"Rather than letting ourselves run wild in our abundant potential, we tend of feel small when our possibilities are endless."
The Alchemy of Middling
Welcome to the middling ground. A special place where you are neither here nor there, yet.
If I had to sum up this post in one sentence it would be this: The middling place is an opportunity for self-discovery or fearful transformation; the choice is yours.
In this two part letter I dive into the exploration on finding yourself between life choices, transitioning from one phase of life into another, or getting stuck between to phases of life without a direction. Keep a look out in your mailbox for part two later this week.
Middling in potential
By my own definition the middling place has a plethora of looks and feels. It can be useful for all sort of shenanigan’s. It can limit or block you; it can allow for self-discovery and expansion. The point is to identify your place inside middling so you don’t get stuck within it.
Here are just a few descriptions of the middling place: a place of allowing without forced action, a place of gathering and preparing, a quiet place for rebooting, a place of indecision, a place of supreme procrastination, a place of grief. The middling place can be one of strategy, acceptance, healing.
Traversing the middle place can be as simple as a walk in the park or as complicated as traversing the Amazon jungles. As a rule, we rarely know we’re in the middling place until we’ve grown out of it or set the intention to be in it. This is especially true if the next goal to accomplish is already envisioned.
For some, they get stuck or lost in the middling place. The requirement to move on to the next grand adventure can feel too great of a risk, and so they linger. For others, the middling place lands right smack in the middle of mid-life. Choices seem foggy between all the shifts and changes of family life, work life, and what-the-hell-is-life-all-about-life.
Lingering in the middling allows fear to build blocks, boundaries, even mansions out of all the possible failures that lay ahead. Before you know it you’ve built a life inside the middling place where fear has created a glass house out of illusional safety.
Key note of distinction: The middling place is not to be confused with the liminal space of in-between. This otherworldly space looks and feels different in every faucet to every sense within the body. More on in-between another time.
Your body is welcome here
Mentally you are occupying the middling place but your body is awaiting it’s chance to explore. This desire to explore is your body wisdom asking you to get connected to your senses again.
We reach the middling place usually after some accomplishment: we’ve overcome something, we’ve learned something, we’ve lived through something. The excitement begins to wear down and our senses begin to calm. We notice there is a stillness— either in our lives or within ourselves.
For those of us that are attached to our perpetual motion, this sensation feels like boredom. To others it feels like the need to take a big long nap.
Ever the survivalist, our body wants rest and adventure. Healing and movement. The nourishment and care we provided for our body temple in the last stages before middling determines the need for rest and healing.
If you arrive to the middling place transformed and invigorated, your time here will require little in the way of rest. If you arrive exhausted, stressed and physically ill then you will require recovery time that needs to be tend to for overall long term health. The body will require compound interest if your health is not tended to now—payable in your later years in life.
The middling place can be visceral when we welcome in the body for support. New conceptual ideas for the life forward can form when we allow ourselves the space and time to dream, to ease into possibilities and to just give ourselves a freaking break!
Transactional not foundational
Utilizing the middling place is the ultimate goal. Since little is required of us here it’s a grand opportunity to gather. Gathering time, energy, information, inspiration, allies, monetary needs, along with visions for the next stage forward.
This gathering is where we tend to get ourselves tripped up. Remember how I mentioned fear can take hold? This is when it happens. We are still in the transactional phase of middling—our possibilities are endless.
Rather than letting ourselves run wild in our abundant potential, we tend of feel small when our possibilities are endless.
Fear worms it’s way into our mental gymnastics and suddenly we find ourselves lost inside the ideas of all that could go wrong. We psych ourselves out at the size and depth of what will be required for the next adventure. Worse still, we grow comfortable with the idea that there’s not much left for us to do, that our last big accomplishment was the end of our magnificence. Hint: If you’re still breathing, you’re not done.
On Thursday I will tackle the pure alchemy of the Middling place. The number one block that keeps a little part of perpetually stuck in middling. I will also share the gifts the middling offers us while giving a little pep talk on embracing the middling for your highest and best. Until then…
All my Love,
Lenaleah 💕