Don't Get Over It: Honoring the In-betweens in
Our Lives
Common Ground February 1997
© Melissa Gayle West
Ever heard of "Frog Crossing?" It's my daughter's favorite computer
game. Elise sits glued to the computer as she helps a little
frog cross a six-lane superhighway, dodging speeding semis. If
she is skillful enough, she can zip him across quickly and avoid
the frog's untimely death by splattering. The obvious point of
the game, given the terrible dangers of the highway, is to get
from one curb to the opposite one absolutely as quickly as possible.
Anyone trying to navigate an important life transition such
as divorce, vocational change, serious illness, or midlife is
in the same unenviable position as Elise's poor frog. Our culture
gives us impossible operating instructions for change, similar
to the rules for Frog Crossing: after you've left behind the
old, head for the new post-haste. Our speedy, product-not-process
oriented culture tells us that if we're leaving something behind,
we better know where we're going, and get there, fast .
The trouble is that important transitions take time: there is
almost always an in-between time when you've left behind your
old way of being in the world, your old beliefs and dreams, and
you've not yet moved into the new. This in-between time is a
time of not knowing, a time of incubating your life-to-be.
Our culture's fear of in-betweenness stands in marked contrast
to indigenous cultures who have important ways of marking profound
life transitions, or rites of passage. This middle stage in a
rite of passage-called "liminal" by anthropologists, after the
Greek word for "threshold"-is the "betwixt and between" time,
after the initiate has left behind the old way of being in the
world, and before he or she takes on a new role and identity.
The liminal stage is honored as the most sacred and important
in tribal rites of passage, acknowledged as the time when the
initiate, stripped of former roles and self, is most open to
transformation.
Being Liminal
Barbara Fischer understands liminality: as a woman suffering
from fibromyalgia, and as a psychotherapist helping others deal
with chronic pain and illness, she has thought long and hard
about being in between. Fischer recalls that when she first began
to deal with the chronic pain and fatigue of her illness, she
tried hard to deny how radically her life had changed. "A real
despair set in," Fischer remembers, when she finally acknowledged
the loss of her old life. "We're so used to controlling and planning
our lives. In liminality, all that goes out the window; it's
a time without the ability to plan. I had lost my past, but didn't
have a future, because of all the uncertainties involved in chronic
illness."
Peter Wallis, an educator who leads rites of passage for adolescents,
was literally plunged into liminality as the result of a skiing
accident, falling several hundred feet while climbing a steep
snow cornice. "I didn't know it at that moment, but this was
the beginning of a profound liminal time for me. In one fell
swoop I had to let go of my youthful heroic self, which had been
such a powerful guiding image for me as a man. Suddenly, I was
faced with my own mortality, the result of pushing beyond appropriate
limits for my older self. I had to leave behind my youth, and
begin preparing to move into elderhood."
We move into liminality during any major change when our old
ways of looking at the world, old dreams, old life patterns don't
work any more. "Whenever we participate in something that will
change us, and change how others relate to us-as when we marry,
are inducted into the armed forces or ordained, become a doctor,
or survive an ordeal-that experience is a liminal one," writes
Dr. Jean Shinoda Bolen in her latest book, Close to the Bone:
Illness and the Soul . We cross a threshold, she writes,
and are presented with an opportunity to experience liminality
as an invitation to transformation: "Here the mystical, spiritual,
or psychic awareness of what is happening determines its significance
as a soul experience."
Being liminal is akin to a snake shedding its skin, a common
symbol both in tribal rites of passage and in many contemporary
liminal persons' dreams. In order to make space for the new,
we must shed the old, too-tight skin of our old lives.
Kathleen Brehony, in Awakening to Midlife , suggests
that another symbol-that of the chrysalis stage in the life cycle
of a butterfly-resembles liminality in four ways. First, she
writes, the caterpillar must be sacrificed in order for the butterfly
to be born: the old self must be sacrificed in order for a deeper
level of self and soul to be born. Second, the experience within
the chrysalis is that of solitude and isolation: withdrawal from
the usual way of being in the world. Third, there is a slow gestation
period that can neither be hurried or circumvented. Finally,
according to Brehony, chrysalis or liminal time is "an opening,
a doorway through which we can more clearly touch the Divine,
transpersonal, and nonrational aspects of being."
Fear and Denial
Given the rewards of acknowledging liminality, why is American
culture so afraid of it? Why does it seem that our society has
adopted W.H. Auden's line, "We would rather be ruined than changed," as
its motto?
Our culture is afraid of death, claims Michael Meade, ritualist
and co-editor of Crossroads: the Quest for Contemporary Rites
of Passage . "Rebirth always passes through the doors of
death; we need to acknowledge that for the new to come, something
has to die. The purpose of a rite of passage is to become more
alive by dying to the old. When our culture denies death, we
cannot become more alive through liminality."
