During a recent interview the host of the podcast asked me, “What would be your advise be for those passing through liminal times?”

My immediate first response was: “Don’t rush.” That answer was not premeditated. Not rushing was the first and most intuitive thing that came to my mind. And why? Because people are so inclined to rush the liminal passage. That is understandable. Who wants to free-float in the ambiguous, undefined, coordinate-lacking space for long?

If anything has characterized the human response to this most recent pandemic it has been that – rushing. We want it to be over. We feel antsy in our home-sheltering. We want our work, our family, our education, our religious organization, our socializing, our love-life, to return to whatever normal was. We so hate being out of control.

But we won’t return to normal, whatever that was. There is no backwards, only forward and what will be created as the result of passing through liminal space.

That is its gift, that we shall be changed. If we receive it.

And so, the first word in liminal space, this liminal space, is don’t rush. Roost but don’t rush. Find what is to be found. Wait for what is to be revealed. Receive the difficult gifts that are revealed in no other way. Let go of what must be released in order to do so.

Take a breath. Take two. Sit with it. Watch and wait. Create out of nothing. Create out of something. Allow the dark interval to serve as our womb, our space capsule, our alchemical container.

So much of our experience of time is illusory, This moment is the still point between what was and what will be. There is nowhere else to be. This present moment is eternal. Why try to escape it? Now is the time to plunge into the deeps instead.

None of us will be free until we let go of the idea that we shouldn’t be here. We are here. In other words, slow down, don’t rush.