Liminal Space & the Art of Creative Suffering

In Western cultures where the collective mantra is, I consume; therefore, I am we imagine ourselves beyond such realities as illness and death. This illusion, a denial that we human beings are part of Nature, requires a collective unconsciousness that we as individuals must recognize if humanity is to change our responses to climate chaos.

Covid-19 ripped the veils of this illusion and forced humanity into a liminal space where we were not certain, nor were we in control. This betwixt and between time, the threshold state Jungians call liminality, is where we as individuals are invited to discover and live from broader perspectives so that we can learn how to suffer consciously or if you prefer - creatively.

This is the place of the artist; the writer; the shaman; the mystic and the intuitive that interests me. I found it can become a place of illumination, but usually after what props up the ego has fallen away. For many, it requires some sort of hardship that touches us personally like death of a loved one, a challenging diagnosis with a bleak future or a collective event out of our control like the pandemic, the current political disruptions or climate chaos.

Do not let others tell you suffering is optional. It is not but what you do with it is. This is what I call the art of creative suffering. Only you can choose to allow your personal suffering to bring you closer to that within which holds you together when that which is without no longer can.

Maybe that is what Carl Jung meant when he wrote:

Every psychic advance of man arises from the suffering of the soul. People are never helped in their suffering by what they think for themselves, but only by revelation of a wisdom greater than their own. It is this which lifts them out of their distress.

Photo: Matt Kochar at Unsplash