Liminal space.
The UU minister in Durango, Rev. Jamie Boyce, spoke of this today. I grabbed my chair! This message was for me! (I've been watching zoom versions of the Sunday services so I could get a sense of their congregation.)
Sometimes the cosmic coincidences just jive, don't they?
It is like the threshold that grabbed my attention the other day. Liminal, the in-between places. Examples are hallways in hotels. And there is also a spiritual thing that can happen in these places.
Another source* gave this:
"Have you ever walked through an empty mall after closing hours or waited alone at a train station before sunrise? The environment feels strangely still—quiet, hollow, and almost disorienting. Spaces designed for movement and noise suddenly appear unfamiliar, as if they’ve slipped outside ordinary reality. These are classic examples of liminal spaces, the places that quietly sit between what was and what will be.
And psychologically, life also has its own versions of these thresholds. Not your whole life—but the transitions, the in-between phases where activity pauses. These moments feel stagnant, yet you intuitively sense that change is about to unfold, much like a silent hallway before a door opens.
The term liminal comes from the Latin limen, meaning “threshold.” When you define liminal, it refers to any state of being in transition—neither fully in the old chapter nor fully in the new one. In emotional or psychological terms, such a phase occurs when you’ve outgrown a previous identity or pattern but haven’t yet stepped into the next version of yourself.Read more here: https://mind.help/articles/liminal-spaces-the-psychology-behind-in-between/
*https://mind.help/articles/liminal-spaces-the-psychology-behind-in-between/
The article goes on about the psychological experiences, changing an inner being to a new place in life.
I, however, didn't read further.
Again I'm stuck on the word liminal and how my current move out west is affecting me much the same way. I'm on a threshold also. Not quite still in my life here in Black Mountain NC...though aware and talking and walking around with same places and people.
But my thoughts! Oh dear! How they are focused almost all the time on the "what will be" time.
I'm already moving there.
And the trip itself just became the liminal space. I will be experiencing daily (and nightly) moving from this known world into and through new ones. So I just can step into that void, and see what happens.
I, of course, being myself, want to organize things. But hey, I'm sitting here having lots of organization of my jobs I wanted to accomplish today, and instead, I'm thinking, writing, and off into a tangential reality rather than putting on the facemask against the dust and actually packing this that or the other.
I know I will, in just a minute or two. I know what I want to actually accomplish. It's screaming at me "pack me!" But all afternoon I've been carrying the word liminal around. Just wanted to write a bit down.
How about this phase of the move being pre-liminal?
Not a word, but it seems like the consideration of the move into liminal, where I currently am, would be correct.
Then there would be post-liminal, right?
But how about the old standby, subliminal? Ah ha!
That I've heard of before. It's messages which come through without being clearly stated, perhaps even like propaganda, where one hears "the grass is green" but thinks, "the grass is greener..."
OK, here's the dictionary:
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Subliminal
adjective
- Below the threshold of conscious perception. Used of stimuli.
- Inadequate to produce conscious awareness but able to evoke a response."subliminal propaganda."
- Existing in the mind, but below the surface or threshold of consciousness; that is, existing as feeling rather than as clear ideas.
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OK, I'm not going any further on that. For now.
I promise there were no subliminal messages in this post...at least not intentional. However being below consciousness, anything's possible!
