Liminal Space - Part 1

We spend most of our lives being absolutely sure about how things are in the world and in our personal worlds.  Our unique experiences— both good and bad— combined with our auto-pilot personality settings create a perfect storm of “certainty.”  I was certain that the world worked in particular ways and what my part was in it.  As an Enneagram type 1 this involved a lot of looking

out into the world, deciding what was broken and what my role, and yours “should” be in all of it.  My world was built around those ideas and they bled into everything I did, including deciding what car to drive, if I should keep dying my hair, am I a good neighbor/student/teacher/mother/human.  Everything became a moral issue.  This was how I shaped my life in conscious and unconscious ways.  We all do this in our own way: move along on auto-pilot, acting out our Enneagram types, seeing, feeling, being, thinking in particular patterns that confirm what our favorite coping mechanism (our personality, ego, Enneagram type) says is the truth.

And then there is an opening.  It may be so small that it does not register fully as the beginning of something new, but nevertheless this opening exists and starts to slowly shake things up.  New thoughts start to come that are counter-to the certainty we have always held dearly.  Paradoxes emerge.  Intentions are questioned.  Ways that have always worked fail miserably or lack the previous satisfaction.

Muscle memory is a strong mechanism that always tries to pull us back to what we know. I’m a person with a body that will always be in physical therapy. One of my recurring issues is that my SI joint is unstable due to faulty connective tissue and takes the shape of whatever position I was in for too long . If I’ve been sleeping on my left side a few days, then my SI joint reflects that. Without sensing it,  I start to walk with a sway, overcompensating with some muscles and others become inactive. By the time I get to therapy I’m a mess.  My PT is effective and “puts me back together” in a way that instantly changes my posture, my pain, my body mechanics. But as I walk out to my car I sense my left hip, trying to pull me back into the sway. The muscles that were firing 10 minutes ago are again trying to go dormant. Even if it causes me pain and problems, my body wants to go back to the positions it knows. Even if it’s not comfortable, it’s familiar.

Our personalities operate the same. Even if it isn’t working, the muscle memory in our heads, hearts, and bodies try and pull us back to what it knows. When that opening comes expect that the personality wants to pull you back; it’s been our number one coping strategy all throughout our lives. And thank God for it! We needed the personality to grow and develop our sense of self. We needed the personality to help protect us from the world, provide a path towards getting our needs met and having some semblance of safety and connection.  But at the place where the paradoxes start to reveal themselves and some of the once-helpful patterns stop working, we enter a liminal space.

Liminal space is that place in between where we were and where we are going.  It is uncomfortable, disorienting, boring and slow.  However, if we can stay present and not resist this purgatory we will see that we were moving somewhere the whole time.  The threshold of liminality always leads to a door.

Can you think of a time you were in a liminal space?  What was it like in the waiting?  How did you feel and think? What did you do?

Part 2 tomorrow.