Autism and the Liminal Experience

It’s another unpredictable world out there and it’s stressful. As we navigate the obstacles, we pass from one space to another, from certainty to uncertainty. And this transitioning between the known and the unknown lies at the heart of the neurodiverse experience of the world, a life on the threshold between being and becoming, a hyper experience of liminal space.

The liminal experience is a concept that is relatively new as a term but it’s a word that goes back thousands of years. In fact, the term derives from the Roman word limen which meant threshold in ancient Roman times. The Romans even had a God of the threshold. This was Janus who gave us the word January. The term liminal signifies not only transitioning into a new space but also the changing space between different circumstances. Thus liminality can be spatial, temporal or experiential.

We are subject to liminal emotions, liminal space, and liminal time. For example, the airport is a liminal space that exists only as a transition between two places. Divorce is another liminal experience, a transition between being married and not being married. The transition from an oil-based economy to one based on renewable energy is liminal.

A defining characteristic of a threshold experience is uncertainty and stress.

There is also the mental liminal space which is a subjective experience both individual and collective. You could also argue that the whole human experience is liminal, a process of moving through the years and through times with the ages. ‘He who is not busy being born is a busy dying.’ A passage from childhood to adulthood is adolescence, a period of life that many people find troublesome, a time of anxiety and insecurity but also an age of dreams and aspirations.

Liminal experience of time in space also opens the potential for spiritual and personal development. Van Morrison has the song called Dweller on the Threshold which talks about crossing the burning ground. Just walking through a doorway from one room into another is a liminal spatial experience. This is reflected in the Buddhist principle that existence is just the process of becoming. Life is all flux. You are not the present, you are not the past, and you are not the future. And to live in this flux is to live without certainty. It is unsettling.

Very few people can live their life immersed in the flux without experiencing a sense of unease. You have to find reassurance in the foundation of personal identity and past-but the sands of self-identity are constantly shifting. Again and again, the same old insecurities arise.

Without wishing to over-elaborate this point, even passing from this world is also a liminal experience — a transition from one state of human existence into something else which we just do not know what it is because it is beyond our ability to experience what comes next. If anything does exist, it is clearly not a human experience.

This does open up the question of what it actually means to be human, something that is central to yoga which claims to be a union between a human experience and another non-experience-we can call it divine or infinite or cosmic-that cannot be defined with conventional human reference points.

This concept of the liminal mind and mental space is fundamental to the neurodiverse experience. Because people with neurodiversity and Aspergers often have a very fragile sense of self-identity, with a mental framework that does not associate in the conventional way of neurotypical people, they often live in a state of flux. They have the sense of being on the threshold of something all the time.

Activities that most neurotypicals take for granted, such as walking into a new room, can be quite stressful. Even walking into the street presents its own set of challenges. A street is itself a liminal space, with people in transit from one place to another. The transition from inside to outside is a liminal experience. Meeting new people is liminal.

A technique recommended by Pooran a spiritual yogi, to navigate the liminal headspace without being overwhelmed by the flux of processes seemingly happening with no coherent order is to use a mantra.

If you don’t know what a mantra is, you are in a liminal state of knowledge, passing from the state of not knowing and on the verge of knowing. In other words, the space between knowledge and ignorance.

A mantra is a mind tool. Most commonly associated with Eastern spirituality. Hinduism especially has a tradition of mantras; The Buddhist om mani padme hum is the most well-known. But a mantra can be any spoken phrase that provides a grounding for the mind in a demanding situation and expression of mental aspiration. Barack Obama’s campaign slogan yes, we can was a political mantra

Bringing mantras to mind serves as a reference point that channels associations and gives weight to the appropriate actions.

Repeating or chanting a mantra connects the past, the present and the consequential future into a single flow. As a result, the flux becomes less threatening and much less of a challenge. This instills a sense of self- confidence that in any situation and eases a troubled relationship with the world, living in the flux of emotions and changing space dimensions.