"Find what interests you and follow it as far as you can" : some thoughts on the liminal space

Much of my life experience and soul-searching in previous years was understanding how our psyche guides us through phase transitions. The portentous and pregnant pause between states,

the lull between one second and the next, the dead space between an exhale and subsequent inhale, the brief airborne suspension between one step and the next, these are the liminal spaces we must first be guided through when passing from Being to Becoming.

Kierkegaard called it the "indeterminant state", the state between the present and the multiple futures we envisioned for ourselves. In actualising the path forward there was only action, and at the decisive moment when in the liminal space, action in the grip of anxiety.

But how to act when there is only uncertainty ahead? Jung articulated my answer best. Jung said that "this body is a body with a beast's soul" and that it contained the Shadow, the animalistic "wild nature" that complemented our dualistic aspect as cognitive reasoning beings.

The Shadow whispered to us when within the liminal space, lending us its bestial vitality and dynamism to impel us to continually move forwards even when all of our reason was screaming within to step back from the precipice, if only we would learn to hear and heed it of course.

Living with too much comfort and safety diminishes the wild dynamism that we have all inherited as the products of nature (not only of culture) that we also are, leading to all manner of anxieties, self-doubts, nihilistic tendencies, and lack of vitality.

Meeting and welcoming the Shadow as brother and heeding its wisdom on the other hand would ignite us with a life-affirming inner fire. This is why I like Wim Hof's method. To @Iceman_Hof it is obvious how to reintegrate with our animal aspect and hard reset pathological thought

patterns that come from being too much in our own heads and not enough in the body - jump into ice water and in the bitter, biting cold let your life hang in the balance. Being in 0°C water causes all cognition to fade away, we stay suspended within the liminal space

leaving only the most fundamental instinct that our Shadow animal natures will not be able to help but respond to - survive in the way an animal survives. Integrating this Shadow then gives us access to a new path of wisdom: 'feeling' not 'reasoning'; leading from the heart';

or how I heard it described recently on Twitter (paraphrasing here) 'the subconscious connection of data points we were as yet unable to articulate' (h/t @radigancarter) or how I interpret it through a Jungian lens,

'being guided by the voice of the Shadow instinct within whenever in the liminal space, the indeterminant state between futures'

Jung had a somewhat related idea I also like of the circumambulation of the Self, the flashes of interest we had in particular pursuits,

of seemingly arbitrary motivations, were like a guiding beacon coming from any number of potential future selves we might realise, and as we moved towards the sum of that potential it would only increase in resolution even as it receded away from us. Nietzsche said it in terms of

engaging in the act of continual 'Becoming', "To become what one is one must not have the faintest notion of what one is ... The whole surface of consciousness must be kept clear of all great imperatives ... Meanwhile the organising idea that is destined to rule keeps growing

deep down. It begins to command, slowly it brings us back from side roads and wrong roads. It prepares single qualities and fitnesses that will one day prove indispensable to the whole. One by one it trains all subservient capacities before giving any hint of the dominant goal,

task, aim, or meaning" - Nietsche

Tying this all together, it was never meant to be about "following your bliss" that phrase is way too puppydogs and rainbows and belies the thick vein of darkness that also runs through life that gives it its gravity, rather I think of it more

as "follow your anxieties", for pursuing what interests you as far as you can should not be a blissful journey, but one that is marred by the dust and sweat and blood of being in the arena, one that is heavy with the unease of continually probing the liminal space where only

as yet unrealised potential and indeterminant uncertainty at the edge of our cognitive and physical limits exists, but one that we know we have the strength to navigate successfully, as scarred as we may be, when trusting the vigour of the Shadow within.

/END