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In The Hallway: Dark Matter & Severance · Unlocking The Paradigm Portal

0:01
Good morning. Welcome back to unlocking the
0:03
Paradigm portal. My name is Sarah.
0:06
So it is bright and, well, not bright and early.
0:09
It is dark and early on Monday morning and I'm sitting here
0:13
with my very hot cup of coffee that just scorched my mouth.
0:17
So come in and join me because I'm going to take up where I
0:21
left off yesterday and we're going to be talking about
0:24
liminal spaces. So to start with that, I want to
0:28
tell you a story about a man who burst through my office door.
0:31
Now, he had never met me. He'd never been in my space.
0:34
And the very first words out of his mouth as he burst through
0:37
the door literally were, did anyone ever tell you look just
0:42
like Jennifer Connelly? I've been watching Dark Matter
0:45
and I cannot believe how much you look like her.
0:48
Now, what's interesting about this moment, beyond like the
0:52
obvious audacity of leading with that, is that this man had been
0:56
doing some research clearly on me, and he had reasons to be
1:00
curious about who I was. And somehow in the middle of all
1:04
that, the universe decided the right introduction was to walk
1:07
through my door and compare me to someone navigating the
1:09
multiverse. Which is really interesting
1:12
looking back now, because this was a few years ago.
1:16
It's just fascinating to me as I'm reflecting on the past and
1:19
how it's really directly impacting right now.
1:23
So I'd never seen Dark Matter at that point, I didn't even know
1:26
what it was, but I've seen it now and I've also seen
1:29
Severance. And I want to talk about both of
1:32
them today because they handed me the most precise framework
1:36
that I've ever had for explaining what happens to
1:38
people in the space between, in that threshold, the not yet.
1:43
And that is the liminal space. So we're going to dive into that
1:48
this entire week about knowing what the liminal space is, what
1:54
exactly it isn't, and how you desperately wish you weren't
1:57
there, but how Either way, you're in the right place.
2:01
And I talked to somebody yesterday who had listened to my
2:04
episode yesterday morning and she said I am just confused
2:09
about the liminal space. And I was like, just wait, we're
2:11
going to talk about it more. So what is it and why does it
2:15
feel like it does? Let's get into that.
2:18
So liminal comes from the Latin word lemon.
2:21
It's the threshold. It's the place between states.
2:25
And if you've ever stood in that place, and I mean really stood
2:27
in it, not sprinted through it, you know that it has a very
2:32
specific texture to it. So it's the morning after
2:36
relationship ends and before you know who you are without it.
2:40
And it's the drive home from a doctor's appointment when
2:42
everything has changed, and it's handing in your resignation and
2:46
sitting with the two weeks that follow.
2:49
Or it's waking up and knowing that something is over, but the
2:52
new thing hasn't arrived yet. And the space in between has no
2:57
walls, no map, no floor plan, just open air.
3:01
And most of us, and I mean most, are absolutely terrible at being
3:06
there. And it's not because we're
3:08
broken, and it's not because something is wrong with us.
3:11
It's because we were never taught that the space between
3:13
was somewhere we were allowed to just be and to just exist.
3:18
We were taught to move, to decide, to perform certainty, to
3:22
accumulate enough information that uncertainty stops feeling
3:26
so loud. We were taught to get out of the
3:29
hallway. Which brings me to the two TV
3:32
shows and everything that they accidentally got right.
3:36
And all these pieces connected together yesterday for me.
3:38
And it was so exciting that I literally started recording this
3:43
yesterday to post last night. And then I was like, slow your
3:46
roll, Sarah. One thing at a time.
3:48
So starting with Dark Matter. Dark Matter is an Apple TV Plus
3:54
show. Jennifer Connelly's in it.
3:56
I can't remember the guy's name. Joel Edgerton I think is his
4:00
name. And it's based on Blake Crouch's
4:03
novel. And it's built around a device
4:06
or a box. And inside that box there's a
4:08
hallway. And the hallway is lined with
4:10
doors. And each door is a different
4:13
reality. It's a different version of your
4:15
life, like the version where you took the other job, or you said
4:19
yes instead of no, or you stayed when you left, or you left when
4:24
you stayed. So every door is a possibility
4:27
that still exists because in that hallway, in Superposition,
4:32
nothing has collapsed yet and everything is still available.
