Relating to liminality

     Liminality: "a psychological, neurological, or metaphysical subjective state, conscious or unconscious, of being on the 'threshold' of or between two different existential planes" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liminality 

     To successfully negotiate each transition, I need to fully engage. My whole self – mind, emotions and body – needs to step with both feet, from my comfort zone, into a new unfamiliar land - and stay to acclimatize. I am thereby transformed - with a more accurate self-image and worldview.  

“Confess your hidden faults.

Approach what you find repulsive.
Help those you think you cannot help.
Anything you are attached to, let it go.
Go to places that scare you.”

     - advice from her teacher to the Tibetan yogini Machik Labdron 

     Chodron P. “The places that scare you. A guide to fearlessness in difficult times.” Shambhala, Boston, 2002.

     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/06/liminality-insight-into-emptiness.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/03/liminality.html

Photo: Gundoctor   www.dpreview.com

Liminality

     "Anxious quiver of being" is Ezra Bayda's description of how he experiences an aspect of life.

     In the dark time of the year. 
     Between melting and freezing

     The soul's sap quivers.                             T.S. Eliot - Little Gidding (No. 4 of 'Four Quartets')

      “Richard Rohr suggests that the only way out of a person's entrapment in 'normalcy, the way things are,' is to be drawn into sacred space, often called liminality, where he believes all genuine transformation occurs. Liminality, from the Latin word for threshold, is the state of being betwixt and between where the old world has been left behind but we have not yet arrived at what is to come.”

     Franks A, Meteyard J. Liminality: the transforming grace of in-between places. J Pastoral Care Counsel 2007; 61(3): 215-22.

     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/06/liminality-insight-into-emptiness.html
     and: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/02/comfortable.html

Photo: Michael Wood    http://miksang.com/

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

Comfort and Beyond

     We relate to life from roughly three different subjective states: comfort, liminality, and distress.
     When we're in our "comfort zone," we feel at home, at ease, safe, contented. The main advantage of the comfort zone is having the freedom & capacity to be authentic, nurturing ourselves & each other - the "tend & befriend instinct" - associated with an inherently deeply pleasant feeling due, in part, to release of hormones like oxytocin. One drawback to the comfort zone is lack of novelty. Without new stumuli, we tend to eventually become bored, get cabin fever - the urge to get out of our well-known comfortable situation and explore the unknown.
     Liminality is our "growth zone" just beyond our comfort zone. When we're in this relatively narrow zone, we're sufficiently challenged and are optimally able to learn. Liminality is a fascinating, important, complex state - see: http://www.johnlovas.com/search?q=Liminality
     When we feel distress, we're so far removed from our comfort & growth zones, that we fear for our health, our very life. This is our "danger zone" - our "fight, flight or freeze instinct" is activated, we're flooded by stress hormones & survival instincts take over automatically. Now it is almost impossible to: think clearly, learn, make good choices (eg voting), or access any of the other deeper resources available to us in our comfort or growth zones.

     These states are subjective because different people can experience the same situation very differently eg skiing down an intermediate hill is pleasantly challenging for an intermediate skier; boring for an expert skier; and a dangerous, frightening experience for a non-skier. 
     We feel at least somewhat uncomfortable so frequently throughout the day, that it’s very easy to be mildly, chronically distressed without really noticing. But when major trauma is added (eg a previous serious skiing accident), the comfort & growth zones can markedly narrow, while the danger zone expands extremely broadly, so much so that life can feel as if one is constantly on a tightrope, always bracing for when (not if) disaster strikes.

     The more we are able & willing to evolve, the more we feel at home, be able to learn & thrive in all situations (ie become increasingly resilient) and, IMHO most importantly, the more we are able to embody our deepest authenticity, expressed as unconditional love for all.
  
