A Blessing for Liminal Time

By Paul Dunion | April 14, 2020

Liminal time is the between what was and what will be. The familiar increasingly fades while the new known is yet to be revealed. It won’t help to allow an understanding of this to recede too far into some abstract consideration. Hence, we can image liminal time from the perspective of the trapeze artist who has released one bar and is twirling through space hopefully headed to a successful rendevouz with the next bar. Liminal time happens between the two bars. Since a virus has made trapeze artists of all of us, we can ask:

How do we live our mid-air liminal time?

Liminal time can be thought of as a  spiritual pregnancy. You are neither the person prior to conception, nor the one after the birth. You may feel fear regarding the familiar falling away and the uncertainty of what is to come. You cannot run to the other side in the hope of shortening your experience of liminal time. Rather, allow this time to offer the opportunity to carry fear in a new way. The old way may have been too much denial or too much worry, which is the ego’s way of doing something in the wake of feeling helpless. Are you willing to be honest about your fear and willing to release a perseverating focus on it?

Consider allowing the release to welcome a single curiosity:

What is this moment asking for?

Even the question is pregnant with new meaning. Loss has the ability to anesthetize the lure to what is cursory. Curiosity now carries a new level of care. The eagerness driving immediate gratification is released in favor of stewarding what is truly sustainable. In this liminal time, you can ask with a renewed fervor:

Am I willing to seek and confirm what truly matters?

You might ask: How will I know what truly matters? Liminal time offers the opportunity to get right with ambiguity. The important question is:

Am I willing to reconcile with uncertainty?

If you are up to such a reconciliation, then you open to new ways of knowing. You will be more informed by your heart. As it opens, you will feel heart forces moving up your throat, through your jaw and eventually moistening your eyes. No need to make quick conclusions. As long as you remain devoted to the task, what truly matters will wait for you. 

This liminal time, prompted by an invisible force that threatens, asks you to retreat from the external world. Allow this yielding to offer a deeper welcome to your interior landscape. You might ask:

Is there a belief that has lingered long after its usefulness?

Is there a fatigue caused by some mandate to be excessively heroic?

Is there a resentment caused by staying too long where I don’t belong?

As you find someone within who is preparing to leave, you may also encounter someone preparing to be birthed. You will come to know who is ready for more life as you ask:

What courage is life asking of me?

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