If this boundary is your own, the best approach is to trust someone else in a small way every day. That means not telling them in advance how to do things, not nitpicking and indulging in perfectionism, not contradicting and insisting that only you know what’s right. Reversing our habit of being right will feel uncomfortable—that’s only natural. But for every time that your trust is rewarded, you will have one reason fewer to put up your old wall.
You trust that love is meant for you. Many kinds of boundaries hide self-judgment. People who reject intimacy feel that they don’t deserve love. They fear exposure, not wanting other people to see how unlovable they are. Putting up a boundary also allows them not to look at why they feel they don’t deserve love. (In place of love, you can substitute respect, admiration, acceptance, appreciation—these are all offshoots of love.) The most fortunate among us have been loved since birth. But that is rare. Most people have experienced a combination of love and rejection, even when very young. They have been exposed to negative situations in which their worthiness remains a question.
The only cure for this doubt is to be loved, and that won’t happen if you shut yourself off. Unfortunately, the more you feel you don’t deserve love, the more you isolate yourself, and then the certainty that you don’t deserve love grows stronger. In essence, you can only attract and hold on to as much love as you feel for yourself. One sees evidence for this when a woman says, “I keep dating the same man over and over,” or “I only meet men who wind up rejecting me.” In the case of men, the complaint is the same, but with gender variations: “I meet a lot of women, but nobody I’d marry,” or “I love women, but I don’t want to be pressured to settle down.” Society provides all kinds of ready-made responses behind which a person can hide from his or her own self-judgment.
This limiting boundary can be taken down by trusting that you are lovable, not completely (that would be asking too much), but enough to remain on the outer edge of your comfort zone. You can help a needy child, work for the poor, tutor a high-school dropout—these are acts of love that bring rewards just as big as going on a date, and usually more. As love comes to you, it will become part of your identity. Love wants to grow. You only need to plant the seed.
You welcome the opportunity to expand. People who live behind boundaries are suspicious of expanding. Human beings are unique in that expansion for us happens in awareness. For example, it’s expansive to share and give. But the matter is complicated: the physical act of giving isn’t sufficient. It’s possible to give away millions while still being greedy and selfish at heart. There seems to be an innate mechanism that makes it almost physically necessary for some people to contract, withdraw, and hide. A recent social science experiment took a group of people and showed them a series of slides depicting gruesome events, such as war and automobile accidents. Each person was monitored to measure his or her response, using blood pressure, heart rate, and galvanic skin response. Everyone in the group found it stressful to look at the harrowing photos. But at a certain point some subjects became inured to what they were seeing. Their stress response tapered off, while for other subjects it didn’t—they were just as upset by the last horrible sight as they were by the first. On the surface this experiment showed how quickly some of us build barriers against experiences that we find fearful. Another result turned out to be counterintuitive, however.
The people taking part had been asked beforehand to state their political preferences. As it turned out, those who labeled themselves liberal were the ones who quickly overcame their initial shock and got used to the gruesome pictures. Those who identified themselves as conservative were the ones who remained distressed. The experimenters struggled to explain this result, because the stereotype of bleeding-heart liberals would lead one to assume that they would be the most sensitive. But perhaps it takes a strong ability to accept the existence of pain and suffering in order to try to fix it, whereas people who remain shocked by pain and suffering only want to stop seeing it. You have to be comfortable with painful reality before you can actually help to do something about it.
The same applies to helping ourselves. It takes willingnes to face the darkness before the light can come in. Your soul treats your boundaries with utmost care. It never demands healing. It never crashes through, even with love. Here, I think the mind leads the emotions. Expansion happens on its own, but first your mind must give permission. Contraction is always based upon fear, and fear’s grip is entirely emotional. Like a parent who coaxes a timid child into the water, you can negotiate with your fearful, contracted self. It takes skill.
The key step is to realize that even the tightest, most constricted part of yourself wants to be free. With that in mind, you ask yourself, “What do I want?” The answer doesn’t have to be grand. You don’t have to want total fulfillment, joy, and love. Find a feasible desire. The next thing that brings you joy, whatever it is, brings you closer to your soul. It may be mixed with discomfort, but if you can give yourself a truly expansive experience, your need to contract will begin to diminish. The more joy you are open to receiving, the less you’ll need to have any boundaries at all.
You see abundance as natural to life. If you believe in scarcity, you cannot help but live in fear. Most of us consider our jobs, houses, bank accounts, and possessions defenses against scarcity. But inner lack is the real threat. Your body is an obvious example of Nature’s abundance. Hundreds of billions of cells are provided for. Your blood surges through your arteries like a tidal wave. Likewise, your soul is a reservoir for infinite energy, creativity, and intelligence. It can’t possibly run dry. This means little, however, if you believe that you are living in scarcity.
When that belief takes hold, it takes enormous struggle just to squeeze enough out of life to survive. This belief is common, ironically enough, among very wealthy people. Their riches keep them satiated externally while on the inside they feel famished. Hence they crave more and more of what didn’t satisfy them in the first place.