     "There is an important link between deep change at the personal level and deep change at the organizational level. To make deep personal change is to develop a new paradigm, a new self, one that is more effectively aligned with today's realities. This can occur only if we are willing to journey into unknown territory and confront the wicked problems we encounter. This journey does not follow the assumptions of rational planning. The objective may not be clear and the path is not paved with familiar procedures. This tortuous journey requires that we leave our comfort zone and step outside our normal roles. In doing so, we learn the paradoxical lesson that we can change the world only by changing ourselves. This is not just a cute abstraction; it is an elusive key to effective performance in all aspects of life." Robert E. Quinn

      "There is a kindness that dwells deep down in things; it presides everywhere, often in the places we least expect. The world can be harsh and negative, but if we remain generous and patient, kindness inevitably reveals itself. Something deep in the human soul seems to depend on the presence of kindness; something instinctive in us expects it, and once we sense it we are able to trust and open ourselves." John O'Donohue

Is Deep Change Optional?

      “How strange that the nature of life is change, yet the nature of human beings is to resist change. And how ironic that the difficult times we fear might ruin us are the very ones that can break us open and help us blossom into who we were meant to be.
      I have watched people choose growth over fear as they navigated some of life’s most difficult transitions. I have seen how it is possible to approach the challenges of real life with openness and optimism – even with wisdom and joy.”  
        Elizabeth Lesser. “Broken open. How difficult times can help us grow.” Villard, 2005.

     “Trust Emergence. With this instruction we are invited into the numinous but observable impermanence of all experience.
      To trust is to make the leap of faith required to enter this seething sea of change. Emergence refers to the process by which the complex things we experience arise spontaneously from underlying contributing factors.”
        Gregory Kramer. “Insight dialogue. The interpersonal path to freedom.” Shambhala, 2007.

     These concepts may be useful when considering making, or being forced to, undergo important changes:

change readiness: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/07/369-ready-for-change.html
rigidity: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/01/261-psychological-rigidity-i-will.html
psychological flexibility: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2012/04/92-psychological-flexibility.html
liminality: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/03/liminality.html
transformative learning: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.ca/search?q=Transformational+Learning
successful aging: http://www.johnlovas.com/2011/12/successful-aging.html

     "There is an important link between deep change at the personal level and deep change at the organizational level. To make deep personal change is to develop a new paradigm, a new self, one that is more effectively aligned with today's realities. This can occur only if we are willing to journey into unknown territory and confront the wicked problems we encounter. This journey does not follow the assumptions of rational planning. The objective may not be clear and the path is not paved with familiar procedures. This tortuous journey requires that we leave our comfort zone and step outside our normal roles. In doing so, we learn the paradoxical lesson that we can change the world only by changing ourselves. This is not just a cute abstraction; it is an elusive key to effective performance in all aspects of life." 
       Robert E. Quinn. "Deep Change: Discovering the Leader Within." Jossey-Bass, 1996.

Living the Question

     We're energized & motivated to control, fix, grab, run from, stabilize - anything but embrace - liminality, uncertainty, the unknown, randomness, any form of change. Instead, we do our best to make the external environment pleasant & stable, assuming that this will make our internal environment happy for the long run.
     This controlling impulse is so automatic, that we even try to control life with mindfulness practice - turn it into a simple tool to fix & control - at times, even long after we think we've transcended the initial "getting rid of stress" phase of our practice. See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2012/01/intention-shifts.html
     Life IS liminal, uncertain, unknown, unpredictable, fluidly changing, shifting, flowing energy ... We are an integral part of - one with - this mysterious sacred process - NOT external to NOR victims of it. Mindfulness is waking up to this mysterious reality - who we are & how we're part of this - living this open question - a timeless opening process.
     See: http://www.johnlovas.com/2013/06/liminality-insight-into-emptiness.html

Fear-based Rigidity & Wisdom Paths to Mature Consciousness

     Keeping an open mind-heart to reality's incomprehensible complexity, ambiguity, liminality, paradox, constant change, including the inevitable aging, sickness and death of ourselves & everyone we love, is hugely challenging.
     But because of our impressive repertoire of subconscious avoidance maneuvers, we're minimally conscious of how powerfully this impacts our daily life. We're usually unaware of the severity of our existential dread & anxiety. 
     Nor do most of us have an intelligent, mature, conscious relationship with any wisdom tradition - the inner sciences that arose specifically to navigate these most challenging aspects of life.
     Instead, most of us take one of two extreme, fear-based positions: drift in cynical nihilism - OR - lock into a dogmatic belief system (or go back & forth between these two).
     But there are intelligent, mature approaches to the various wisdom traditions that CAN help intelligent, educated people evolve in consciousness / spirituality. I'm only familiar with Buddhist, Advaita & Christian paths.
     There are other wisdom paths (Aboriginal, Hindu, Kabbalah, Sufi, etc) & other superb authors. Even outspoken atheists, like Sam Harris (below), recognize the vital role of wisdom traditions. 

