This is one of the most astonishing and heartening essays I’ve ever read on this topic. I had no idea that all of these things I’ve been experiencing my whole life are all linked. Thank you 🙏
Well you did it again! Across the planet from me and you peeked inside of me again. I am both. I had an awakening experience at age 10. I felt a shift in me and looked at my body in surprise and wondered how many times have I been an “I”. How many times have I found myself in a body. Then later in life I went all in with non duality teachings and it happened again but much deeper and intense and extremely hard to explain. Lots of trauma in childhood and up to just 2 years ago. My few offerings here on substack show both sides of me. I was fascinated with fairy tales and mythology very young and philosophy in late teens and up. I got my degree in art, but took fiction writing and poetry too. Yes I also have been fascinated with Tarot and have many decks.💜💜
That’s amazing, Michelle! Appreciate all that you’ve written here. So glad this essay reflects your liminal experiences as a child and as an adult. You’ve explored so much of this important part of you and kept it alive!
This gives language to something I have been circling for years.
In my own writing, I have often returned to images of the veil, the mask, the mirror and the in-between — not as decorative metaphor, but as a way of processing reality symbolically. During a period of personal crisis, an older body of lyrical prose I had written became almost a parallel reality of meaning: grounding, alive, and at times overwhelming.
It made me think about how much modern Western life narrows human experience. Experiences that may belong to imagination, embodiment, intuition, trauma, giftedness or deep symbolic intelligence are often reduced either to pathology or to romantic mysticism.
This piece holds the middle space beautifully — where meaning and reality can coexist without being flattened.
Love everything you’ve written here, Rania. Thank you very much for encapsulating my essay so generously and sharing your experience. Yes, so agree – modern Western life narrows human experience and shoves us into systems that flatten us. We can learn so much from other ways of knowing and being that brings us fully alive.
'Intuition', the 'Lil-o-radar', I've seen these in action for decades... now I have a better explanation and understanding of what's going on in that noggin, thank you.
Loved the water reference/analogy; we've been bathing in this experience since moving down to the seaside! 🏄♂️ 🐬 🦈 🐋 🌊 ☕️ 💝
Thanks for reading and commenting, Ted. Your interest in my “noggin” continues and for that I’m grateful! Yes, all the seaside things contribute so much to a gentler earth-side experience and support/resource the poetic-side.
You wrote my liminal life. 🤯 it’s exactly what I’ve been exploring and experiencing…I call it “Borderling” and I write about it on my substack of the same name. ♥️
Thank you for reading and commenting, Heather. Great to hear from you. "Borderling" is a wonderful, descriptive word to capture the luminal experience!
Lily, Interesting how you connect back to Dabrowski and his ideas for develpmental potential. I note that "liminal" implies a threshold, such as crossing a doorway, or a stream to its bank or the opposite.
Imagine how hard this is for a gifted sensitive child, or adolescent It might be interpreted as being odd, yet still uniquely theirs, a world that must be kept secret. Why? to avoid social judgment or misunderstanding. Even for adults with such potentials and needs it can feel too much. Thank you for entering such territory, an ever changing terrain.
I appreciate your patient essay to find the positive and the good in such people, young and old alike.
Hi Steve, thank you for your thoughtful comment. Yes, there are some interesting overlaps with Dabrowski's imaginal overexcitabilities, existential giftedness and liminal giftedness that I was attempting to connect in my essay. It's a fascinating developmental pathway and it was interesting to explore as a writer, researcher and dweller in liminal spaces.
Yes, a child or adolescent might be interpreted as odd and it makes sense that they could have a unique, secret world (or worlds). It'd emerge from high sensitivity - not necessarily fragile - and protection from social judgement and misunderstanding is so important. I'm glad you mentioned this and also commented on how adults with such potentials and needs can feel. "An ever-changing terrain" - yes! Thanks again, Lily.
Were you peaking through the veil and seeing into me through the morphic field? As an INFJ, you’ve described all four of my profile stacks in the most eloquent of ways. Simply brilliant writing. Salute
So glad you found this essay and felt seen, Molica. When I saw your title a few days or so ago - “liminalist” - I thought to alert you to my essay. Brilliant that you connected with it anyway. Thank you very much for reading and commenting.