American society, Meade also notes, is afraid of alive, passionate,
idiosyncratic people. "Rites of passage are about becoming real,
and enlivened, and self-knowing. Our society just can't handle
that. Can you imagine IBM celebrating this? They can't; they
need workers ."
Finally, we live in an instant culture: credit cards, fast food,
weekend seminars that "change your life." We want it all, now.
Unfortunately, profound transformation rarely is accomplished
in days or even weeks. Many rites of passage, such as midlife,
can take months or even years to navigate. When you can take "happy
drugs" and feel better almost immediately, why take the harder
road of surrendering to the process of death and rebirth?
How ironic that our culture denies liminality, even as it, and
indeed global culture, is deeply liminal! "We are at the threshold
of a new era; humanity is entering a whole new phase which has
no historical precedent," notes David Spangler, teacher and author
of The Call . "The speed of technological change, the
globalization of the economy, the radical convergence of cultures,
the ways we are interacting with our world ecologically: there
is no way that we can understand what the consequences will be.
There's a big question mark, a huge mystery as to where we are
heading."
We are liminal as a nation and a world as we head toward the
millennium; we're going to be liminal for quite a while, for
millenniums historically are like stretched-out thresholds. The
result of this, notes Peter Wallis, who gives workshops on liminality
as a result of his own experience, is that "even if we aren't
liminal in our personal lives, we'll feel that way as a result
of living in a liminal culture. It would be very hard to live
in this country and not feel the undercurrents of insecurity
and anxiety that accompany such profound change."
It is a shame, he adds, that we seem to have such difficulty-both
as individuals and as a culture-acknowledging and honoring liminality.
This stage is the most crucial one in a tribal rite of passage,
Wallis says, for it "provides a ritualistic container for the
death of the old self. In that receptive, vulnerable place the
initiate is given contact with the sacred myths and spiritual
traditions of the tribe, allowing for profound personal and spiritual
transformation. This important time allows the initiate to draw
nourishment from the deep soil of the unconscious for the gestation
and emergence of a new self."
Yet people in our culture do find ways to experience the trials
and gifts of liminality. In order to reap the gifts of in-betweenness,
five areas need to be addressed: finding support; making conscious
contact with the Sacred; honoring solitude; learning surrender;
grieving the old and celebrating the new.
Support
The need for support and authentic community is paramount during
liminality. To find trusted others, or even one other with whom
you can feel safe in sharing your uncertainties, your grief,
your dreams is very important. "Seek the company of wise people
who know something about this process," encourages Barbara Fischer. "Advice
is so cheap, and you get so much of it when you're liminal. Our
culture is so frightened of liminality that most people just
have this knee-jerk response: do this, do this, do this...If
they haven't been through this stage themselves, they immediately
try to "solve' it for you. It's so important to find people who
know, really know, what it's like to wander around in the dark,"
The "others" can be friends, support group, family, therapist,
minister. Being in-between can take a long time, and having others
who support you and encourage you to take the time it takes can
be real lifesavers. Louise Mahdi, Jungian analyst and editor
of Betwixt and Between: Masculine and Feminine Patterns of
Initiation , believes in the importance of having a trusted
confidante with whom you feel safe because you know that he or
she has "been there", a guide for this unknown territory.
We don't seem to be hard wired to do this alone. Finding trusted
others to journey with can be one of the great gifts of this
time. In my own practice as a therapist, many clients have told
me that discovering that they didn't have to do the night journey
alone has been one of the greatest gifts of the process.
Contact with the Sacred
Our relationship to time changes during liminality, says David
Spangler, bringing with it both insecurity and the great gift
of opening to the Sacred. Normally we are in a state of being
spread out in time: part of us is in the past, part in the present,
part in the future. However, when we are liminal, he explains, "the
past and future part of our time-bodies get lopped off: now the
past isn't applicable, and we're not sure at all what the future
holds. We can feel amputated and insecure." However, the gift
in this is that "we're not lopped off from the present; time
collapses into the present moment, which is where all spiritual
and mystical disciplines say it should be anyway."
When past and future fall away, when we are left, vulnerable,
in the present moment, we are open to the embrace of the Sacred
in a way that is impossible during non-liminal, hurried, directed
time. That open, in-between space, claims Spangler, is actually "homologous
with the spiritual experience, though when I've lost my job or
my marriage has dissolved, I may not at first see it as a deeply
spiritual experience. But if I can stay with the present moment
and its uncertainties, it will take me to a deeper place; engaging
with the mystery of in-betweenness can be used as a spiritual
practice."
