Liminality

It’s from the Latin “limen”: a threshold, a door, a passage and in our time refers to psychological or metaphysical state of being; to discuss psychological states; rituals of passage.

Increasingly the word usage can be found in psychological & theological literature recognizing a sense of the holy, the sacred, and the transcendent; often the threshold between consciousness & unconsciousness (“subliminal”).

Some examples from life:

  • The feeling of always being in between and never “there”
    • Equinox & Solstice: Noon & Midnight: Dusk & Dawn
    • Graduation
    • Out of a job/work
    • The Twilight Zone
    • Lost Islands & places (Bermuda Triangle, Jurassic Park, etc.)
    • Purgatory & Limbo
    • Mistletoe
    • New Year’s Day
    • In between beings (typical of this time of year)
      • Shapeshifters, Cyborgs, Androids, Tricksters
      • Monsters, Dracula, Frankenstein, Grendel, etc.

Experiencing liminality:

  • Alienation, Marginality, Drift, Homelessness, Sense of Loss
  • Unusual degree of Vulnerability, Feelings of Intimacy and Ultimacy
  • Sudden emotional “drafts” from either “within” or “without”
  • Highly charged images and thoughts
  • Sense of an amputated past and a vague future: growing sense of life’s limits
  • The appearance of a messenger or guide (dreams, images, experiences)
  • Nostalgic periods of grieving for a vaguely felt absence
  • Lassitude, depression, disillusionment, disappointment

For the time being, let’s not try to solve this contemporary feeling, issue, problem to solve; let’s simply reflect and perhaps share the experience of it.

Reflections welcome.

 

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