"Three Theses on Liminality"

In the liminal, there are dangers involving true existential threats, as well as opportunities for fundamentally good re-patternings of basic social structures and cultural realties.

Liminality (from the Latin word līmen, “threshold”) is the ambiguity that emerges in the middle of a fundamental transition. Liminality is the “in-between”, where the space and the participants no longer hold their past status, but have not yet fully transformed to their post-transition self.

Today it is commonplace to speak of the present as an interregnum, as liminal, or simply a transition, but the issue at stake is deeper. My preferred form of words comes from Zak Stein – a time between worlds – because it gives the idea a poetic and mystical atmosphere for inquiry while also being an empirical claim.

Living between worlds means dealing (again) with reality itself, which is not some featureless totality of oneness, but a complex non-dual whole in which every choice counts and has causal impact.

Whether it refers to people, places, or societies, liminality provides a playground for transformation, a game with no rules we’re all invited to join, a sandbox for liminal creativity.

One world is now gone and a new one has yet to emerge; we are now at the beginning of the beginning. We are living in the liminal: a time of pure potential and change, a time between worlds.