It is true that change is the eternal constant. The average human body is replacing over 3.8 million cells a second, approximately 140 million babies are born every day and 275 million stars are born every year. And each moment of our lives is completely and uniquely different than any other moment that ever was or will be; always in constant movement as each moment creates the next in a seemingly infinite process called “the now.”

We truly only live in this creative moment, and that’s the only time we have ever lived. But most of us spend the majority of our time in our heads. Our focus is only marginally in the now because we are always trying to manage the moment, focusing on the desires in the future.

Most of us, to some degree, are lost in the trance of attachment to thought and like to consider our opinions to be true, because after all, that’s what we think. And what we think about, what’s happening in the moment, is what shapes our reality, not what’s actually happening in the moment.

However, most people will claim it’s the conditions in the moment that are responsible for our experience. We rarely realize we create the experience, our story, by our thoughts about it; the process is so ingrained that we are generally unaware that we were thinking at all. Our thinking is quite automatic, entirely created from all our past conditioning, our experiences, beliefs, opinions, social, cultural and religious backgrounds, etc. And we rely on this conditioned mind, which is entirely made up of the past, to inform and guide us into the future. So, we often end up in a future that looks, not surprisingly, a lot like a continuation of the past, our well ingrained story, until eventually an experience comes along that disrupts that pattern.

All too often, for many of us, unfortunately, it takes a disruption in our life, often painful, that fundamentally challenges our story and breaks our pattern. The experience of these disruptions can move us beyond the familiar conditioned thinking and into the present moment because that’s where the pain resides, taking us to a place beyond the limited patterns of the past and into a new potential for change, into a “liminal space.”

The word “liminal” comes from the Latin word “limen,” meaning threshold. The state of being that is liminal space is outside of the old patten of “business as usual.” It is often defined as “relating to a transition,” between two states of consciousness, like sleeping and waking. It refers to a state of consciousness that is “on the precipice of something new,” having left the old behind, yet the new has not materialized, so we must live with the uncertainty of what it might be.

To exist in the space of liminality is to be open and available in the present moment to the creative inspiration it holds within, while also being receptive and allowing for the uncertainty of the moment to bring unknown possibility into reality – potentially leading to authentic transformation. If our attention starts looking for certainty, we stand to miss the transcendent potential of the moment, because we are then back into our story, trying to control the moment.

I have been fortunate to know, more than once, the immeasurable transcendent possibility of the liminal now in my life. The first time I really got it came as a surprise. I had the stark realization that my thoughts of a failed relationship were creating most of my suffering. There seemed to be no way out of my constant mental story of loss, continually reliving the feelings that I would never be loved nor ever love like that again, so I went in. I focused inward, allowing the pain completely in without resistance, and there I felt intensely present within myself in a quiet stillness and energized state, absent of all the mental-emotional influence. I felt like I had somehow moved beyond the agonizing pain I was just suffering moments before and into a place of peace where I could imagine a way through this.

After this liminal moment, I was never again visited by the ferocity of anxiety that was so present before. I have since come to know this liminal experience of the present moment as a portal to new creative inspiration, through a peaceful still mind, bringing about a more expansive life.

Of course, our conditioned mind (our ego) has its part to play in our functional lives; in fact, we couldn’t live without it very well, but it should never take complete control over our lives. And becoming fully present in the liminal now doesn’t always require a difficult challenge to precede it; we may find this transcendent moment in our love of beauty or nature and each other, and with a little applied intention, in many other areas of life; that’s the way I would prefer it.

To ensure our creative aliveness, it is important that we balance our world with the creative potential within the stillness of the present moment by learning to be fully in it; to enter it often with full intention and attention to know its limitless possibilities.

David Flint is a minister at the Spiritual Center of the Desert, a non-denominational center which practices the Science of Mind Philosophy. For more information, visit www.pdspiritualcenter.org.