Where are your boundaries?
We all have them. Everywhere. We build boundaries around our physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual world. We need them, to some extent. To protect ourselves from getting hurt, for instance.
But boundaries are like leftovers: you need to check up on them regularly, and get rid of them after some time. Otherwise they make your life stink.
Take that wall you’ve built up around your heart to protect yourself from loss, because of a relationship gone bad or a death of a loved one. You know, where you don’t let others get too close to you because you don’t want to be hurt again.
Is that wall really serving you? Is it really preventing loss? If you numb the heart (even just a little bit) so that you can’t get hurt, are you improving your life?
The funny thing is, by not letting others get close, you are increasing the likelihood they will leave you. The very effort to protect has the exact opposite effect.
Sure, you won’t lose a deep, loving relationship. You can’t lose something you don’t have. Instead, you will prevent the depths of spiritual beauty that come from being fully immersed into another’s life.
The same is true with all of your boundaries. Each one protects you from something, but at the expense of blocking depth in that aspect of your life.
Here’s a challenge: every day, identify one of your boundaries. Then spend the rest of the day experimenting with not enforcing it. Open yourself to the good and the bad for one day. Tear down the wall and let the world in.
Walk up to strangers and start conversations. Hug someone you feel uncomfortable around. Eat a food that you normally avoid. Attend a discussion on a contentious topic and try to understand all the viewpoints (even the ones you strongly disagree with). Go out for the day without grooming in any way. Try something new in the bedroom. Belch loudly in a public place. Find something that scares or intimidates you in any way and experience it.
Make this a practice that you continue every day for the rest of your life.
Remove the boundaries from your life, and you’ll live easier, happier, and freer. You’ll start to experience living on a new level. Yes, you will get hurt sometimes. But you’ll also feel an overwhelming joy regularly.
The ideal goal, the desired result, is to eliminate every boundary. You’ll feel a kind of bliss that can’t be described, only experienced. Enlightenment.
And it all starts by picking a boundary and letting it go.
In the news
- Good for the soul: Music ‘nurtures’ premature babies
- Here’s a man who touched more lives than most: US ‘Viagra scientist’ dies at 92
- ‘Vinny’ might have a job for you: Cancer drug erases fingerprints
Quote for the week
A sound mind in a sound body is a short but full description of a happy state in this world. – John Locke
Healthy thoughts,
Jeff
