Liminality - Insight into Emptiness - Śūnyatā

     The term "'liminal' first appears in publication in the field of psychology in 1884, but the idea was introduced to the field of anthropology in 1909 by Arnold Van Gennep ... (who) described rites of passage such as coming-of-age rituals and marriage as having the following three-part structure:

     separation
     liminal period
     reassimilation

     The initiate (person undergoing the ritual) is first stripped of the social status that he or she possessed before the ritual, inducted into the liminal period of transition, and finally given his or her new status and reassimilated into society. ...
     ... 'the subject of passage ritual is, in the liminal period, structurally, if not physically, "invisible". That is, the status of liminal individuals is socially and structurally ambiguous. ... 'Liminality may perhaps be regarded as the Nay to all positive structural assertions, but as in some sense the source of them all, and, more than that, as a realm of pure possibility whence novel configurations of ideas and relations may arise.'"   http://www.liminality.org/about/whatisliminality/

     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/03/liminality.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/02/comfortable.html

gerry328   www.dpreview.com

Attitude

       We ALL inevitably undergo MANY significant changes throughout a lifetime: being born, starting school, moving out of our parents’ home, falling in love, starting a new job, birth of our child, starting and ending relationships, retirement, serious illnesses, death of loved ones, aging, our own death.
     While we have little or no control over these major transitions themselves, we have complete control over how we relate to them – and thus over the impact these have on us - whether we suffer or benefit. No matter how traumatized some people are by these perfectly normal, inevitable life events, others grow and benefit (“post-traumatic growth”) from the exact same events. They grow via psychological flexibility rather than embalming themselves in dysfunctional rigidity.

     “The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty ‘yes!’ to your adventure.”                  Joseph Campbell

Photo: Aaron Teasdale   http://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/