Liminality (The In-Between)

Liminality is the magic moment when you are changing, like a caterpillar turning into a butterfly. You are not what you were, but you are not the new thing yet. It is the hallway between two rooms. It is the silence between two songs. It is the moment after you jump but before you land. This middle place is where our spirit grows the most because we are open to everything. The old walls are down and the new walls have not been built yet.

The middle place is where our spirit grows the most. The caterpillar does not become a butterfly gradually. The caterpillar dissolves. Completely. Inside the cocoon there is no caterpillar and there is no butterfly. There is soup. And from the soup, the new thing assembles itself. Every ceremony that changes you — baptism, bar mitzvah, marriage, graduation — puts you in the soup. You enter as one thing. You dissolve. You exit as another. The threshold is not comfortable. The threshold is not supposed to be comfortable. The threshold is supposed to be transformative.

Liminality (Victor Turner): betwixt and between. Characterized by stripping away of social status and identity, allowing radical restructuring of the self — a psychological reset button. During liminal phases, barriers of the individual ego are thinnest. The void from which all new creation and spiritual rebirth emerge. The threshold is not comfortable. The threshold is transformative.

SOUND: Whispering wind: sound from a direction you cannot name.

SMELL: Wet earth where things grow: the scent of potential before it has a shape.

TASTE: A sour lemon that makes your whole face change: transformation on the tongue.

TOUCH: The tingle after a cold splash of water: the body between temperatures.

SIGHT: Fog where you cannot see what is coming next: visibility surrendered.

BODY: Balancing on one foot: the body practicing the art of being between.

Music: Angel by Sarah McLachlan

Music: Energy by Sampa the Great

Part of Ritual & Ceremony — RELIGION — Education Revelation