There's a multidimensional ecosystem, we inhabit this multidimensional ecosystem. Our bodies construct models of reality reflecting the situated context inhabit
So the brain constructs a reality, with emotional relational conceptual symbolic being axes to the brain itself. So the brain and body experiences a multidimensional reality rooted in a multidimensional system that induces the multidimensional reality?
I think that's a reasonable way of thinking about it, although I'd probably use slightly more cautious language.
What we experience as "reality" is certainly shaped by perception, memory, emotion, relationships, culture, language, imagination, and meaning-making. In that sense, our lived experience is undeniably multidimensional. We're entangled in an ecosystem - a node in a web - interconnected.
So our ecosystem is itself this multidimensional system that our bodies and brains exist within. Our brains and body construct models of reality that are rooted in the ecosystem we inhabit?
I think of it as my living system (making no distinction here between brain and body) exists within a multidimensional ecosystem (context) that I construct models of reality about - that are partly in touch with reality, mind you. I'm a multidimensional living system that's entangled in a multidimensional field or ecosystem, if you like. How does this sound to you?
Both the body and ecosystem are multidimensional. Synthesize the body and ecosystem and a multidimensional reality emerges from the synthesis of the body and ecosystem.
Because there exists multiple bodies in this relational ecology, a multiplex relational reality emerges.
I think there's something important in what you're pointing to.
None of us encounter reality in a completely raw or unmediated way. We experience it through perception, memory, language, culture, metaphor, and the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening. In that sense, imagination is not the opposite of reality; it is one of the ways we participate in making sense of it.
Perhaps the distinction I was trying to make is that there is a difference between imaginative engagement with reality and becoming disconnected from consensual reality altogether. Many highly imaginative, creative, gifted, and neurodivergent people move fluidly between the symbolic, the conceptual, and the concrete. From the outside, that can sometimes be misunderstood as fantasy, dissociation, or confusion when it may actually be a sophisticated form of meaning-making.
The challenge, I think, is learning to inhabit both worlds at once: remaining grounded in shared reality while still honouring the rich imaginative and symbolic dimensions through which we understand it.
So people advanced in imaginational thinking can access a liminal space that allows them to see the world underneath the intersubjective reality people typically experience
Yes, perhaps, although I might frame it slightly differently.
I do think some people spend more time in liminal spaces – between disciplines, between identities, between ways of seeing, between the concrete and the symbolic. That can make certain assumptions, patterns, contradictions, and possibilities more visible to them than they are to people who are deeply embedded within a particular worldview or social reality.
What does seem true to me is that imagination, reflection, and deep pattern recognition can help us see beyond the default narratives that societies construct. They can reveal that many things we take for granted aren't inevitable, natural, or fixed. Sometimes what looks like "seeing underneath" is really seeing that the map isn't the territory.
I suspect some of the most creative, gifted, and other neurodivergent minds spend a great deal of time questioning the map, exploring alternatives, and wondering what else might be possible.
The liminally gifted people see right through the simulacrum we are enmeshed in by stepping outside of that simulacrum. They experience the capacity of seeing the underlying matrix that induces the simulacrum?
I think there's something compelling in that idea, particularly if we understand the "simulacrum" as the collection of stories, norms, assumptions, identities, and social agreements that shape our experience of reality.
Many neurodivergent people seem less willing – or less able – to take those constructions for granted. They often ask questions that others don't ask: Why is this done this way? Who decided this? What assumptions are operating here? What are we not seeing?
Where I become more cautious is in assuming that stepping outside one framework means we've arrived at some final or underlying reality. More often, I think we move from one map to another, hopefully a broader and more useful one.
Once we notice that there is a matrix, it becomes difficult to stop questioning.
If we remain curious rather than certain or convinced that we alone can see the underlying truth, we may avoid becoming captured by a different simulacrum.
Oh! For the first time I can say I feel seen. Thank you 💕
That’s great news! Thank you for reading and commenting Jaimie!
This is one of the most astonishing and heartening essays I’ve ever read on this topic. I had no idea that all of these things I’ve been experiencing my whole life are all linked. Thank you 🙏
You're very welcome, Keena. So glad to hear this. Amazing! Thank you for reading and commenting.