While caught up in the whirl of our everyday lives, we rarely
have the need to open to the Sacred in such a vulnerable way.
When we have been stripped of old dreams, old relationships,
our past and our future, opening to the Sacred can be like finding
the proverbial oasis in the desert, water for the thirsty. Peter
Wallis claims that what is most needed during liminality is "a
willingness to turn inward, to seek support and guidance from
a higher power, whatever that means to each individual. By contacting
the Sacred when one is so vulnerable, one learns trust at the
deepest level possible, trust in the process and trust in life."
Solitude and Soul-work
Just as a bear hibernates during winter, so is drawing inward
necessary during this winter-stillness of liminality, descending
into the "soul-realm" of dreams, images, Big Questions about
the meaning of one's life. During liminality, writes Jean Shinoda
Bolen, "the soul realm is a place of great inner richness...This
is the psychological layer that contains the potentials we have
not developed, the talents and inclinations that once mattered
to us...the deep core of meaning that dreams and creativity draw
from. Here are the wellsprings of the soul."
During tribal rites of passage liminal initiates work with their
dreams, since Big Dreams- dreams that could give the initiates
meaning and direction for the next stage of their life- would
be dreamed at this time. Louise Mahdi stresses that this happens
to us as well, and underscores the importance of attending to
liminal dreams. "An ordinary dream," she says," is like a little
flashlight that can guide you through a night or two. A Big Dream,
which occurs so often during liminal time, is like the beacon
of a lighthouse, shining out far over the waters so that one
can see for some distance, over the next several months or years
or even the next chapter of one's life."
Just as turning inward is required for dreaming Big Dreams,
so is it needed for asking Big Questions. As we shed our past
self-definitions and life patterns, our future opens up in new
ways, and we have an opportunity to ask questions that many of
us have not asked since adolescence: Who am I? Where am I going?
Why am I here? A turning point for Barbara Fischer occurred when-after
months of working with doctors to cure her fibromyalgia- she
consulted a new doctor who didn't asked the usual questions. "He
asked me instead, 'What does your soul need?'" says Fischer. "I
had been working so hard on my body, but nothing was helping.
His question shifted the whole context for me. It didn't make
any difference in my actual experience of pain, but I held the
pain radically differently because there was a larger context
for it. A whole new life emerged for me when I stopped and asked
what my soul needed."
For people who are liminal, asking Big Questions allows new
visions for their lives to emerge from the emptiness of waiting. "During
this time of great mystery," says Michael Meade, "the most important
questions to be asked are, "What is dying? And what is trying
to be born?"
Cultivating Surrender
'Surrender' is a dirty word in our culture: we are trained,
it seems from birth, to be in control. Liminality strips that
away that illusion of control; letting go of the old self, and
not knowing who will emerge, takes the wind out of our sails.
To surrender during liminality does not mean giving up. Rather,
it means finding ways to say "Yes" to the transition you are
in, and all that you are experiencing in that transition: saying
yes to not-knowing, saying yes to the present moment, saying
yes to the radical opening to the Sacred.
When Barbara Fischer holds retreats for those struggling with
chronic pain and illness, she opens with this story: One day
a person went to Buddha and asked, "What can I do? I am starving.
There is no chance of finding anything to eat." Buddha replied, "Fast."
The difference between starving and fasting, says Fischer, is
surrender: "It's about taking responsibility for where you are
and saying, 'I'll stop fighting this process and I'll open myself
fully to what it has to offer me.' It's about learning trust
in the process of liminality. So often, when the Sacred tells
us to let go, we say, "Do you have any other ideas?" Surrender
is about making that open space, that crack in the cosmic egg,
for the sacred, for new life, to pour through."
Grieving the old, celebrating the new
Death and birth go hand in hand in liminality. Indeed, in tribal
rites of passage, initiates are often placed in caves or partially
buried in the earth, showing them that the tomb of their old
life has become the womb of their new one. "When you can be liminal," says
Michael Meade, "and sit in the shadow-the dark parts, the loss-the
new that emerges has so much greater depth, because it comes
up from the earth, the incredible depths of the burial places." Meade
loves to quote an old tribal proverb about rites of passage: "You
can only go as far forward as you can reach backward."
Going backward by grieving what has passed away makes room to
go forward, allowing space for new dreams and new life to emerge.
During liminality, particularly as one moves toward rebirth-the
third and final stage in a rite of passage-small births make
themselves known through new visions, new relationships, new
tasks. "In the liminal time, you get new images and visions for
one's life to be lived in a new way," says Louise Mahdi. "These
new visions and dreams are like endangered species: they need
to be nourished and protected so that the inner self can guide
us into new life."
