Healthy Boundaries
How having a healthy dynamic relationship with boundaries propels our sovereignty
In our current world, we are deeply seduced by the things we can tangible see, explain and talk about, often denying the depth of what cannot be described in words.
A lot of us share the common trait of weak boundaries.
Weak boundaries are like rotting roots of a large oak tree. If early rot sets into the roots, the tree’s growth becomes stunted and it never reaches the full expression of itself. This what the energy around it feels to me, but it can look very different.
One expression of it is the character of a people pleaser who constantly compromises themselves and their truths and desires so that they can be accepted and just survive in their world. On the other hand, and this is harder one to swallow, is the character who is so aggressive and abrasive, that it is obvious to everyone except the character that they are desperately hiding vulnerabilities and insecurities.
Weak boundaries, the way I understand them, occur when we have unhealthy relationships with our sense of protection and connection with what we see as ‘other’.
Boundaries getting crossed isn’t essentially a sign that they are weak. This is nuanced work and this is why it feels like a relationship to me, more than a static administration of walls.
We can see and hear and speak on physical boundaries, but emotional, psychic, energetic and mental boundaries get crossed constantly.
You know that feeling you get when you phone buzzes? The chemical hits you get and the pulsing of your nerves as a reaction to ’Someone has texted, I wonder who!’. Only to find out it’s a telemarketer? It’s subtle, but it is so normalized to be available and open to all sorts of unwanted energy. From commercials and un-ending construction noises to the clouds of exhaust we inhale and the constant media instruction telling you who to hate, what to do and how to think.
Most of us are raised in this, so learning healthy, conscious, dynamic boundaries in all our bodies (mental psychic, psychological, physical, emotional, relational and spiritual) that are strong, yet also change and evolve with us, supporting our growth and expansion, is something we learn later in life, when we attend to it.
Early Boundaries
Right in the beginning, I resisted working on my boundaries. they seem the exact opposite of ‘oneness consciousness’.
If I make a boundary, I felt that it was ‘against’ someone and that wasn’t love, right?
I was taught that this is a common misunderstanding, and the way forth, is to realize that boundaries are necessary for the true self to actually flourish.
I learned that like in a cocoon where a caterpillar liquifies and pupates turning into a butterfly eventually, so to our early boundary are like that cocoon. Giving us the necessary space and protection to evolve.
This is especially important where we are at the stage of consciousness where are attempting to unplug from confirming patterns of the collective (our family, society, community, ancestry etc). Here we are unplugging from the Matrix and we need firmer boundaries, that sometimes need to expressed strongly and loudly, because for the first time, we are giving ourselves permission, space and freedom to liquify.
This is apparent when we try to do something different and tell our close friend or family, and they tell us all the reasons why we should no change, because it threatens the status quo they hold dear.
When we express our boundaries, we may find that we suddenly have space we didn’t have before. Maybe all we do is take a bath, or read a book, or build a cabinet or take a nap. We learn what to do with this space - are we just filling it unconsciously or is there something we have always wanted to do, and now we have to rise and just do it.
Our people may get angry at us. They may feel hurt and hurl pain at us.
The boundaries we establish allow us our work, and are loving for others as well, because they let our people face their anger, their drama and issues. In this way, when we change, we enable others to change. We learn to discern our stuff from the stuff of others and become more skilled at working through what is truly ours.
Dynamic Boundaries
We get confident and good at saying NO to things we have allowed or engaged with in the past, and as such we get to experience he benefit of saying YES to ourselves, our soul path and our true spirit.
Because the Universe is not a boring place, the work of establishing boundaries isn’t complete just by making them that one time.
My next learning came almost in conflict with the first one:
Boundaries should change and evolve.
This was a hard one for me. If boundaries change, then are they actually boundaries?
I imagined a beautiful home I made for myself, a sanctuary and a place where I felt safe and free. When I was doing early work on boundaries, I visualized big high and strong reinforced walls around this sanctuary. It was great! But after a while, I got frustrated and I couldn’t understand why.
I realized that never letting myself outside the walls into the fields and forests that lay there. I felt scared of the the outside and only felt safe inside. In this way, I started to make my world smaller and the boundaries that I built to help me, started feeling like a self-made prison. outside. Every person I interacted with was a potential threat to my sanctuary, and so my relationships suffered and no intimacy and vulnerability was possible.
When you have a lot of other people’s thoughts, ideas, constructs and beliefs, we need really strong boundaries in the beginning because we have no idea who we actually are. But after a while, our truer Self emerges and this is where, I learned, that I need to start having a relationship with what felt safe and protective, while also growing and evolving.
This isn’t easy. I had developed an identity around my now firm boundaries and an attachment to life choices and life style from that place. I saw ‘other people’ as something like a virus, where I needed to “keep them out of my clean and pure space”. This is an entirely mind-based, egoic construct that I couldn’t see. But I felt it in the anger and isolation and constantly feeling like any desire I had was unmet.
Boundaries shouldn’t make us weak inside and feel utterly threatened every time a strong wind blows. Their purpose is protection, but Life will happen and move into us, something that we need to be open to and allow. This balance requires self-truth, self-love and conversation with our Soul. It also requires the sacrifice of self-denial and personality constructs that no longer serve us in love.
I realized that while I had strong and firm boundaries, they aren’t actually impenetrable. The thickest and highest walls still allow winds, rain and birds to come through. And many times, skilled people may climb up and in.
So then, what was the point if they didn’t guarantee my safety and protection?
What I finally realized was that existence is far from linear. Boxing life experience into safe and unsafe created great inner conflict, keeping us far from Source and repeats the isolation and separation pattern within us.
The purpose of boundaries is in the process of building them, when we didn’t have them before. After that, it is about negotiating and shifting, reinforcing or taking them down. This is because the medicine of boundaries is to help us realize our strength and our power from within. They provide a layer of protection while we are on the training ground of self-realization, but we will not forever be in-training.
The day we emerge, we will not need the same boundaries we had last year.
We know that we are strong. We know our process. We have build and we have dismantled so many times, that we gain immeasurable confidence in ourselves and our abilities.
When someone crosses our boundaries, we know how to turn the energy, transmute or dissipate it. If it still sticks, we know that something in us need our love and our release. We free others from being perpetrators in our lives, and start seeing humanity trying.
In this way, we become free from the dramas and traumas of our world and we emerge as Masters of our own sovereignty. A gift, that just keeps on giving to every heart we touch.
New Earth: Strength, Safety and Freedom from Within
I imagine a time when I and people around me emit (for lack of better word) radiance and the fullness of our creative light force. Mine makes yours even brighter, and yours makes mine even stronger.
By light force, I mean the uniqueness that makes each of us who are. From knowing this in ourselves, we get to embrace, celebrate, honour and respect this part of others.
In this way, the work we all do with boundaries becomes different. Instead of working on it on an individual level for survival and protection like we do today, it becomes much bigger; allowing for true freedom to evolve and thrive beyond our perceived limits and create amazing beautiful structures and inventions for our world, our families, communities and nations, lovingly.
It’s a dream of mine, a prayer and an invocation.