The Sacred In-Between | How to Heal in a World That Never Stops Moving.
“In a world of endless alarming alerts and carefully curated connection, stillness isn’t a luxury, it’s how we remember who we are.”
Lately I’ve found myself rereading the foundational books that first shaped my spiritual path, I suppose, because I’ve been in a bit of a funk. I’ve been in this liminal, in-between place again, the kind of strange emotional and spiritual threshold that feels like a chrysalis. If you know, you know. It feels like you’re in between the past and the future and the present feels overwhelmingly anxious. No longer who I was, not quite who I’m becoming, and these phases seem to be happening more often the deeper I go. It’s as if the more I commit to a life of spiritual practice and self-awareness, the more I’m asked to shed what no longer fits, to let go of things I didn’t even realize I was still holding, to trust the space between endings and beginnings, even when it feels uncomfortable or unclear, like I’m just…waiting.
It’s hard to explain, but it kind of feels like that awkward in-between moment after a long day at the beach or pool as a kid, riding home in a wet bathing suit, at the mercy of a licensed adult blasting the A/C, chlorine water dripping down your face and back from your hair, wrapped in a damp towel, cold, a bit sticky, and just uncomfortable. You can’t get back in the water because you’ve left for the day, and you can’t change into warm, dry clothes because you’re not home yet. You’re just stuck there, waiting for the ride to end, caught in this strange, awkward pause between the past and whatever comes next, completely unprepared, trying to make peace with the discomfort of the present. It’s annoying, frustrating and a completely necessary step in the process that doesn’t feel like anything is actually happening, even when it is.
That same sense of discomfort, the waiting, the helplessness, shows up in other places too, especially in how we deal with emotions like anger, grief or fear. Water is a natural amplifier. During my recent Holy Fire Reiki training, part of our attunement took place in a warm water therapy pool, and I can confirm, the water acts like an emotional subwoofer. Everything I was carrying became louder, deeper, harder to ignore. I was feeling so much disruption during it that I felt totally out of control. Which is probably why this next passage landed the way it did.
In The Medicine of the Cherokee, the author writes about how anger disperses our energy, how it pulls our power out of our bodies and throws it into the world, often recklessly and without any real direction. He likens it to tossing a stone into water: the surface doesn’t return to stillness immediately. The Earth, like the body, needs time to settle.
And I thought, of course. No wonder we’re all so dysregulated. We live in a world of constant stone-throwing, but it’s not just one stone at a time, it’s a thousand, hurled from every direction, day after day, outrage after outrage, manufactured crisis after manufactured crisis, all engineered to keep us reacting instead of reflecting, designed to provoke a response before we’ve had the chance to form our own thoughts. The stream never has time to clear. It’s always stirred up. And we’re not just bystanders, we’re in the middle of it, exposed and overstimulated, like caged animals under a blinding spotlight, vulnerable and agitated and prodded into constant movement and emotional labor, with nowhere to run and no safe place to rest.
We weren’t built for this kind of noise. We aren’t biologically prepared for the comforts or chaos of the modern hyper-connected, chronically overstimulating world we are living in. The nervous system, ancient and intuitive, needs rhythm and pause. It needs slowness and silence and long stretches of time where nothing is asked of us. We’re meant to walk in forests, not refresh feeds. We’re meant to sit beside animals and feel their calm. To lie in the grass and watch the clouds drift across the sky like our thoughts sometimes do when we remember how to be soft again. We’re meant to cry and breathe and stretch and wonder, not just react and perform and consume.
And yet, I’m not against the world we live in. I’m not interested in rejecting everything modern just to appear spiritual. I love air conditioning and electricity and the beauty of a book being turned into a moving and entertaining film adaptation. I love the strange and wondrous internet that lets me research obscure topics at any given moment, write on my iPad at 2am when I can’t sleep, and connect with awesome people I never would have met otherwise. I genuinely believe we’re living in a time of enormous gifts and incredible privilege, but it comes with a cost, and that cost is often hidden in plain sight.