Well you did it again! Across the planet from me and you peeked inside of me again. I am both. I had an awakening experience at age 10. I felt a shift in me and looked at my body in surprise and wondered how many times have I been an “I”. How many times have I found myself in a body. Then later in life I went all in with non duality teachings and it happened again but much deeper and intense and extremely hard to explain. Lots of trauma in childhood and up to just 2 years ago. My few offerings here on substack show both sides of me. I was fascinated with fairy tales and mythology very young and philosophy in late teens and up. I got my degree in art, but took fiction writing and poetry too. Yes I also have been fascinated with Tarot and have many decks.💜💜
That’s amazing, Michelle! Appreciate all that you’ve written here. So glad this essay reflects your liminal experiences as a child and as an adult. You’ve explored so much of this important part of you and kept it alive!
This gives language to something I have been circling for years.
In my own writing, I have often returned to images of the veil, the mask, the mirror and the in-between — not as decorative metaphor, but as a way of processing reality symbolically. During a period of personal crisis, an older body of lyrical prose I had written became almost a parallel reality of meaning: grounding, alive, and at times overwhelming.
It made me think about how much modern Western life narrows human experience. Experiences that may belong to imagination, embodiment, intuition, trauma, giftedness or deep symbolic intelligence are often reduced either to pathology or to romantic mysticism.
This piece holds the middle space beautifully — where meaning and reality can coexist without being flattened.
Love everything you’ve written here, Rania. Thank you very much for encapsulating my essay so generously and sharing your experience. Yes, so agree – modern Western life narrows human experience and shoves us into systems that flatten us. We can learn so much from other ways of knowing and being that brings us fully alive.
A lot of artists, I’d imagine. And me.
Yes, exactly, Eva. Artists, poets, writers, mystics, modern day shamans. Thank you for reading and commenting🌟
'Intuition', the 'Lil-o-radar', I've seen these in action for decades... now I have a better explanation and understanding of what's going on in that noggin, thank you.
Loved the water reference/analogy; we've been bathing in this experience since moving down to the seaside! 🏄♂️ 🐬 🦈 🐋 🌊 ☕️ 💝
Thanks for reading and commenting, Ted. Your interest in my “noggin” continues and for that I’m grateful! Yes, all the seaside things contribute so much to a gentler earth-side experience and support/resource the poetic-side.
You wrote my liminal life. 🤯 it’s exactly what I’ve been exploring and experiencing…I call it “Borderling” and I write about it on my substack of the same name. ♥️
Thank you for reading and commenting, Heather. Great to hear from you. "Borderling" is a wonderful, descriptive word to capture the luminal experience!
Lily, Interesting how you connect back to Dabrowski and his ideas for develpmental potential. I note that "liminal" implies a threshold, such as crossing a doorway, or a stream to its bank or the opposite.
Imagine how hard this is for a gifted sensitive child, or adolescent It might be interpreted as being odd, yet still uniquely theirs, a world that must be kept secret. Why? to avoid social judgment or misunderstanding. Even for adults with such potentials and needs it can feel too much. Thank you for entering such territory, an ever changing terrain.
I appreciate your patient essay to find the positive and the good in such people, young and old alike.
Steve Foster
Hi Steve, thank you for your thoughtful comment. Yes, there are some interesting overlaps with Dabrowski's imaginal overexcitabilities, existential giftedness and liminal giftedness that I was attempting to connect in my essay. It's a fascinating developmental pathway and it was interesting to explore as a writer, researcher and dweller in liminal spaces.
Yes, a child or adolescent might be interpreted as odd and it makes sense that they could have a unique, secret world (or worlds). It'd emerge from high sensitivity - not necessarily fragile - and protection from social judgement and misunderstanding is so important. I'm glad you mentioned this and also commented on how adults with such potentials and needs can feel. "An ever-changing terrain" - yes! Thanks again, Lily.
Needed this.
Thank you for this beautifully written piece.
You’re welcome, Lori. Great to hear from you. Thank you for reading and commenting🌟
Were you peaking through the veil and seeing into me through the morphic field? As an INFJ, you’ve described all four of my profile stacks in the most eloquent of ways. Simply brilliant writing. Salute
Thank you very much for your kind words, Jeremy. Yes, I see you. It’s great to meet another INFJ in this community. We’re a rare and brilliant bunch.
I'm a little late in finding this, but late is better than never. I've never felt so seen before. Thank you so very much for talking about this. ❤️
So glad you found this essay and felt seen, Molica. When I saw your title a few days or so ago - “liminalist” - I thought to alert you to my essay. Brilliant that you connected with it anyway. Thank you very much for reading and commenting.
