What Do We Do When One Story Has Died But The Other Is Not Yet Written?
The liminal space between stories is scary but necessary
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Transcript:
Speaker 1 (00:02):
So I wanted to talk to you today about the space between stories. I heard a, an audio from Charles Eisenstein. It reminded me of this concept of this space between. A long time ago feels like a million years ago. But when I first started undoing the trauma of my past, the person I was working with described it to me as a trapeze artist.
When a trapeze artist, lets go of one bar, there's that moment where they're suspended in space before they grab the other bar, and that momentum carries them forward. And it really struck me this morning how that's really where we are. The, we are suspended in space.
We are used to having our stories to hang on to for good or bad, whether those stories are actually true or not. <Laugh>, they were the firm ground we stand, stood on, stood upon. I love how Pema Chödron describes this in many of her books, where the rug just gets snatched out from under you and you are suspended in space. And it really is where we are.
So what do we do when one story has died, but we haven't written the other one yet?
We don't know how to write it because we've never been here before. Most of us today don't have, and I have to speak from an American perspective because that's who I am. And I've never lived in Europe. And I know that they are much more in tune with history than we are.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
But I'm struck by how this is such a powerful moment. It's an incredibly powerful place to be staring into the void when everything has collapsed and or is collapsing. Our, our old, our old stories have ended. Although some of us are still like, wait, what? Especially those who voted for someone they thought was gonna help them, who then immediately was like, nah, I don't want it. And actually I never intended to. Basically, I tricked you so I could get your boat and now off. I know that that's like extra shocking for some people, and that's unfortunate. And I also have a great deal of compassion for it.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
I actually do feel sorry for people who thought they were going to get help. And they were, you know, tricked, betrayed.
So that's a different story. But let's talk about how our old stories have ended. And even though some of us are fighting to keep hold of them, like, no, wait, let's patch this together. No, wait, let's just rewrite this a little bit. Can we just do some editing? Can we not just like erase the whole thing, but the whole thing is being erased. We have our pre-COVID and post-COVID stories. The world is never ever gonna be what it was pre-COVID. It's never gonna be what it was pre-2016. We know this.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
So stories are shattering and some have shattered. And the image I see is them scattered on the ground, like broken glass. Like, in a sense, we've gone through a different kind of [metaphorical] Kristallnacht where everything just gets shattered, and it feels sudden even though it's not sudden.
It was, this has been a slow process. Let's go all the way back and dump this on Reagan, because I mean, this has been a long thing. What's sudden is the awareness like, oh, oh, it's over. Oh no. Oh wait, this is real. That part is sudden. That part is a shock. But the truth is, this has been building for a while, but we can miss this beautiful point of power where everything is shattered. Everything in one sense, this is the razor's edge, right? On one side, everything is destroyed and, and it's horrible and sad. And on the other side is weight. Everything is destroyed.
We can build whatever we want, and we will lose this point of power if we allow ourselves to be transfixed by the stories that are still shattering.
One of the most powerful things we can do is to acknowledge the death and destruction of these stories and to step fully into that liminal space, which is frightening. But when we step into it with the knowledge that this is the way things go, there is a destruction, there's a space, and then there's the, in that space, we are contemplating and we are building the seeds for the new stories there. It's not an inactive place that in between, it's actually very active, although it can look quiet and still from the outside.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
So we're called on to step into our personal power, into our sovereignty and choose in a sense we have that blank slate before us.
What are we going to write on it? How will we write it? What do we want? We know where we've been. We know where we are, sort of, but we haven't yet effectively defined where we're going.