4:36
But here's where it gets interesting.
4:38
Where you end up, which door you walk through depends entirely on
4:41
your internal state. While you're standing in the
4:44
hallway, your emotions, your subconscious, what you're
4:47
carrying, what you're afraid of, what you want most deeply
4:51
underneath the thing you think you want, and the hallway
4:55
responds to you. So sit with that imagery for a
4:58
second. If you haven't seen the show, if
5:00
if you haven't, check it out. It's pretty good.
5:03
So because that is not just good science, science fiction, that
5:07
is the most accurate description of how the liminal space
5:12
actually works that I've honestly ever seen put on
5:14
screen. So when you are in the in
5:17
between, when the old thing is gone and the new thing hasn't
5:20
arrived, that space, it's alive with possibility.
5:25
And every door is a yes that hasn't been opened yet.
5:28
And every version of what comes next is still on the table.
5:32
So the hallway and dark matter is not a threat, it's an
5:35
invitation. And it's terrifying because it
5:38
requires you to trust what's happening inside of you because
5:41
what's inside of you is what steers you.
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So if you're running from something, if you'll find more
5:47
of it, and if you're desperate, you keep landing in desperate
5:50
places. And if you're in fear, you walk
5:54
through a door that confirms your fear.
5:57
But if you can slow down and if you can regulate, and if you can
6:01
be present in the hallway without sprinting through the
6:04
first door that looks like an exit, you end up exactly where
6:07
you were always going. So the hallway isn't the
6:11
problem. The hallway is the work.
6:13
And again, as I always say, work has a capital W.
6:18
So then as I was thinking about this, it made me think of the
6:20
other show on Apple TV that I love called Severance.
6:25
And it's kind of a version of the same hallway, but a
6:28
different nervous system approach.
6:30
So totally different show, but also a hallway.
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And if you haven't seen it, Severance follows employees of a
6:37
company called Lumen Industries who have undergone a procedure
6:41
that literally severs their work memory from their personal
6:44
memory. And at work, they have no access
6:47
to who they are outside and outside.
6:49
They have no access to what happens inside. 2 completely
6:54
separate selves coexisting in the same body and never meeting.
6:58
And those employees spend a lot of time in hallways.
7:01
They're fluorescent lit, white walls identical in every
7:04
direction, doors with numbers and codes and no explanation of
7:08
what's behind them. There is no curiosity and
7:11
courage. There's no questions invited.
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It's the same architecture as dark matter, but completely
7:18
different nervous systems operating it and navigating it.
7:22
So in Severance, the hallway is dread, it is control.
7:27
It is ambiguity that has been weaponized, uncertainty kept
7:31
deliberately in place so that the people walking through it
7:34
stay compliant. They stay small and they stay
7:37
moving in the direction they're pointed.
7:40
So in this show, the doors in the hallway aren't
7:43
possibilities, they're assignments.
7:45
You go where you're told. You don't look behind the wrong
7:49
one, and you don't ask what's on the other side.
7:52
So the severance hallway is what happens to the liminal space
7:55
when it gets colonized by fear, when the nervous system
7:59
navigating it has been conditioned by life, by wounds,
8:03
by years of not being safe in the not knowing, to believe that
8:06
ambiguity is dangerous and that the space between is something
8:11
to be managed, not inhabited. The curiosity is a liability.
8:16
So it's the same hallway. One is an invitation to become
8:19
exactly who you are, and one is a mechanism to keep you from
8:23
ever finding out. Are you following me so far?
8:27
So by the way, as I'm going through all of this, you're
8:31
literally walking the train of thought that I had yesterday,
8:34
but I had it in about 35 seconds.
8:37
So here is the question I want you to hold for this entire week
8:40
as we process through this. Which hallway are you living in
8:44
right now? And more importantly, are you
8:48
the one who put you there? So are you living in
8:51
possibility? Are you living from fear?
8:54
So now this leads into also what I started yesterday talking
8:58
about the accumulator and the performer, which are two ways to
9:02
refuse the hallway. So we're going to dive deep into
9:06
the two archetypes later this week.
9:08
So I'm going to just touch on them right now because they're
9:11
two very different looking people who underneath are doing
9:14
the exact same thing. They're both refusing the
9:17
hallway, just with different strategies.
9:20
So first is the accumulator and when the accumulator, and these
9:24
are just names that I gave them. When the accumulator hits the
9:27
liminal space, when they find themselves in that in between
9:32
with no map and no guaranteed outcome, they start opening
9:37
every door simultaneously. They sign up for all the things.
9:41
They download all the courses, they start 12 projects.
9:45
They make the lists, they research the options, they
9:47
collect the information. Maybe they build a spreadsheet,
9:51
they join the program, and then the other program, and then the
9:53
one after that. Because if they gather enough,
9:57
whether it's enough data, enough options, enough material, enough
10:00
evidence, maybe they won't have to feel the raw uncertainty of
10:04
not knowing which door is actually theirs.
10:08
So the accumulating isn't about the stuff it never was.
10:12
You just think it is. It's about making the hallway
10:15
feel like it has walls, like you have some control over what
10:19
happens next, like you're doing something and therefore cannot
10:23
be accused of being lost. So the accumulator is in the
10:27
severance hallway, running their hands along every door, never
10:31
opening. 1 terrified of what choosing wrong actually means,
10:36
and the performer. So the performer hits the
10:39
liminal space and does the opposite.
10:42
They pick a door fast, and they Sprint through it, and then
10:45
immediately begin performing certainty about having chosen
10:49
correctly. Because standing in the hallway
10:51
feels like failure. Like evidence.
10:54
Like something other people might see and use against them.
10:57
Like proof that they don't have it together, that they're not as
11:00
far along as they should be, that they're behind some
11:04
invisible timeline that everyone else seems to be on track with.
11:09
Have you ever felt like that? Like you're just not keeping up?
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So they move, and they decide, and they commit loudly and
11:16
publicly to the door that they chose, even if it's the wrong
11:20
one. And if it's the wrong one,
11:21
they'll figure out how to make it look like it wasn't.
11:25
The performance isn't about the door.
11:26
It never was. It's about not being caught, not
11:30
knowing. So the performer is also in the
11:33
severance hallway, eyes forward, pace, steady, performing
11:37
navigation while quietly hoping no one notices that they have no
11:41
idea where they're going. So both of them are driven by
11:44
the same thing. It's an unsafe wound.
11:47
It's a nervous system that learned somewhere, sometime from
11:50
someone that not knowing what comes next is dangerous, and
11:55
that the space between is where bad things happen, whatever you
11:59
define is bad, that you cannot afford to just exist in the
12:03
uncertainty without actively trying to resolve it.
12:06
And both of them are paying a price for it.
12:09
So the accumulator never actually moves, they just get
12:11
heavier and the performer moves constantly and rarely ends up
12:16
somewhere they actually wanted to be.
12:19
Neither one of them ever finds out what the hallway was trying
12:22
to show them because neither one of them ever stayed long enough
12:25
to find out. So what does it look like when
12:29
you actually belong there? So I've been thinking about this
12:33
all day yesterday and I even woke up thinking about this.
12:37
I swear my mind does not stop. And what kept coming back to me
12:41
was this image. A mermaid not swimming with a
12:45
destination, not diving hard to the bottom to excavate something
12:49
and drag it back up to the surface, not gasping her way
12:52
back to the air she thought she needed.
12:55
She's just floating and twirling and moving through the water
12:59
because the water is home. And for a long time I treated
13:03
depth like a task. And literally, when I say for a
13:06
long time, I mean until this moment yesterday.
13:09
So if you're here and you're feeling this, I'm here with you.
13:14
So I would go in hard with purpose, with intention, find
13:18
the thing, dig it up, process it in the light, and then do it all
13:21
again. Like there was always something
13:24
buried, something I had to go get before I was allowed to come
13:27
back up. And that's just been my
13:30
methodology. Like I had someone once say to
13:32
me, do you ever do surface? And I was like, no, I don't.
13:37
And when I when this image came to my head, what I realized was
13:41
I was diving so hard down that I was like holding my breath,
13:45
having to get to the deepest points to understand and then
13:49
scrambling instead of realizing that I had gills.
13:55
I didn't need to. I could just float and be there.
13:58
And fun fact with that, as I was sitting there thinking about
14:01
this yesterday in that mermaid image, I had just cleared out a
14:05
whole bunch of books. And it's like, it's like giving
14:07
up my own children to get rid of books, But I realized I have a
14:10
ton and I needed to donate them. So I have them in a box and
14:14
dropping them off at the free little libraries all around.
14:17
And my daughter had gone through them.
14:19
She picked out the one she wanted to keep, and then she'd
14:21
made a stack of the one she didn't.
14:23
And they were sitting on top of this bookshelf that I was
14:25
facing. And I look over right as the
14:28
mermaid image came to mind and the one book binding that I saw
14:33
that was so clear said maybe a mermaid.
14:36
And I was like, well, isn't that perfect?
14:39
So little science and synchronicities noticed them.
14:42
But anyways, so with the mermaid imagery, the depth was never the
14:46
threat. The liminal space was never
14:48
trying to drown me. That in between the depths and
14:51
the surface, I was navigating it like someone who needed to
14:54
surface, when the whole time I was built for exactly this
14:58
environment. And so are you.
15:00
You just learned to be afraid of it, so the regulated nervous
15:04
system doesn't dive down to find the answer and come back up
15:07
exhausted. It swims and it floats, and it
15:11
exists in the between without making the between into a
15:15
project. It lets the pieces come together
15:18
without forcing them, and it trusts that the hallway knows
15:21
what it's doing. So that's what I want for you
15:25
this week. That's what I experienced this
15:28
past week as I took a week from doing podcast episodes and
15:33
really kind of took a vacation from the life that I've been
15:36
living. Not in any dramatic sense.
15:39
And I didn't go anywhere and I kept working, but I just set
15:43
aside some of the things that had become too deep or too much
15:49
of A project instead of what I really wanted it to be, which
15:52
are these episodes. That's why I'm changing course.
15:54
And I will come back to the core wounds.
15:57
And I spent so much time trying to sort through things and make
16:00
sense of it that it wasn't until literally yesterday and talking
16:06
about liminal spaces that I realized why I needed that week.
16:10
And so that's what I want for you, because I got to see how
16:15
beautifully peaceful it is and that in between.
16:19
So rather than trying to solve the liminal space or accumulate
16:22
your way out of the uncertainty, or perform your way past the
16:26
discomfort, or make the hallway into something you can manage, I
16:30
want you to ask yourself, what would it feel like to belong
16:34
there? To be in the dark matter hallway
16:37
where all the doors are still open, nothing collapsed yet.
16:42
Not because you're stuck, but because you're finally trusting
16:45
that where you land is exactly where you were always headed.
16:49
Through all the hardships, through all the challenges,
16:52
through any trauma, through all the beautiful moments.
16:55
What if you are exactly where you're supposed to be?
17:00
And you learn to believe that and know that.
17:03
So the hallway is not the waiting room before your life
17:06
starts. The hallway is your life, and
17:10
the question is whether you're going to Sprint through it or
17:12
you're actually going to live in it.
17:15
So this also ties in just a touch.
17:20
I have shared a whole bunch about Roman and how that's the
17:23
reason I took off the past week was if you didn't listen to any
17:27
of it. I'm just going to give a very
17:29
brief synopsis. Roman was my first baby, my
17:32
very, very dearly wanted baby ever since I was very small.
17:37
And he passed away when I was 25 weeks pregnant.
17:40
And I found out on April 7th, 18 years ago.
17:45
And then the only way through, the only way I had to sit in
17:49
that hallway and that hallway of liminal space.
17:52
I realize now looking back, but I didn't see it at the time.
17:56
I was just raging. I had to labor and deliver him.
18:00
So I had 18 hours of Labor and then had to push this little
18:04
human out and say goodbye. And what I realized actually
18:08
during the episode yesterday, if you listen to it, it's toward
18:11
the end, and I know it was a long one, I realized as I was
18:15
speaking, holy crap, my first experience that I can recall of
18:19
being in the liminal space was actively delivering that little
18:23
boy because I still had him, but I didn't have him anymore and I
18:30
hadn't fully released him yet. So in that little window of time
18:33
of pushing him and pushing him out, that was a space of that in
18:38
between. And I remember the feeling so
18:40
clearly. It was euphoria because it
18:43
wasn't about him. It wasn't about the experience.
18:46
It was being in between two states of being.
18:49
And I literally had that epiphany moment while I was
18:52
saying a bunch of stuff yesterday.
18:55
And I, I believe I stopped and went, Oh my God, I'm getting
18:57
teary. OK, I'll process that later.
18:59
This was part of the processing. So of course, the week that I
19:04
pause everything and I move into what I identified after the fact
19:08
is Liminal Spaces. It was on the anniversary of his
19:11
birthday. So just seeing the timing
19:15
fascinates me. So before I let you go, I want
19:20
to just address something so Light in the dark that series.
19:23
I'm going to put it on a temporary pause, and I'm sorry
19:26
if you really like it. It hasn't had as much views as
19:30
the other episodes, and for my own sanity and to recognize
19:35
where I've been taking on extra things that I need to just set
19:39
aside just for the time being until I feel called to it, I'm
19:43
going to just pause that. Because that show was built to
19:46
be a Lantern. It is slow and intimate and
19:49
sitting beside you in the dark when the dark gets loud.
19:52
And it served that purpose genuinely and fully and for
19:55
exactly as long as it was supposed to.
19:58
But right now, I'm not in the dark.
19:59
I'm in the hallway. I'm in that in between and it is
20:03
lit up with possibilities and not shadows.
20:06
And I'm not going to manufacture the dark just to fill up a slot.
20:09
I would be doing a huge disservice to me and to you, and
20:14
I'm not going to perform. And you know by now that's not
20:17
what I do. So Lighten the Dark will come
20:19
back, not on a set schedule necessarily, and not when it's
20:23
convenient, when it has something real to say and when I
20:27
have something real to say and when there's an actual Lantern
20:30
to carry, it will be back and it will be worth the wait.
20:34
And it's going to shift a little bit because it feels like I've
20:37
outgrown the way that I was doing it.
20:40
But I'm in that space, so I don't know what it looks like
20:42
yet. So until then, this is where
20:45
we're going to live together. OK, Definitely Monday,
20:48
Wednesday, Friday, doing the hard hitting, the direct and
20:51
always asking you the questions that you've been avoiding
20:54
because that's why I'm here. That's why I created this.
20:57
And who knows, I may add more episodes if I feel called to.
21:01
So you might get some bonus ones in there.
21:04
So closing up this week, the accumulator, the performer, and
21:08
what it costs you to keep refusing the hallway.
21:12
So on Wednesday, I'm going to get more into the accumulator.
21:16
So if that one resonated with you, tune in for that one.
21:19
Friday I'm going to get into the performer more.
21:21
And if that one resonated with you or if both of them did,
21:24
because God knows when I realized all of this, I've been
21:28
both of them. And then I will do a bonus one
21:32
where I talk about what it means to move beyond those.
21:36
And it's not easy, but it feels amazing when you do.
21:39
And that is the integrator when you incorporate all of it
21:42
together. So if this episode found someone
21:45
who needed it or someone standing in their own between
21:48
right now sprinting or hoarding or pretending they know exactly
21:52
where they're going, send this to them.
21:55
Listen to it again not to fix anything, just so that you know
22:00
and they know that the hallway has a name and that they're not
22:04
the only one who found it terrifying before they figured
22:07
out that it was theirs. So have an amazing Monday as
22:12
always. I am off today and I'm going to
22:15
live outside as much as possible in this beautiful weather.
22:19
I will be back Wednesday. Leave me some comments if Light
22:22
in the Dark was helpful for you because if I see enough feedback
22:27
about it then I will sit with that and let the pieces come
22:31
together and put a little bit more focus on it and bring it
22:33
back. Otherwise, have a great day and
22:36
I will see you next time.