Weekly Insights: The Liminal Phase...

This week, the Judgement archetype had me thinking deeply about awakening to change. Change can happen in one breath, or it can take some time to get fully integrated into our lives. We tend to go through a type of cocoon phase - where we live in a void while we move from one identity to another. I have had a lot of these experiences in my life, and I am familiar with this space. It can be really scary, yet extremely exciting - and it can bring up our fears, insecurities, and self-doubts. There are moments when we feel great about creating change, and there are spurts of self-deprecation where the entire process feels like a big failure. I would say now that this is a big indicator that we are headed in the right direction.

An important part of creating positive change manifests in the void. Most people struggle in the spaces of the unknown because as humans, we want to believe that we have control over our lives. Life, however, has a different plan for us. We are really here to grow, change, and evolve into a more aligned version of who we are. This process takes us from our old realities to the decision to change. After change comes the void of the unknown, and then to new ideas, tests, and trials, and finally to total integration into our new realities. Each of us goes through a death of the old life, and the old dreams, old goals, and old versions of who we were. We might be drawn to journal our feelings, connect deeper to nature for peace, fall back on our spiritual practices, or sleep more this week. Part of the uncovering of truths is taking care of oneself and honoring the living process.

Our society rewards progress, success, and productivity. It doesn't think as highly of those who are in a pause between commitments, choices, and decisions. Even our own nervous systems struggle with uncertainty. We try new ideas and try to solve the puzzle of what we will do next, but only time can define where we land. There can be grief over this process, but at the same time, there is joy in the art of expansion. We are literally building our new lives from the foundation up. It is a time to become more stable, to reorganize our priorities, and shift the way we measure our successes. The biggest struggle manifests in the feeling that we are no longer the people we used to be, but we have not been able to justify our total transformation yet. This process mimics the transformation from a caterpillar to a butterfly. The caterpillar finds a milkweed plant to attach to and hang in stillness until it is time to emerge into the new state of being as a butterfly. We also go through this metamorphosis. Stillness, silence, and space are crucial to our growth process. Death creates the stillness, and the rebirth creates the transcendence - and every transformation has both death and rebirth. The gifts that come out of this process are highlighted as clarity, stronger values, a stronger nervous system, and the release of automatic living. The real question for all of us is, what cost are we willing to pay in order to preserve our authentic expression?

Each of us had to cross the bridge between our old realities and our current ones. It is part of the recipe for life and the sacred times of change. Once the cycle is over, we are able to take another step closer to a more meaningful life. Isn't that what we all really want? Looking back at our lives, each of us can identify these profound moments that offered great meaning to our transformation processes. These moments of "in between" were crucial to the process of becoming who we really are. Embrace the liminal phases of life and be okay with stillness. This is where all of the seeds begin - in the dark and quiet states of the void.