This resonates for me. Lucid dreams, visions, an entire novel (Collide) lucid-dreamed one chapter at a time.
Great to hear this! Thank you for reading and commenting🌟
There's a multidimensional ecosystem, we inhabit this multidimensional ecosystem. Our bodies construct models of reality reflecting the situated context inhabit
So the brain constructs a reality, with emotional relational conceptual symbolic being axes to the brain itself. So the brain and body experiences a multidimensional reality rooted in a multidimensional system that induces the multidimensional reality?
I think that's a reasonable way of thinking about it, although I'd probably use slightly more cautious language.
What we experience as "reality" is certainly shaped by perception, memory, emotion, relationships, culture, language, imagination, and meaning-making. In that sense, our lived experience is undeniably multidimensional. We're entangled in an ecosystem - a node in a web - interconnected.
So our ecosystem is itself this multidimensional system that our bodies and brains exist within. Our brains and body construct models of reality that are rooted in the ecosystem we inhabit?
I think of it as my living system (making no distinction here between brain and body) exists within a multidimensional ecosystem (context) that I construct models of reality about - that are partly in touch with reality, mind you. I'm a multidimensional living system that's entangled in a multidimensional field or ecosystem, if you like. How does this sound to you?
Both the body and ecosystem are multidimensional. Synthesize the body and ecosystem and a multidimensional reality emerges from the synthesis of the body and ecosystem.
Because there exists multiple bodies in this relational ecology, a multiplex relational reality emerges.
YES!
This article reminds me of a friend of mine who experiences the world symbolically
Ah! That’s very interesting. Thanks for letting me know.
"This may be mistaken for dissociation or a failure to distinguish fantasy from reality."
People don't understand that reality is imaginational due to its discursive nature.
I think there's something important in what you're pointing to.
None of us encounter reality in a completely raw or unmediated way. We experience it through perception, memory, language, culture, metaphor, and the stories we tell ourselves about what is happening. In that sense, imagination is not the opposite of reality; it is one of the ways we participate in making sense of it.
Perhaps the distinction I was trying to make is that there is a difference between imaginative engagement with reality and becoming disconnected from consensual reality altogether. Many highly imaginative, creative, gifted, and neurodivergent people move fluidly between the symbolic, the conceptual, and the concrete. From the outside, that can sometimes be misunderstood as fantasy, dissociation, or confusion when it may actually be a sophisticated form of meaning-making.
The challenge, I think, is learning to inhabit both worlds at once: remaining grounded in shared reality while still honouring the rich imaginative and symbolic dimensions through which we understand it.
So people advanced in imaginational thinking can access a liminal space that allows them to see the world underneath the intersubjective reality people typically experience
Yes, perhaps, although I might frame it slightly differently.
I do think some people spend more time in liminal spaces – between disciplines, between identities, between ways of seeing, between the concrete and the symbolic. That can make certain assumptions, patterns, contradictions, and possibilities more visible to them than they are to people who are deeply embedded within a particular worldview or social reality.
What does seem true to me is that imagination, reflection, and deep pattern recognition can help us see beyond the default narratives that societies construct. They can reveal that many things we take for granted aren't inevitable, natural, or fixed. Sometimes what looks like "seeing underneath" is really seeing that the map isn't the territory.
I suspect some of the most creative, gifted, and other neurodivergent minds spend a great deal of time questioning the map, exploring alternatives, and wondering what else might be possible.
The liminally gifted people see right through the simulacrum we are enmeshed in by stepping outside of that simulacrum. They experience the capacity of seeing the underlying matrix that induces the simulacrum?
I think there's something compelling in that idea, particularly if we understand the "simulacrum" as the collection of stories, norms, assumptions, identities, and social agreements that shape our experience of reality.
Many neurodivergent people seem less willing – or less able – to take those constructions for granted. They often ask questions that others don't ask: Why is this done this way? Who decided this? What assumptions are operating here? What are we not seeing?
Where I become more cautious is in assuming that stepping outside one framework means we've arrived at some final or underlying reality. More often, I think we move from one map to another, hopefully a broader and more useful one.
Once we notice that there is a matrix, it becomes difficult to stop questioning.
If we remain curious rather than certain or convinced that we alone can see the underlying truth, we may avoid becoming captured by a different simulacrum.