Liminal and Lucid – dreamstate interplay

Words mean stuff. They don’t always mean what we think they mean. Take “liminal”, for example.

Scratching My Head

Yes, I’m continuing to talk about dreams. Obviously this is a subject that gets me going.

I’m not an expert on dreaming. Instead, I come at it from my own perspective. (Okay, I did take a few classes on dreaming and dream interpretation in graduate school. But that only informs my experience now.)

Most of all, I’m interested in the state of being that occurs during dreaming. To me, that feels like a very different experience than being fully asleep or fully awake.

Scratching The Surface

In the movie LadyHawke, Isabeau and Navarre are “cursed”. To break this curse, they need to connect in that moment that straddles night and day. They and others in the story keep trying to find a way for this connection to happen, but it is illusive.

That’s what I think of when I hear the word “liminal”. It’s that thread between sleeping and waking much like their search for the one between day and night. It is, quite literally, the space between.

Talk about dreamy: liminal is exactly that. It is hanging in-between the moments that I can understand and those that I cannot immediately explain. The hovering between sleeping and waking is the kind of dreamstate I’m interested in.

Liminal to Lucid

This liminal space is common to lucidity. We can’t have lucid dreaming until we become aware of those moments of hovering. (I’ll ponder this “lucid” stuff more in a later blog post.)

Delving into these deeper states of consciousness can be very enlivening. I truly believe that seeking to notice and understand dreams makes our waking selves better, too. Dreams come from our subconscious mind, so naturally paying attention to them is going deeper. This is a great beginning for anyone who wants to understand more about themselves.

Don’t be afraid of exploring this liminal space. It does not need to be a scary thing. It’s part of who we are and has much to tell us. Let’s listen…

Main photo by leegenhyung via Pixabay