Liminality refers to in-between states that mark transformation. Liminality is all around us — we see it in a flower between bud and blossom, the dawn before the sun breaks over the horizon. We feel it when we travel on a flight from somewhere to somewhere as we journey in a transitional space that offers a chance for unaccustomed vistas, literally and figuratively.
“Such things as I have seen out this window I have never dreamed,” artist Georgia O’Keefe wrote to her sister while on a plane journey. “A great river system of green and grey seeming to run up hill to a most dreamlike lake of bluish and pinkish grey…” The perspectives that air travel gave O’Keefe inspired her to take new, more abstract directions in her painting. This shift intended to capture the sense of possibility, of becoming, inherent in the “between.”
“This year, as we say goodbye to the old and welcome the new, we can put aside our usual ways of seeing.”
In Tibetan Buddhism, between-states are known as bardos. They frame the intervals when heightened awareness and new insights are available to us. We’re now entering one of the most fertile between-states in life — the transitional period as the old year comes to an end and the new year begins. This period is a bardo passage with great possibilities for change.
The Tibetan Book of the Dead is a centuries-old manual for navigating bardo, written to guide the dead through the intermediate state between death and rebirth. Its message also guides us, the living, on the journey between birth and death, including bardos we experience during life. The book tells us that, in our between states, we have a precious chance for transformation because “the intellect becometh ninefold more lucid;” and “one possesseth the slender sense of supernormal perception and…the mind is capable of being changed or influenced.”
The bardo passage as this year winds down and the new year gets underway offers us the opportunity to gain wisdom and determine our path forward. One way to think of this interval is as a time when we’re in retreat or, from a Buddhist point of view, “in the cave.” In the Buddhist tradition, caves are very important: quiet, simple spaces that invite reflection. They’re believed to hold great possibility for fresh perspectives.
My Tibetan grandmother told me about a Rinpoche from Darjeeling who vanished and was discovered to have gone to a high cave in Yatung, near Tibet. There he stayed for three years “getting power.” Siddhartha Gautama retreated to a cave near Bodh Gaya, India, on his journey to becoming the Buddha, and in the 11th and 12th centuries, the Tibetan spiritual master Milarepa meditated in numerous caves in the Himalayas.
We can embrace the end-of-year bardo as a time to enter the cave and reflect on where we are in our personal lives as parents and children, as friends and partners, as professionals and artists. We can contemplate “what is” now, our hopes for what will be, and what we can do to make those hopes a reality.
Because the holidays are so busy, this may sound aspirational, but however hectic things get, even a few minutes in the cave each day can reveal surprising insights — things we only see when we make room for them to become visible. Your cave could be an alcove in your house, a corner of your garden, space in your mind as you make breakfast or put up holiday decorations or take an early morning walk. Where might yours be?
Accustomed as we are to constant thought and motion, we may find it difficult to enter the cave and, once there, to stay there. But if we persevere, open to the alchemy that can take place in bardo, we may discover new interpretations and outlooks. We’re familiar with the idea of exploring our external lives; in the cave, we can make discoveries as we navigate our inner universe.
This year, as we say goodbye to the old and welcome the new, we can put aside our usual ways of seeing. We can allow the seen to give way to the unseen as we travel the mountains and rivers and galaxies of the world within. The discoveries we make can awaken and delight us, helping us to reset our compass and start afresh with the new year.
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