Because with every convenience, something beautiful and primal is quietly lost. I want to look up and see the stars clearly, but I live with light pollution that dulls the night sky. I want to sit on the porch and feel the thrill of an approaching thunderstorm, the electric stillness, the deep rumble, the way the air shifts before the first sprinkle, but instead I hear the endless whoosh of cars cutting through wet asphalt, never stopping, never noticing. We’ve traded stillness for motion, and mystery for utility. We scroll through images of nature instead of walking in it. We watch animal videos while forgetting to appreciate and engage with the living ones beside us. We “connect” with people through screens while our real-life relationships thin out, waiting for our full, undivided attention. For our presence.
It’s not just that we’re overstimulated. It’s that we’ve been conditioned, coaxed, trained, maybe even gently imprisoned—into believing that the representation of life is enough. That the photo of the sunset is as good as the sunset. That the digital version of connection is as nourishing as the real thing. And it’s not. Not really. At some point we have to return to our bodies, to the Earth, to the unfiltered aliveness of the world around us, before we forget how to do it altogether.
And again, at the same time, I’m deeply grateful that I live in an era where I have access to so much more than survival. I can buy healthy food, live in a safe home, and go for a walk in the morning without worrying about being attacked by a wild animal. I can grow herbs and vegetables in my garden not because I have to, but because I want to. I can stop by Wawa at nearly any hour and get a snack or a drink, without needing to hunt or forage or boil rainwater. I want to become more resourceful and self-sufficient because it feels good to remember those old ways, but it’s a choice, not a necessity, and that privilege isn’t lost on me. And I’ll never take it for granted.
I want to feel more awe and less urgency. I want to slow down and be where I am before the moment slips through my fingers. But most days, I’m tired, tired from errands and tasks and the everyday weight of being a human in a world that never really stops—and I collapse into the couch, watching short videos or reading something interesting, trying to avoid the nonstop swirl of bad news and artificial outrage.
Don’t get me wrong, I want to stay informed. I always have. I double-check sources. I look for nuance. I try to understand opposing perspectives because I believe it matters. But that kind of attention takes energy, and we live in a time that wears energy down on purpose. We are emotionally exhausted and spiritually underfed, and very few people are talking about that. So I’m trying to protect my stillness, not because I think it makes me better or enlightened, but because I know it’s the only way I can hear myself anymore. Stillness isn’t about doing nothing. It’s about making space for what’s real to rise again. It’s about letting the water clear so we can see through it. It’s about remembering who we are when no one’s watching and nothing’s pushing.
I’m not great at meditating. My Aries brain is always busy, always chasing ideas, always interrupting the silence with a new concept or a flash of creativity that I feel like I have to write down. But I’m trying. I’m trying to stay still, even when it’s uncomfortable. I’m trying to stop running. I’m trying to make peace with not knowing.
The truth is, this isn’t just a political or cultural or technological problem, it’s a spiritual one. It’s a nervous system problem. It’s existential. We are overstimulated animals, trapped in an economy that thrives on our distraction, and the longer we go without rest or reverence, the more fragmented we become. Stillness is how we return, where discernment lives. It’s where peace begins—not the kind that’s passive or checked out, but the kind that’s rooted and aware and fully alive.
If I’ve learned anything in my 45 years on this blue and green marble hurtling through space, it’s that the in-between is profoundly important and highly underappreciated. It’s where the lessons from the past reveal themselves and the spark for the future begins. We have to become comfortable being uncomfortable. Not every moment needs to be about movement or reaction. We should learn to appreciate the liminal space, the crepuscular moments, the spiritual and emotional dusk and dawn. To be patient and hold space without trying to live in the past or the future, and without needing distraction to keep our minds on something other than the awkward in-between. Stillness is where the soul speaks, where truth gathers, where healing begins.
So today, I’m stepping back. I’m letting the water clear. I’m choosing to honor the threshold rather than rush through it, to sit for a while in the in-between, and let whatever is next find me in its own time. I’m going to accept that sometimes I have to ride home wearing a wet bathing suit because I know it won’t be forever, but that in-between is part of the journey. So I might as well make the most of it, because I can’t change it and I can’t rush it. Because maybe the chrysalis isn’t something to escape, but something sacred to surrender to. Maybe stillness is the becoming.