               Adyashanti. “The End of Your World. Uncensored Straight Talk on the Nature of Enlightenment.” Sounds True, 2010.

               Freeman L. “Jesus the teacher within.” Medio Media / Continuum, 2000.

               Goldstein J. "Mindfulness: A Practical Guide to Awakening." Sounds True, 2013. 

               Helen Hamilton. “Reality Check. A Simple Guide to Final Enlightenment.” Balboa, 2021. 

               Helen Hamilton. “Dissolving the Ego.” Balboa Press, 2021.

               Harris S. "Waking Up. A Guide to Spirituality without Religion." Simon & Schuster, 2014.
 
               Hollis J. "What Matters Most: Living a More Considered Life." Gotham, 2009.

               Hollis J. “Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life.” Gotham Books, 2005. 

               Isira. "Buddha on the Dance Floor." ‎ Living Awareness, 2014.

               Keating T. “Invitation to Love. The Way of Christian Contemplation.” Continuum, 1998. 

               Kornfield J. "Awakening is Real. A Guide to the Deeper Dimensions of the Inner Journey." Sounds True (audio) www.soundstrue.com

               May G. "Addiction and Grace. Love and Spirituality in the Healing of Addictions." HarperCollins, 1988.

               May G. “Simply sane. The spirituality of mental health.” Crossroad, 1994. 

               Palmer PJ. “A hidden wholeness: The journey toward an undivided life.” John Wiley & Sons, 2004. 

               Parks SD. “Big questions, worthy dreams. Mentoring young adults in their search for meaning, purpose, and faith.” John Wiley & Sons, 2000. 

               Sawyer D. “Huston Smith: Wisdomkeeper. Living the World’s Religions. The Authorized Biography of a 21st Century Spiritual Giant.” Fons Vitae, 2014. 
 
               Smith R. “Awakening. A Paradigm Shift of the Heart.” Shambhala, 2014.

               Walsh R. “Essential spirituality. The 7 central practices to awaken heart and mind.” John Wiley & Sons Inc, 1999.

               Welwood J. ed. “Ordinary magic. Everyday life as spiritual path.” Shambhala, 1992.

Stone Walls Invariably Crumble

     The transtheoretical model of change (http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/2013/11/436-readiness-for-change-is-pivotal.html) reflects our natural evolutionary, personal & species-wide, transition from rigidity towards ever-increasing psychological flexibility.
     Rigidity is an understandable, yet primitive, fearful avoidance of change. Change that we feel is beyond our current ability to handle & survive. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=rigidity
     Psychological flexibility, on the other hand, is about bravely opening up to clearly examine & skillfully engage with what's facing us, right now. See: http://mindfulnessforeveryone.blogspot.ca/search?q=Psychological+flexibility
     Need for change may be obvious to everyone except the person who is rigidly avoiding change. The rigid individual is unable to fundamentally (qualitatively) transform to a new self-concept / worldview. At best, this individual may think in terms of minor (quantitative) adjustments to reduce stress.

     Difficulties, friction, noise, liminality are various ways of experiencing a boundary - a "line in the sand" between our current self-concept / worldview and the one for which we're ready, or almost ready.  
     Boundaries are imaginary - not solid walls, nor necessarily sources of suffering. A great deal of energy is trapped by trying to maintain old boundaries, which when released, makes this energy available for loving & living.

The Danforth by P. Michael Lovas

Living in Liminality?

    "I think there are probably more people who sort of think & suspect they might have had an awakening - then they actually have. And that’s good news if that’s you, because there’s something pretty amazing waiting. This is the birth of the awakening process or birth of the process of liberation, of realization."
    Angelo DiLullo "Stages of Awakening (57-minute Intro)" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM2oHMDfRhM

    Most readers of this blog, and many people in general, have had mystical experiences. HOWEVER you, dear readers, are probably aware that your experiences were mystical, AND are also curious about & motivated to go deeper into the mystery. You're in a transitional threshold, YET possibly uncertain about proceeding. 

