The Already/Not Yet

The Life You Want is On the Other Side of the In Between

The path to your life’s deepest potential will always run through a liminal space.

Liminal space is a concept in psychology and spirituality that describes an in-between state of being. It’s a place that marks the beginning of endings—the end of What Was and the promise of What Could Be.

We’re often hurled into such spaces against our will: a relationship ends in betrayal, tragedy swallows us whole, or we lose our sense of purpose.

Liminal spaces have a gravity of their own. After you’ve crossed the threshold into one, you can never truly go back. To the mind, this feels like death. Desperate for safety and control, the mind will cling to what it knows best: the past. The harder it tries to drag the past into the present, however, the more exhausting life becomes. It’s like treading water in the middle of the ocean while wearing a backpack filled with rocks.

Who you thought you were might begin to lose the importance it once did. You wonder what the point of life is. You will ask…

• What does it mean to be me now?

• Where am I going?

• Where do I belong?

• What is happening to me?

Unsure what to do, and confused by a profound lack of desire, drive, or clarity, you might retreat into yourself. You might stand between realities, a stranger to yourself, stretched so thin you’re terrified your life might rip in two.

All of this is normal.

I wish someone had told me this long ago, though I’m sure I wouldn’t have listened. Turns out, the liminal spaces are one of life’s profound gifts. You cannot divert around them. You must go through them. How you go through them is up to you.

Liminal space can feel vast and confusing. Some call it the void because there is nothing to grab onto. There is no up, down, near, or far. In a strange paradox, they can be suffocating, claustrophobic, liberating and spacious all at once. All dark nights of the soul are liminal spaces, but not all liminal spaces are dark nights of the soul.

Yet, while they are the beginning of endings, they are always incubators of the New. We all intuitively know this. All of humanity’s great myths, legends, and art are stories of liminal spaces.

Nature is filled with them, too. The most recognizable is the chrysalis, of course. In its cramped liminal space the caterpillar is no longer what it was, but it is also not yet a butterfly. Driven by an inner impulse, it has consumed its own self in the messy process of becoming. What it used to be dissolves, and the imaginal cells of what it was meant to be all along awaken.

Within you, too, are imaginal cells—the very blueprint of what you are not yet, but have always been and will eventually become. It is Who you are already/not yet.

How long will you be here in the liminal space? No one can say, least of all me. In the end, the timeframe matters very little, which is frustrating for the mind which demands comfort and instant results. But your soul can’t be bothered with such nonsense.

What will you encounter here in the in-between? Questions. Uncertainty. Disillusionment. Unmaking. But most of all, new possibility.

When I sat down to write this, I sketched out some ideas for “how to” navigate liminal spaces. Articles like this need to land, right? But, I decided to scrap them. You don’t need a clever listicle of principles or pat answers. There aren’t any, anyway.

I’ll simply remind you that there is a part of you that already knows how to navigate the unknown spaces, and can be trusted to guide you safely. This requires trust, curiosity, and honesty. Why? Liminal spaces are ultimately mirrors that reveal the limiting and untrue stories you cling to.

When you’re forced to look in the mirror, ask questions.

• What is this revealing about me?

• What benefit to I get from telling myself this story?

• What is this story costing me?

However long you find yourself here, recognize that liminal space is instrumental to shaping your life in the same way that the space between musical notes makes one song distinctive from another.

Every piece of music is made from the same twelve notes. It is simply the different combinations of beats and pauses, the liminal spaces of silence in-between, that give every song (and every life) its shape.

As an important side note before we part ways: Individuals pass through liminal spaces, but so do communities, nations, and entire civilizations. Today, humanity is in a liminal space. The same rules apply. We can’t go around it or avoid it. The only way out is through.