There is a huge discrepancy, then, between what the soul is providing and what we receive. I find that when someone feels poor inside, the following exercise is very helpful. Take a piece of paper and write the word Abundance, then draw a circle around it. Now write five words around the circle, each one standing for an area that would make your life feel more abundant. (When I do this exercise with people, I ask them not to write material things like money, houses, or possessions. Career, work, and success are good substitutes, because they have an inner meaning.) Let’s say the five words you wrote were:
Peace
Fun
Compassion
Well-being
Family
One man actually listed these five things. For him, life would be abundant if all of these areas were more fulfilled. Now, taking each item in turn, write down three things you can do, starting today, to make these areas more fulfilling. Here’s a sample of what this man wrote:
Fun: Spend more time outdoors. Play games with the kids. Learn to have fun again.
Compassion: Give to the homeless guy on the block. Offer help to my depressed co-worker. Volunteer at local animal shelter.
Family: Tell my wife more often that I love her. Sit at the dinner table and talk about how everyone is doing. Pay attention to signs of sadness and unhappiness.
It’s not enough to yearn for more in your life. Your desire must be specific; it must point from where you are to where you want to be. Such a desire isn’t chaotic or out of control. Rather, it exerts gentle pressure for change.
You don’t expect anything. Nothing creates more unhappiness than failed expectations. The job promotion that doesn’t come through, the proposal of marriage that is postponed one more time, the image of an ideal family that never materializes. Expectations are an attempt to control the future. An expectation says, “I won’t be happy unless x happens.” Here we must be careful, however. Having no expectations is a familiar way of saying that life is empty and without hope. That is n
ot the goal. Instead, it’s a kind of openness in which anything can happen and be welcomed.
Recently I had a vivid experience of this. A book tour had taken me to the tenth city in as many days. To survive the grind of traveling from airport to airport and hotel to hotel, I had created a routine. But on this day no part of the routine went well. I got up early to exercise, but the hotel’s gym was closed. I went to breakfast for juice and toast, but, this being a Sunday, all they offered was a lavish brunch buffet. The staff had forgotten to deliver the morning newspaper, and the car that was supposed to take me to where I was speaking came late, forcing us to rush through traffic and keep the entire audience waiting.
Hunched in the back of the car, I wasn’t happy, and I knew why. It wasn’t just an interrupted routine; it was failed expectations. I had posted a mental plan about having a good day, and piece by piece the things I expected didn’t come true. My desires had been blocked. This happens to everyone. Expectations don’t come true, and the result is disappointment. Afterwards I realized that I could have enjoyed my day more if I had approached it without any expectations.
I could have been more centered. When you are centered, you aren’t so dependent on your circumstances. The ups and downs of everyday events don’t throw you off.
I didn’t need to dictate in advance what a good day would be. One can never see the whole picture. Room needs to be left for the unexpected. In that way, when the unexpected comes, it upsets nothing.
I could have let go of outcomes. The only thing any of us can control is our own actions. Outcomes are beyond our control.
I could have taken things less personally. Life comes and goes. The universe gives and it takes away.
Nurturing these attitudes in yourself helps you not to build up expectations. I’m not suggesting that you can totally avoid disappointment. Our minds are stocked with images of things that we identify with happiness, and by expecting those things, we expose ourselves to letdowns. Yet we also know that a better sort of happiness exists. Next Christmas, which would make you happier, a gift that comes from a list you wrote, or a gift that comes as a complete surprise? Your soul doesn’t exist to fill a mental list constructed in the past. Its gifts are unexpected. The happiness it brings is fresh because it comes from outside our expectations.
The magic of desire is linked to the freshness of life as it constantly renews itself. The soul isn’t a suitor who whispers “I love you” in your ear. The soul has no words, no voice. It expresses love through action, by bestowing the next thing that will give you joy. The next thing may be insignificant; it may be earth-shaking. Only one thing is certain: love awakens the soul and brings its love in return. That’s the experience you will have once your boundaries begin to soften. Ultimately, the possibility opens up of a life without any boundaries. It’s this possibility we need to explore next.
In Your Life: Letting Your Soul Shine Through
The influence of higher awareness is constant and always beneficial. Like a warm light melting an ice sculpture, it doesn’t matter if the ice is carved into a fearsome monster; all that matters is melting it. If you can’t feel the warmth of your soul shining through, it’s being blocked. Resistance can always be traced back to the mind. These obstacles, being invisible, are difficult to spot. Your mind is expert at hiding from itself, and your ego insists that building boundaries is one of its most important jobs. So the best way to observe what you’re doing is through the body. Your body can’t fool itself the way your mind can. It has no access to denial. Fear and anger are its responses to the most powerful threats. When your body registers either emotion, some outside force is pushing against your boundaries.
Fear is physically debilitating, and when it turns to terror, it paralyzes. Fear is registered by a tight stomach, cramps, coldness, blood rushing from the head, dizziness, feeling faint, and tightness in the chest. Anger is registered by warmth and flushed skin, tense muscles, a clamped jaw, quick, irregular breathing or loud breathing, a faster heartbeat, and a pounding in the ears.
