Crisis As A Turning Point The Gift Of Liminal Time

hey

thank you

[Applause]

people come to see a psychiatrist or

jungian analysts as i am

when they are in crisis

you go along with life and it seems to

be the way it is and then

suddenly something changes that’s very

painful a relationship ends

you’ve thought of yourself in great

health and you

get a blood test back and it says you

have something very very serious

or it happens to someone close to you

or you’re in an automobile accident you

were perfectly fine

five minutes before the accident now

you’re going to spend a lot of time

in rehab and in hospitals this is what

life is

like it goes smoothly and then

crisis and i’d like you to think about

the many crises that you have had in

your life

i don’t think you can get through life

without at least

a couple dozen of them there are major

crises and then there are smaller ones

but each one is

very similar in the way

that what was

is no longer

you can’t go back to what was the

relationship really is

over or you were fired from your job

or you failed a course in school and

suddenly

you are in a

crisis and crisis brings on something

that

is good to think about as a liminal

space

because that’s where during this

pandemic

global pandemic caused by covid

19 we are all now in this liminal space

where we can’t go back

hundreds of thousands of people have

died they’re not coming back

people are out of work their jobs are

over

the businesses are done

you can’t go back to what was

and you don’t know what is coming next

because during a liminal time

and the word comes from the latin word

for threshold

threshold is in between in between what

was

and what will be or what next

one way or another we are in this in

between

space where life is not the way it used

to be

but there is a gift to liminal time

when you are examining

and feeling and sharing it

and you don’t know what’s coming next

that’s when there is space

in your psyche mostly it’s an inner kind

of

experience and you think

is this all there is and there is a

a kind of dishearten out of touch with

what is authentically you and that

is when the work

of listening to one’s dreams of

remembering

what your what your hopes were

when you start examining and feeling

from

inside out you’ve been so busy trying to

please other people or

or live up to or whatever it was that

you have spent so much of your energies

doing

and now in the middle of the pandemic

life is not quite the same

for many people it’s really really not

the same

and somehow in that kind of liminal time

that we all find ourselves in we start

to

remember what we forgot

that mattered to us and this is one of

the richest times of the gift of liminal

time you start to remember and have

dreams and think about

what it was that was important to you

before

long before maybe so in the liminal time

of being in between who you used to be

and who you might be becoming this is

when

the dreams can have an enormous ability

to evoke

that part of yourself that you

suppressed

and it may be for example a talent you

had

that from the very time you started out

interested in that people around you

said ah

you can’t make a living doing that

except right now you might be in a

liminal unemployed time when you might

think about what it is you really love

to do

and you might think about what is it

that you do that you get

so involved in what you are doing that

you actually lose

track of time and only you can say

when you say yes to something is it

going to be meaningful to you

will it be fun for you

it may be really a lot of work but when

you do that

when you try learning that you are so

engaged

in it that for you it’s fun

and the other thing is what you are

drawn to do

motivated by love love

of the space you get into when you do it

love of being with that person and what

that person represents

it’s a very inside out kind of decision

to make about how you spend the energy

of your life

the idea of a crisis is a turning point

and i’m remembering the labyrinths that

i’ve walked

and how it is you think you’re going in

a straight line and then

oops turning point

and you the path that you were on

suddenly

moves you in yet another direction

but if you stay on that path because it

is your path

you’ll have many different turning

points but it is the way your life

unfolds through the turning points

of crisis through the times when you

stop and

feel and follow heart and soul

and make decisions sometimes

it’s unexpected and a positive thing i

think about how it is that i

turned out to be a doctor in part

because i

was a surprise because in high school

and

what i was on track to be was to go into

law

but i went up in the mountains one

summer just before becoming a senior in

high school

and i thought about my birth injured

brother who never even learned to talk

i could have been him there’s no reason

why

he came into this world and had to

suffer

his impaired life and i was a star

of the family there was just at that

point a deep sense of humility of

that i had done nothing to to be the

spared child

it was a a sense of

deep humility and a sense of wanting

to know what i should do with my life

and in that mountainous area

i got the strong interior message that

you should be a doctor

and i promised i would i was never that

great in the

the sciences and so i said well maybe i

made a mistake

and then i started to work with people

and i had a sense

that helping people was really what my

assignment was

there’s something about this liminal

space between what was

and what will be where synchronicity in

the form of what i call

the dandelion effect that you

pick a dandelion and you blow out

the seeds and the winds take them

it’s a it’s the internet winds carry

the words that i may speak

out somewhere and the idea is

that people need words to understand

what’s going on inside

because they need to to have a sense

of why they are motivated from inside

out

to do what they are doing and if i

say something and it goes out on the

internet winds and it lands in a fur

in the fertile soil of a soul that just

needed some justification

the right words just to say this is who

i

am this is who i was meant to be and

this liminal time of being in crisis

is an opportunity the chinese word for

crisis the pictograph

it’s made up of two pictures danger and

opportunity

and that’s where we all are in this

liminal time in this time of pandemic

where things are not the same but one of

the things that most people

are doing more than they used to do is

that they are dreaming more

that they are feeling more and

remembering more

of what it was in their path

on their path that brought them to where

they are now

where they are in a moment of choice

about what they will do with their lives

now in liminal time there’s the

opportunity

to decide what you’re going to do with

your time

what is your dream saying

and might this be a time not just for

you personally

but for humanity in general there is a

global pandemic going on there’s a

global

warming going on in california anyway

where

i live we’ve had wildfires there was a

day when

the sky was orange

it was like the end of end of time

so we are in an extraordinary important

liminal time where every person

can contribute something to shift it

one direction or another and i have been

writing a number of things and

i put a memoir out into the world

and then i got interviewed for a

lifetime achievement award recently and

and they have a whole bunch of questions

and one stood out what do you want your

legacy to be

i’m 84 this year and i thought

i’m not done yet and so i pulled the

memoir back

because i am not done yet

and that’s the kind of inner feeling

that that doesn’t come from outside and

to pay attention to what’s

inside that’s saying what it is

and that’s what happens when you are in

a liminal

time and you’re receptive to being who

you are

synchronicity comes in and invitations

or possibilities come in and pay

attention

because you have an opportunity to shift

not only your course

but to contribute to the humanities

course

and i’m thinking about how it is

that we have this this time

this liminal time to make a difference

in the jungian world we have an

understanding of a collective

unconscious that we

are actually linked in some way that we

can’t

totally understand because it’s not

entirely visible and tangible

trust that you came into this world

with something to do here somebody

something to love here

trust that that it matters and trust

that there’s an invisible world that

supports you

it goes back to to that realization that

my handicapped impaired brother

who died young could have been me

and as i look across the world and i see

people that are part of the human family

not just my personal family

but all the people that are born under

terrible circumstances in

hardship places why wasn’t it me

it could have been me it could have been

any one of us but we are here

and it does matter

we in a liminal time what we do here

matters we can make a difference on the

world

in our families and become true to

ourselves

in the doing of it

and when you are true to yourself there

is something about

becoming who you were meant to be that

just from

inside out means that over

and over again you say yes

from inside there are three questions

will it be meaningful

will it be fun and lastly

isn’t motivated by love the other day

i was reading

three lines from real kay who said

i live my life in widening circles

that go across the world

i’m on my last one i don’t know

when it will end but i am committed

to see it i’m not done yet

thank you you