Liminality and therapy
In a culture that denies liminality, therapy has provided a
safe place for those in-between, where a person could grieve
the old, be supported in "not-knowing", and play with new possibilities.
For a person pregnant with new life, therapy, and therapist,
could act as midwife. Therapy, especially longer therapy at its
finest, has provided a holding environment for people in transition,
giving them permission to "take as long as it takes," rather
than pressuring them, as the culture does, to hurry up and get
it over with.
In the present era of managed care and freely prescribed Prozac,
therapy as a haven for those in transition has become endangered.
I recently began seeing a client, thrown into a profound midlife
transition in the aftermath of a divorce, who called herself
a refugee from managed care. Given six sessions by her company,
she saw a therapist who told her problem was depression, prescribed
an antidepressant, and was given "tips" on how to feel good.
She knew in her bones that her "problem" was not depression,
but of birthing a new self and a new life, and wisely walked
away from his office.
Managed care is effective for certain conditions. Liminality
is not one of them. "The managed care model is extremely inappropriate
for liminality," contends Barbara Fischer. "Symptom-focused six
week therapy is not going to help someone who is liminal at all.
When you get a therapist who's trying to 'fix' someone in a short
amount of time, it's irrelevant, totally, to this stage of growth.
You can't grieve losses, ritualize that grief, befriend solitude,
open to the sacred, dream new dreams-all vitally important therapeutic
issues for liminality-in six sessions."
Therapy-"old style therapy"-will continue to be a haven for
those who are liminal, providing safe space for the rich, slow,
often agonizing and always deeply rewarding work that allows
a new self, and a new life, to arise from the ashes of the old.
Gifts of liminality
However you journey through liminality, you will at some point
enter the third stage of your rite of passage: rebirth. It is
often not until after rebirth that the gifts of liminality can
be appreciated.
Rebirth for a chronically ill person, for instance, is not necessarily
the regaining of their old state of health. "Other things were
born instead," recalls Barbara Fischer. "I began to have new
ideas, find new things that gave me joy. My creativity flourished.
I thought of new ways to work. New ideas began to come out of
my experiences of being liminal, ideas and dreams I never had
before, that didn't depend upon the recovery of my old self:
this is how my retreats were born."
The flourishing of creativity that Fischer experienced as a
result of being liminal is one of the most important gifts of
liminality. David Spangler believes that the in-between time
can be the most creative period of a person's life. Often, he
says, our creativity comes out of reshaping what we already know.
The creativity that arises from liminality is of an entirely
different order. "It's a still place," explains Spangler, "where
I may feel somewhat empty and insecure, because I no longer have
access to ways of thinking and perceiving that are familiar.
That open space can be very, very fertile, because new things
arise from it that are not re-formations of something I already
know or have done. It's quite remarkable; there is no way of
predicting what will emerge."
Another gift is the deepening of one's spiritual life. "Liminality
improves your spiritual life tremendously," notes Fischer. "The
encounter with the Sacred can truly happen, in a very real way,
in liminality. There is room to be touched and engaged by something
much bigger than yourself when you stand still."
Deepened contact with the Sacred leads, as well, to a new confidence
in the cycles of life. "You learn that what looks like death
ain't necessarily so," one client told me after a long midlife
passage. "There's something always being born out of that death:
not something changed, but something entirely new." To allow
oneself to be liminal for as long as it takes, and to experience
rebirth flowing naturally from that, gives a person great confidence
in dealing with other challenges life presents. "By having to
let go of my youth, my heroic way of being in the world, before
I could move into the new rhythms and wisdom of elderhood," Peter
Wallis discovered, "I gained such a deep understanding that something
new cannot be born until the old truly dies away."
Authentically honoring a liminal passage brings small miracles:
new gifts of creativity, of receptivity to life and the Sacred,
new joy and energy. Liminality is not a stage to be endured with
gritted teeth, moved through as quickly as possible. If liminality
can be embraced, says David Spangler, "Out of it will come new
perceptions, new images, new awarenesses that will help me grow
and prosper in ways that my old patterns couldn't. Accept the
uncertainty, the unknown. Engage it. Use that openness to go
to deeper places in spirit and life. Do anything you can to make
this time your ally."
Make liminality your ally and new life, authentic life, will
be yours at the end of your transition. David Whyte, a Whidbey
Island poet, celebrated this in his poem "Tilicho Lake":
In this high place
it is as simple as this,
leave everything you know behind.
Step toward the cold surface,
say the old prayer of rough love
and open both arms.
Those who come with empty hands
will stare into the lake astonished,
there, in the cold light
reflecting pure snow
the true shape of your own face.
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