     YOU will very likely find Angelo Dilullo's 7-minute "pointing" surprisingly valuable: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEr5VLIf_eM 

     Notice the on-going tug-of-war between your brain's left hemisphere (Iain McGilchrist  https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-d&q=iain+mcgilchrist+youtube#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:bb7bff33,vid:C85Vyq-yQtk,st:1750 ) loudly, persistently ordering you to do something else, be somewhere else, and be someone else. Meanwhile your right hemisphere is whispering you are unconditionally loved as you are, so there's 'nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be.' 

    Under stress, fear & anxiety, the left hemisphere is particularly loud, making us tremble to do something - no matter how irrelevant, and madly ride the gerbil-wheel of obsessive circular thoughts. So under stressful circumstances, the left hemisphere's shouting tends to drown out the right hemisphere's whispers. Similarly, during military & other conflicts right-wing dictators (bullies) tend to be elected to power; then they cling to power by starting & maintaining military & other conflicts. 

    So, instead of continuing to "rearrange deckchairs on the Titanic," a wiser practice might be to gently keep returning awareness back to the aspect of yourself that does not change. This aliveness within is recognizable intuitively, by a felt sense. It has qualities of stillness, peace, love, warmth, silence, stability. As we learn to rest & stabilize in this aliveness our behaviour increasingly becomes spontaneously nurturing, arising from the unconditional love of Oneness.

 The late, great Glen Hansard covering the late, great Leonard Cohen's

"Who by Fire"

 

Control, Chaos and our Hemispheres

     Clinicians love to cure - definitively fix - the sick, the broken. And many of us, at least when we feel broken, want to be fixed-up once & for all! We all dearly love 'agency,' the sense of control, the ability to reach out, grab & hold onto what we want, and push away what we don't want.
     At some level, we realize that this idea of perfect control over our life & environment is wishful thinking, based on an a childishly unrealistic, simplistic, mechanistic, reductionist model. Life's complexity extends well beyond our comprehension, never mind control.
    However, we dread the idea of being overwhelmed by chaos - being helplessly out of control as our world crumbles around us. So to create some sense of agency, we tend to restrict our attention to manipulating whatever we can. But with this narrowed focus, many of us forget about or even become averse to the big picture that includes the most meaningful dimensions of life that cannot be controlled or even be put into words!
    Our current Western society tends to overuse the perspective of our left hemispheres, and at best ignores, at worse ridicules & actively suppresses the perspective of our right hemispheres.
    This lack of balance causes serious conflicts: rigid partisanship (political, religious, ecological, ethnic, racial, gender, economic, and even academic / educational: 'hard' sciences vs 'soft' sciences & arts) instead of harmonious tolerance, balance & collaboration. It seriously impacts the education of even our health-care professionals: http://healthyhealers.blogspot.com/2012/02/control-and-liminality.html
     Extreme positions eg towards control, often produce unintended, undesired results eg chaos.

     Iain McGilchrist spent 20 years researching & documenting the neurological basis & Western cultural rationale for a healthy balance between the two hemispheres, perhaps summarized in Reinhold Niebuhr's 'serenity prayer':
          Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
          courage to change the things I can;
          and wisdom to know the difference.

     “Attention is not just receptive, but actively creative of the world we inhabit. How we attend makes all the difference to the world we experience. And nowadays in the West we generally attend in a rather unusual way: governed by the narrowly focused, target-driven left hemisphere of the brain.