We're still in the pushback, right? We're still pushing against what's happening. Like we're still in the no, no, no, no, no state. We're still saying, wait, no, we don't want this. We don't want this. And that's okay. That's all normal. But we also can be very effective if we give some thought to alright, this is happening with or without our agreement. This is happening. And okay, so this is gone or going, the other is not yet here. And in this suspended state, we can panic and flail and struggle and drown in despair. Or we can acknowledge that we are in that suspended state. There is nothing firm under our feet. Our foundation has been obliterated. We are topsy-turvy as or tea kettle like we are in that moment. And while it is terrifying for the human mind, when we recognize that's where we are, just that recognition gives us a little something to stand on. We're not spinning in space groundless. As soon as we acknowledge it that, oh God, oh, I'm spinning in space. Then we actually kind of stop spinning in space. 'cause We recognize where we are.
Speaker 1 (07:48):
We recognize the big picture of what is happening. And that gives our mind a place to rest. It's a little place to rest. It's a tiny thing. But it does stop our spinning out of control. We can remind ourselves that liminal space doesn't go on forever. This isn't purgatory where we're stuck for the rest of our lives or the rest of our existence. These are the moments before dawn, the predaawn, the twilight, the in between.
The places where the foxes and the coyotes and animals start to move. And the nighttime critters start to become active. This shadowy in between.
As the animals, the nighttime animals start to become active, the humans can start to become anxious because we know darkness is coming and we're not comfortable in the dark.
But we can grab this moment and go, yes, darkness is coming, and it's actually here. But that means the sunrise will also come that lightening around 3:00 AM 4:00 AM when the rooster starts crowing well before sunrise, we know that's coming too. And we remind ourselves of that.
We can spend our time writing news stories at night.
So it's an advantage we have as a human that we have that choice, that we do have the ability to grab ourselves by the scruff of the neck and shake ourselves out of the hallucination to pull our attention back and pull our power back to ourselves and choose where we want it to go.
(09:42):
We're being tugged on. It's sort of like a mother or a father that's being tugged on by a toddler. Look at me, look at me, look at me, look at me. Oh, you're not looking at me. I'm gonna, I'm gonna scream and throw a fit. Oh, you're not still not looking at me. I'm gonna get louder. I'm gonna start breaking. I'm gonna go totally Tasmanian devil here.
(10:02):
But the parent's job is to go, I see what you're doing, and I'm here, and I'm watching, and I'm gonna keep you safe. And also, I'm not going to get into that with you, <laugh>, right? This is like being a therapist or being a coach. You can't jump into the chaos and panic with your client.
You know, when I was going through my stuff and I was talking to this person and I was like, I, I feel like I'm going crazy. I feel like I'm never gonna stop crying. I feel like I, my emotions are like out of control. Like, what is blah, blah, blah. And he's like, oh, you're, that's the InBetween. You're safe. You're okay. This is normal. This is the dissolution. This is you know, everything falling apart, dissolving.
(10:48):
It's the goose state between before becoming a butterfly, becoming a butterfly. It's, it's normal. Yeah. So if instead he had jumped in the mess with me and was like, oh my God, you're right. Oh my God, this is terrible. You're gonna cry forever. Oh no, <laugh>, that wouldn't have served me at all. He would've been a terrible therapist if he'd done that. I would be a terrible therapist and now coach if I ever did that with my clients. My job is to hold the steady space, to be the eye in the hurricane. And we can do that for our poor little mind that is just freaking the out.
We can go, yes, yes. It is scary. Yes, this is painful. Yes, this is wrong.
(11:44):
And what do we wanna do with it? I left a message for my money group this morning because I did a distance healing session for them yesterday. And it's like, what do we want?
Where do we want to put our power?
Where do we wanna grab all this chaos and alchemize it?
Where do we wanna grab the hysteria and go, let's take this raw unbridled energy and alchemize it into something creative.
What do we wanna do in this space between stories where one story is dying and the other is yet to be written?
It's not manifested yet.
We're like, where's this going? Where's this going? Well, it's gonna go where we decide it's gonna go.
We have to write the story. We have to create the banks for the river of energy to flow through. Right now it's just a wild lake churning and flowing and going nowhere really just churning and churning and churning.
