The liminal space between ending and new beginning
A place where serendipity is talking loudly to me
You know how sometimes life seems to mysteriously point you to certain things? Articles, signs, people, messages, metaphors, YouTube videos…
I call it serendipity. I have written quite a bit about it here:
Shaping serendipity,
Serendipity in Portugal,
Serendipity: how it can change your life.
Serendipity is always there. We often don’t notice it because we are too busy, not in the present moment. Since my life is pretty much restrained to my couch at the moment, serendipity tends to find me a lot.
Serendipity # 1
A few days ago, I came across this fascinating article ‘Drinking in the Roots’ by
full of interesting facts and images of tree and plant roots and their communication with each other and the world.I made this note in my diary:
Serendipity # 2
The same day, I came across this article ‘Isostacy, Ecotones, and Healing’ by
where she talks about the effect the book ‘Weathering’ (How the Earth’s deep wisdom can help us endure life’s storms”) by has on her. And it spoke to me.Serendipity # 3
Two days later, serendipity in form of this article made me come across the poem ‘For a new beginning’ by John O’Donohue :
FOR A NEW BEGINNING
by John O’DonohueIn out-of-the-way places of the heart,
Where your thoughts never think to wander,
This beginning has been quietly forming,
Waiting until you were ready to emerge.For a long time it has watched your desire,
Feeling the emptiness growing inside you,
Noticing how you willed yourself on,
Still unable to leave what you had outgrown.It watched you play with the seduction of safety
And the gray promises that sameness whispered,
Heard the waves of turmoil rise and relent,
Wondered would you always live like this.Then the delight, when your courage kindled,
And out you stepped onto new ground,
Your eyes young again with energy and dream,
A path of plenitude opening before you.Though your destination is not yet clear
You can trust the promise of this opening;
Unfurl yourself into the grace of beginning
That is at one with your life’s desire.Awaken your spirit to adventure;
Hold nothing back, learn to find ease in risk;
Soon you will be home in a new rhythm,
For your soul senses the world that awaits you.
It spoke to me in the sense that I realised that I find myself in this liminal space between ending and new beginning.
Serendipity # 4
As I cannot physically move much at the moment (being anaemic and thus without much energy and oxygen), I participated in a Movement and Creativity workshop based on several gentle approches like Jeremy Krauss and Feldenkrais. After the first class I already had the takeaway that SMALL IS BIG and that small movements can have a big impact.
Serendipity # 5
A friend sent me an Instagram reel on how in numerology, 2025 is a number 9 year which “represents completion, transformation and releasing what no longer serves you. It’s the perfect time to align your subconscious with new beginnings.”
HAH!
When serendipity winks at me this often, I pay attention and go dig and while it may look like my digging has me jump from one thing to the next, it is all linked with lots of hidden messages and aha moments.
So bear with me…
NUMBER 9
Number 9 has always been my lucky number. My life path (numerology number) is 9.
My healing journey of digesting has taken me back to the past, which is exactly what a number 9 year expects of you. I came across this article that explains it well.
The 9 Year takes you in what seems like the wrong direction – backwards – but this is the direction you must take in order to find the unfinished issues which are preventing you from going forward.
Your reality is not just a matter of where you stand today or where you want to be tomorrow. It is made up of everything that has ever happened to you, everyone you have ever met, anything you have ever done, and any feeling you have ever felt – or denied.
TWILIGHT
I feel like a lot of things are coming together, yet it feels like a transition stage, a TWILIGHT ZONE of some kind, which brought me to look up what Twilight really means.
evening, between daylight and darkness
period of obscurity, ambiguity, gradual decline
I drew this image from Wikipedia in my diary. It felt suddenly similar to the image I drew days earlier about the tree and the roots, the above and beneath.
…sometimes twilight is used metaphorically to imply that something is losing strength and approaching its end. (source)
LIMINALITY - RITES OF PASSAGE
This made my digging move on to a liminal space (from latin: limen = doorstep, threshold, beginning) and liminality:
…a quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of a rite of passage.(source)
Arnold van Gennep coined the term liminality and determined 3 stages of a rite of passage (source):
preliminal rites (rites of separation/metaphorical death)
liminal rites (transition rites / following a sequence)
post liminal rites (rites of incorporation / new identity)
Victor Turner rediscovered the importance of liminality
'The attributes of liminality or of liminal personae ("threshold people") are necessarily ambiguous'.[16] One's sense of identity dissolves to some extent, bringing about disorientation, but also the possibility of new perspectives. (source)
And in Tibetan Buddhism, Bardo :
Metaphorically, bardo can be used to describe times when the usual way of life becomes suspended, as, for example, during a period of illness or during a meditation retreat. (source)
For Jungians “the idea of a 'container' or 'vessel' as a key player in the ritual process of psychotherapy” and “Carl Jung's objective was to provide a space he called "a temenos, a magic circle, a vessel, in which the transformation inherent in the patient's condition would be allowed to take place.” (source)
Isn’t all that absolutely fascinating?
I am sitting in this vessel (my body) in this liminal space, going through a rite a passage. The ending not yet there, the beginning only hazily visible.
My journey of digestion made me go back and write a list of all things (big and small) I have had to digest or haven’t digested fully yet (which is why I am sick now).
I have since been thinking of how to creatively process this list and my journey because “emotional expression is our strength, our own self-healing mechanism, our only means of freedom, and the ultimate tool of creativity.”
And here again, serendipity provided. But more on that later when I have given it time to incubate.
Stay tuned!
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. ~T.S. Eliot
Beautiful read, thanks for sharing, Miranda!
I really enjoyed this, Miranda. Thank you!