One of the questions I am frequently asked is this: “Just what can you discover in liminal space and how do you find it?”

That is such an excellent question. As Bjorn Thomassen reminds us, liminality guarantees nothing. In other words, liminal time and space simply is; the result can be either good or bad for us. What is required in a zone where past structure is absent, coordinates blurred, and old dependencies rendered useless is human creativity and agency. We may create in liminal space, which is actually changing our conscciousness as we pass through it. In a very real sense, the liminal passages allow for transformation, and in turn, the ways in which we are changed help us to accept, reform, and better what is around us.

Right now Gisela Wendling of The Liminal Pathways Study is working with a team to identify what competancies are required to navigate liminal space. The model she is developing is multi-facetted in that it considers mind, emotion, body, and spiritual insight. Those who serve as liminal guides develop abilities to navigate these spaces. These include:

• Observe and recognize where we are, what is there, and how the process is unfolding
• Understand the liminal arc of transformation as it passes through threshold into liminal space and beyond
• Direct attention and provide suggestions as to purpose in the great transition
• Provide support and protection
• Anticipate from experience what may be next
• Share a large universal perspective; the part belongs to the whole
• Draw on higher wisdom, spiritual insight, and non-rational ritual
• Pose great questions
• Point toward what might be on the other side

All of these leadership qualities allow those who pass through liminal transition to let go, discover, and embrace.

I am now working with Ewa Pasternak in Stockholm to integrate liminal reality with quantum principles. Stay tuned! We will present a paper at an international conference in Cambridge, UK, in December. Suffice it to say that liminal time and space reveals quantum aspects that have been present all along, making us aware of the deep ways individuals and communities may think differently about the ways in which we regard and move through newly revealed time and space.

No, liminal space doesn’t guarantee anything. But it most certaintly reveals what has been hidden. And in that revealing we may be transformed.