     Forget everything you thought you knew about the difference between the hemispheres, because it will be largely wrong. It is not what each hemisphere does – they are both involved in everything – but how it does it, that matters. And the prime difference between the brain hemispheres is the manner in which they attend. For reasons of survival we need one hemisphere (in humans & many animals, the left) to pay narrow attention to detail, to grab hold of things we need, while the other, the right, keeps an eye out for everything else. The result is that one hemisphere is good at utilizing the world, the other better at understanding it.
     Absent, present, detached, engaged, alienated, empathic, broad or narrow, sustained or piecemeal, attention has the power to alter whatever it meets. The play of attention can both create and destroy, but it never leaves its object unchanged. How you attend to something – or don’t attend to it – matters a very great deal.
     Because of the way we prioritise the left hemisphere’s take on the world, we have ceased to appreciate the meaning of continuity & flow, instead prioritising discrete chunks of experience we call things. This has serious consequences for how we see our selves as human beings and our relationship with the wider world. … the world in which we live in the West is shaped by a set of beliefs about reality which we know from experience, and feel intuitively, to be almost certainly false. Though the consequences of this are widely deplored, we seem strangely powerless to resist it. We are as if in a trance, whistling a happy tune as we sleepwalk towards the abyss."
     Iain McGilchrist. “The Master and his Emissary. The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.” Yale University Press, 2019. (An exceptionally worthwhile read IMHO)

     “It’s just not compatible with the left hemisphere’s view that there could be anything wrong with itself. It has a polished, perfectionist view of what it’s doing. It’s therefore very unwilling to accept the contrary argument. As a society I would say, I believe we exemplify this mentality in our world. 
     In a nice piece of research ... they sent questionnaires to over two thousand executives to see how much they knew about their own industries. Managers in the advertising industry were 90% confident they were correct, but were actually wrong 61% of the time; people in IT 95% confident they were correct, only 20% were right; 99% of them overestimated their success. This is the world we’re now living in. 
     Now how did we get trapped in this worldview of the left hemisphere, which is that of the static, the fixed, the certain, the isolated, in competition with others, a detached, unempathic, unflowing world, which has only one value – that of utility? As opposed to a world in which things are seen as seamlessly interconnected, flowing, never certain, constantly changing, but with which we have a relationship of care. 
     How did we get into this trap? I think there are briefly a few reasons: one is that it gives us power, it makes us powerful, and that is hugely seductive. This is the hemisphere about getting. The left hemisphere controls the right hand with which we grasp; it controls the bits of language (not all of language) the bits with which we define things and pin them down, and say we’ve grasped them – so it’s the grasping part us. That makes us powerful but it’s version of the world is also extremely simple. It’s that it’s made out of bits which can be understood, and then we’ve got there. And all the bits that don’t fit with that are sheared off from the model. And so it’s possible at the end of the day to go, ‘I’ve explained everything,’ because actually you’ve only explained the things you’ve allowed into your model. Another thing is that it’s what I call ‘the Berlusconi of the brain,’ because it’s the one that controls the media. It’s the one that actually does the talking and constructs the arguments, so it’s a piece of cake for it to make its points, whereas it’s quite difficult for the right hemisphere to express things that are subtle, often contradictory and implicit. And I think the fourth reason, at the moment, why we are trapped in this is because we’ve evolved a world out there which reflects the left hemisphere’s world inside. So all around us we have the rigid, lifeless, fixed, represented world which is that of the left hemisphere.”
       Iain McGilchrist @ Schumacher College: Things Are Not What They Seem
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oXiHStLfjP0
 
      “… we know intuitively that there is a dimension of ourselves and of nature which eludes us because it is too close, too general, and too all-embracing to be singled out as a particular object. This dimension is the ground of all the astonishing forms and experiences of which we are aware. Because we are aware, it cannot be unconscious, although we are not conscious of it – as an external thing. Thus we can give it a name but cannot make any definitive statement about it … 
     Our only way of apprehending it is by watching the processes and patterns of nature, and by the meditative discipline of allowing our minds to become quiet, so as to have vivid awareness of ‘what is’ without verbal comment.

     … seen as a whole, the universe is a harmony or symbiosis of patterns which cannot exist without each other. However, when it is looked at section by section we find conflict.
                       ‘for the world is a shen vessel 
                        and cannot be forced.’
     ‘Shen’ presents problems for the translator... I take it to mean that innate intelligence (or li) of each organism in particular, and of the universe as a whole, which is beyond the reach of calculation."
       Alan Watts. “Tao. The Watercourse Way.” Pantheon Books, 1975.

'Shen'