Chapter 42: Liminal Space

Engaging in autoethnographic practices activates transformational processes. My experience took me on a pathway from a life-o-gram to a transformagram. Beautifying the story mandala allowed Sophia or wisdom to flow through me, guiding me towards narrative concrescence. My life history has been transformed, but even more, I discovered transformational pedagogies that I now use in my teaching. Ira Progoff’s Intensive Journal Methods have offered a proven framework for incorporating journaling into coursework.
Liminal space can be understood as the in-between or entre nous. In this space we can create wiggle room, transitional space that can provide a matrix of relational potentialities. As we enter our journaling sanctuaries with the intention to find our way forward, we can activate the homing in mechanism. Writing to transform our relations brings us to new landscapes of meaning where we can trace new flyways of becomingness. In this liminal space, transformation is engendered. Questing enkindles the pilgrim’s intentions to move beyond Self in search of narrative truths.
 
Jim Harrison a famous American author wrote two adoption stories taking place in Nebraska- Dalva and The Road Home. He describes not only the beauty of the landscapes and wildlife but tells intergenerational stories of families who have lived on the Great Plains of Western Nebraska.
 
Just as the natural environment shapes lifeforms, words are meaning containers that allow us to recollect and transform our narrative truths. Dr. Emoto’s photographs of water crystals show us how words shape water crystals. As our bodies are around 70% water, we can only imagine how words and music fashion and configure our bodily forms.
 
We are all experiencing an acceleration in connectivity. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin wrote about the Noosphere that is an emerging form of planetary consciousness. Here is an article that allows us to better understand this period of great acceleration that we are experiencing as the paradigms of Anthropocene and Noosphere play out in yet another liminal space, acting upon our planetary becomingness.

​From Anthropocene to Noosphere: The Great Acceleration

​Dr. Emoto’s Water Crystals that show how words and music influence form:

Here is a PBS news presentation of American author Jim Harrison who wrote Dalva, an adoption story in Nebraska:

​Here is an article about the Spiritual Exercises of Saint Ignatius of Loyola that presents transformational processes including Progoff’s Intensive Journal Methods: