Although liminoid sounds like something a Cockney may have in their vodka (I apologise in advance to those wearing pearly jackets and encouraging each other to have bananas), a liminoid state is often experienced when we become completely and utterly absorbed in an activity.
The word liminoid has its roots in the Latin word limin, meaning a threshold. In a liminoid state, we experience the threshold between conscious and unconscious awareness, with our senses being heightened and our perceptiveness widened. One of the key aspects of liminoid experiences is that the individual usually finds them to be intensely meaningful.
The anthropologist, Victor Turner, described two different types of threshold experience. These are the liminoid which is a uniquely individual and often spontaneous experience, and the liminal which is a collective and ritualised experience. The key difference between the two experiences is that an individual chooses to be immersed in a liminoid experience, whereas they are usually obliged to take part in a collective liminal experience.
In many organisations, staff are usually under obligation to be involved in liminal rituals such as a meetings, change initiatives and executive worship. Although these events may have once been real threshold experiences that generated genuine transformations, most liminal rituals now seem meaningless, usually because the context of the original experience has been lost.
When individuals in an organisation no longer find any meaning in ritual liminoid activity, their need to find meaning in what they do often becomes more subliminal. They may appear to be taking part in liminal activity, but in reality, they are just going through the motions until they find the space and time to immerse themselves in a splash of liminoid experience.