced to surrender to the transformation happening within me. When we become deeply attached to an outcome, we easily miss the guidance that aligns with our soul’s path right now.
Seeking is in the outcome; surrender is in the process ~Karyn, Move the Moss.
Surrender
Liminal space forces you to surrender, to let go, to be with whatever is happening at this exact moment. Imagine swimming against the current; you become exhausted very quickly, but if you flip to your back and allow the current to take you and surrender to the path, it is often not what you had in mind, but it probably saved your life. Liminal space is incredibly disruptive as the tides of transformation come in to move through you and clear the pathways within you, but always aligning you with Divine time.
Normality is a paved road: It’s comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow. ~Vincent Van Gogh
We are not unscathed during this transformative time in our lives. On the contrary, it is unlike anything we have ever experienced before. Our nervous systems are hijacked, our intuition tested, our grief revealed. We need people, and connection, and purpose. Yet, so often, we are thrust into all of it, unprepared and unable to understand what is really important anymore.
6 ideas to embrace the Liminal Space within you:
1. Keep showing up for yourself and putting into the world what is important to you.
2. Find a connection with the deeper, shadowy side of yourself and your human experience.
3. Be willing to be stretched by the hands of time- let go of the grip chronological time has on your present moment- Surrender.
4. Surrender to the current of your life, float, and allow the water to take you where you must go.
5. Be with the discomfort of liminal space, don’t run from it, distract yourself or medicate yourself. Sit in the belly of it. Significant change requires great courage to Just Be.
6. Challenge your toughest inner critic- start asking a lot of Why Questions? You will be entertained in the least and create new neural pathways that move your inner continuum of change.
Wyldness
Perhaps you are sitting on the threshold of embracing the liminal space within you. You may feel resistance, fear, grief, and sadness. Wherever you are is ok. Embrace that, and allow yourself to Be with what you are feeling. Liminality invites us over the threshold of everything we often resist.
This liminal space took me to some of my darkest days but equally transformed the darkness. I was launched to think, understand, and be with an entirely new way of existence; these were big pants I wasn’t ready to try on. I now have great reverence for this space; laying down my sword to surrender and meeting each experience with gratitude opened a Wyldness in my heart revealed only by submerging into liminal space.
Wyldness became the balm for my heart, helping me shed what no longer serves me, rooting out gems waiting to be revealed, and activating a sacred space within that wants to be seen, heard, and trusted for the Wyldness of my humanity. Re-Wylding is deeply embedded within liminal space and transformation. We must continue to turn toward our Wyld nature as we evolve.
I have been clearing the pathways and space within; I invite you to do the same and embrace the call of the liminal space within you.