These are unmistakable signals, but the mind can ignore them anyway. Notice how often a person will say “I’m okay, nothing’s wrong” when her body is blatantly contradicting her. You need to trust your body’s cues, even when your mind is saying otherwise. Trust begins by recognizing the signature of each emotion. Each one is a sign that you are resisting. An experience is creating stress, and that happens because instead of flowing through you, that experience has hit a barrier. Maybe you can’t see what’s going on, but your body can feel it. Feeling is the first step of tearing down barriers and no longer needing them.
It’s helpful, then, to explore more of these physical cues. When two feelings are related, like anger and hostility or grief and depression, I’ve given the primary emotion a longer explanation.
Humiliation is like fear in that your body feels weak, but in this case it isn’t cold. Your cheeks redden and your skin warms. You shrink and feel smaller. Extreme fear makes you want to run away; humiliation makes you want to disappear. Humiliation lingers in the body and can be triggered by the slightest memory from the past. Someone who has been severely humiliated, especially in childhood, will be listless, unresponsive, and withdrawn; the body will feel chronically weak and helpless.
Embarrassment is mild humiliation. It shows the same physical signs but passes more quickly.
Frustration is like anger, but more bottled up. It feels as if your body wants to be angry but can’t find the switch. Movements become rigid, another sign that the outlet is blocked. Frustration can also be anger combined with denial, in which case you will experience signs of denial—averted eyes, quick, dismissive speech, shrugging, tightened jaw muscles, labored breathing. In other words, the person’s real feelings are dammed up. Some people show subtle signs of being angry, such as being too restless to sit still. Not all frustration is linked to anger, but even when someone complains of being sexually frustrated, for example, irritability and anger are rarely far away.
Guilt creates a restless feeling, like being trapped and wanting desperately to escape. You feel confined or suffocated; breathing can seem difficult. The chest tightens and wants to explode, to release pent-up guilt as if it were physically trapped. We say that guilt gnaws at you, which the body can register as chronic pressure on the heart.
Shame is another warm feeling, bringing flushed cheeks and warm skin. But there’s also a sense of numbness inside that can feel cold and empty. Like humiliation, shame makes you feel smaller; you shrink and want to disappear. Shame is related to guilt, but it feels more like a dead weight, while guilt is a beast that wants to explode out of you.
Anxiety is chronic fear; it’s an emotion that weakens the body. The more acute signs of fear may not be present because you’ve grown used to them; your body has adapted. But the body can’t adapt completely, and so the fear creeps out in signs like irritability, tuning out, numbness, and sleeplessness. The body can be listless or restless, which sound like opposites. But when anxiety persists for weeks and months, symptoms have time to shift and adapt to each person’s circumstances. In all cases, however, if you lie still and go inward, fear will be present just beneath the surface.
Depression feels cold and heavy, lethargic and lacking in energy. There are many varieties of depression, because like chronic anxiety, this condition can last for weeks, or months, or even years. Your body has time to build up its own unique defenses. For example, someone who is depressed typically feels tired, but that’s not always true: high-powered types can continue to function by forcing themselves to be energetic despite their depression. When allied to a sense of hopelessness, depression can make you listless and dull; why move when the situation is hopeless to begin with? Depressed people may complain of being cold all the time. They flounder physically when confronted with challenges, as if confused or helpless. Many people balk when depressed, refusing to react; others lose all motivation. Their bodies signal those attitudes by moving slowly, rigidly, or
hesitantly.
Grief is like depression but even more cold and numbing. The body can feel so heavy and listless that the person feels dead while they’re still alive.
Hostility is like anger, but needs no trigger to set it off. There are angry cues all the time, combined with a kind of simmering vigilance, alert to the slightest excuse for full-blown rage. The body feels tight, tense, and ready for action.
Arrogance is disguised anger, like hostility, and it is also chronic. One sees signs of it all the time, and the person needs only the slightest trigger to start acting proud, dismissive, and aloof. But arrogance buries its underlying anger deeper than hostility, so deep that this normally warm emotion turns cold. Being bottled up and in control, arrogant people don’t explode; instead they deliver a measured dose of cold fury, marked by clenched jaws, a cold stare, and rigid facial expressions.
When you detect these physical cues in your own body, the first step is to trust them. The second is to examine their motivation. Boundaries make you act in ways you aren’t fully aware of. Often your ego has an agenda of its own, and it is trying to push that agenda, even though your body isn’t buying it. Here are some examples of ego agendas:
Self-importance is an overall strategy for seeming bigger, stronger, more in command or control. The physical giveaways tend to be arrogance and other signs of controlled anger. Signs of frustration indicate that nothing is ever good enough. The body is often rigid, with a stiff neck and head held high; the chest can be stuck out or expanded. Along with these cues, self-important people display typical behaviors of impatience, belligerence, aloofness, and cold dismissal. When challenged, they pontificate; if overmatched, they withdraw and balk.