During the first year of the pandemic, I felt lost and adrift in the middle of a sea with no shore on the horizon. All my usual routines were upended. At first I resisted. I was sad, I was angry, I was afraid what the future might bring. My life and the world around me were in chaos.
With no end in sight, I found myself in a place of “not knowing.” Whenever anyone asked me a question about anything, my standard response was, “I don’t know.”
How did I feel? “I don’t know.” How was my practice changing? “I don’t know.” When would I teach classes again? “I don’t know.” Was I depressed? “I don’t know.”
And of course the big one. What would life look like after the pandemic? I didn’t know.
I was in liminal space. Liminal space is the place in between. By definition, liminal space is filled with not knowing. It’s a vast emptiness in which anything is possible. It’s the space between where we are now and where we will eventually be. We let go of the familiar to sail across a sea of unknowns to reach another shore. Because we haven’t gotten to this new territory yet, we don’t know what it will look like or what will manifest.
It felt good to admit I didn’t know. There was power in that, and the glimmer of acceptance. A part of me realized it would be virtually impossible to remain unchanged from the experience. Nor would I want to. It was still deeply unsettling.
My resistance eventually faded and I surrendered to the experience, not always gracefully. I began to be curious about what was arising for healing within my being and what might manifest on the other side of the pandemic. But I didn’t pursue the answers. I posed the questions to the Universe, then sat in the not knowing and waited. I listened for the quiet voice of my soul.
The first nudge was an urge to learn about Zoom and to offer the empaths class online. I did, and it felt good to teach again. The next was to continue growing my hair. I did, and a softer, more feminine energy emerged. And then through a miraculous series of dreams, the walls around my heart fell away, and I was more vulnerable.
As the energy of not knowing slowly began to shift, there were glimpses of what might lie ahead. Although there were still plenty of unknowns, at least now I was standing on an island in the middle of the sea. Difficult days of railing at the Universe were balanced by days of clarity.
Liminal space is a common part of the human experience. There are many examples – birth, graduation, marriage, pregnancy, illness, retirement, death. It’s seemingly endless, terrifying and divine all at the same time.
Liminal space is a feminine energy. It’s about being versus doing, about exploring the unknowns of our soul. Masculine strategies such as pushing, fighting, resisting, and working hard to overcome are ineffective in liminal space. They just create greater suffering. In liminal space, our soul is asking us to surrender and let go of what we thought we knew to in order to open further to the mystery.
The human race as individuals, as a nation, and as a world are in liminal space right now. That’s why so many of us are struggling. Our masculine society doesn’t teach us how to handle the feminine energy of liminal space. If we stay in a place of receptivity (a feminine energy) versus seeking (a masculine energy), answers began to emerge from the depths of our soul. We begin to hear the murmuring of our spirit in the quiet.
As the Northern Hemisphere heads into the stillness and quiet of winter, I feel myself once again with the sensation of floating in the sea of liminal space. Once again, it is both terrifying and beautiful. I am choosing to trust the process and allow.
This work is real, and it matters.
November 18, 2021