(12:51):
When the outlet for a lake when gets too full, and it's churning and churning, they open the outlet gate, and all the water starts rushing down the river. And it has banks. So it's controlled chaos. It's going somewhere. It's effective. It's doing something. It's leveling and calming the lake and it's rushing toward irrigation ditches or to the ocean or where rivers go. You know, it's flooding on the flood plains and creating fertile soil. It's effective, but it's up to us to do this on an individual level so that we can contribute to forming the river banks on the collective level. So we can go with our pink eraser and erase all the things and knock it out of our struggling and stop trying to grasp onto it. Pick up a pencil and start writing something new. Okay, this is. I know I don't want this. What do I want?
(13:56):
I want to put more of my time into creating something I'm going to then see manifest. What I'm doing today is going to manifest my tomorrow. My future is being created right now as I'm sitting here talking to you, oh, making this podcast episode, which I just realized I completely forgot to do the introduction, whatever, podcast number, blah blah. This is your host, yada yada. Y'all know the drill.
But what I'm choosing to do with the chaotic energy, with the broken stories on the ground is to feel my panic. Share what I feel like I need to share, vent that energy, and now grab that energy. We are surrounded by surging wild, primal energies. We can think of that as a block of clay. We can grab hold of it, pull all that energy into us, feel how disturbing it is, feel physically how disruptive and dysregulating it is, and observe how it flows through our body. And it feels like we're being tossed around.
We're in the spin cycle of the washing machine, the washer. And we can go, yes we are. And what do I wanna do with this? Do I wanna sit and create a blanket, do some embroidery, something so simple? Do I want to declutter a drawer? Do I wanna really clean the house? Do I wanna organize the garage?
How can I move my body with this chaotic energy and make it into something that serves me on a very personal level?
(16:02):
And in doing so, I am contributing organization to the chaos out there that we're all going through. If all of us grabbed this energy and started creating with it, can you imagine maybe you are needing to create a committee. Maybe you need to create your book. Maybe you need to create the channels so that your psychic mediumship skills can be opened up and organized and given form and given structure so that they can be useful to you.
So we can't see the future yet because we haven't created it yet. And if we don't take charge of creating it, we will just continue creating more chaos. 'cause that's where we're focused.
We can become conscious of this conscious creators. We can develop conscious businesses that acknowledge the truth of what is. We can keep encouraging each other. Like, don't be distracted. Don't be distracted when they throw another shock bomb. When anyone, now I'm not even talking about us versus them or any kind of that. When anyone throws a shock bomb, we don't have to be destroyed by the shrapnel. We can say, oh yeah, cute. I see what you're doing there. I see that you're deliberately creating shock. Hmm, I'm gonna catch the wave of the chaos and shock you just created. I'm gonna do something with it.
(17:40):
I'm gonna channel it into the future because I'm an alchemist, because I'm the boss of me, because I am sovereign, because I can allow the ripples and the disruption and the dysregulation to flow through. And then I can incrementally come back to center and say, now what?
Another thing I left from my group today was I got this from a coach [Janelle Newell]. You label the event, okay, X happened and here's how I feel about it. And now what am I gonna do with it? This happened. Here's how I'm responding to it or reacting to it. Here's what I'm gonna do with it. Now you, you may not be able to answer that in 30 seconds. You may have to think, okay, this happened. This thing happened. Wow, it really happened. You might have to spend a whole day there. And then here's how I feel about it.
(18:46):
That might take some time. And when you say, here's how I feel about it. Get physical, like really physical with that. Really take that, those sensations, those intense physical sensations. Let them ripple through your legs and your feet and make you itchy and antsy.
And when that happens, be present with it and breathe. Not to make it go away, but to help it integrate. That is the process of alchemy.
When all of this thing is these things are happening and our body is reacting to them, we breathe to bring it in and alchemize it, not to run away from it. Some people are using their breath, practice their EFT, their meditation, time to still escape. It's subtle, but we have to watch for that.
(19:36):
And it face the pain. Bring it in point, turn poison to medicine, devour that energy and alchemize it tolen practice. T-O-N-G-L-E-N. You're breathing in the hot chaos, the dark, and you alchemize it in the power of your own heart. And then you exhale joy, you exhale peace, you exhale beauty. And some people will say, I can't do that because I'm gonna have that all that darkness in me.
No, you don't. You're alchemizing it. You're taking that mud and growing a lotus from it. You're taking that broken story energy and writing the new one. You're acknowledging that you are so powerful that you can bring all of that right into your own heart. And there is nothing that your heart can't transform.
And the more we acknowledge that, whoa, whoa, whoa. We're not victims here. We've been raised to be cogs in the system. We've been raised to be components on a weird circuit board and to only do our one little thing. We've been raised that way, but we're not that way. We are not that We are sovereign. We can take the energy. And at the most minimal thing, the tiniest little thing that we can do that's so incredibly powerful is to change how we feel.
(21:20):
A lot of us live by that Victor Frankl quote. That everything can be taken from a man except the freedom to choose his own response or her own response. Or their own response. Of course, I just totally screwed that up. But I think you know what I'm talking about. There's also the space between stimulus and response that a lot of us live by.
I had that, I had both those quotes on my desk for years when I was trying to get out of social services. So back, so back in the nineties and early two thousands when I recognized that job was killing me, but I didn't know what to do next. Same thing. The story that I could do that job forever was had broken, but I didn't know what kind of story to write next. So in the in between I was like, wait a minute, I'm powerful. I can choose, I can breathe, I can do this, I can do that, we can do that. And we have done it already. There's times in your life where you've already done this. Just having to being asked to do it on a larger scale. And it's not just America, this is global.
(22:36):
Things falling apart is global. It's not just us. We're not alone. Other people have been through it more than we have. We can look to them to go, okay, wait a minute. How did they resist it? And let's take some lessons from that. This is, you know, going up to the big picture level, to the the overview. And then how does that look in my, I'm sitting here on a Sunday afternoon in Monroe, Georgia. Now how does that look for me? Well, for me, it looks like I'm working today. I'm taking a break to do this and I'm gonna go back to doing my work going with the family to a Mexican restaurant this evening. Now, in between all that, what can I do to check in with the collective and to hold a prayer that we awaken and recognize where we are? These are all things I can do. Just little old me sitting here doing my things. I got a cat in front of me. Of course, y'all, if y'all know Juniper Hoot, AKA Shaman Cat, there's a lot of energy running. He's always right here when there's loads of energy. So I can pet the cat,
(23:58):
I can pet this little old man. There's a lot that I can do. There's a lot that you can do. It takes a great deal of courage to be in the in-between, to stand in the space between the stories, to be in that liminal space and know that nighttime is coming and the day is ending.
And to remind yourself that yeah, nighttime's coming. And we'll get through it and the darkness will lighten and there will be a sunrise. And in that time, we can take a step toward creation.
We can take the wild chaos and channel it into the new story. We can be the alchemists we are when we choose to BE the alchemist.
When we say, I got a lot of lead here, there's a lot of lead. Mm, kind of literally and figuratively. There's a lot of lead. Now here's how I feel about all that lead then next:
How am I gonna spin this into gold?
How am I gonna transform this into life? How am I gonna take all this death and rebirth it?
How am I gonna be the phoenix going cold and set myself on fire to transform?
(25:29):
Next? Which word comes next? Which sentence comes next? Which paragraph comes next?
One letter at a time. One word at a time, one sentence, one paragraph. And the next thing you know, we have a new story to stand on.
You're the boss of you - choose. And that's all I have for you and I hope that's helpful. Until we talk again, think less, feel more, and I'll talk to you later.
XO,
LMW
P.S. I am teaching a new process for exploring and evolving your natural intuitive abilities. We start Feb 22, and enrollment is open now.
