B is for Boundaries

This has been a really important topic for me over the last few years, and to be honest, for a lot longer than that. My Boss has a difficult life and is often very negative and seems to enjoy others being miserable too. Working with her has made me very much more conscious of the energies we pick up from others and boundaries. This is what I have learnt from all sorts of places and acts as a summary of where I am now...

So...

I believe that the boundaries we maintain are really important but that it is wrong to make these boundaries so strong nothing can get through. It is also important they are flexible and can change. The stronger we get, the less we need boundaries at all, but while we are gettig there, techniques for maintaining and reasserting our boundaries are really, really important.

Many years ago I lived in the city. I found this quite hard and when I travel to other more urban areas oof the country I find myself re-erecting the barriers I needed there and becoming harder and more vigilant. In the city you do need to be aware of what is going on around you and there is just so much going on!

I remember one time I was in the city centre and I was sat having a drink. There were two young guys and I realised they were paying attention to me and I was able to pick up the gist of it, although I think it was more in the way of gestures than words. One of them was teaching the other to pick pockets or some such and the student had picked me out as an easy target. The Teacher took one look at me, found me watching back and told his pupil no and they moved on.

Being aware makes it harder for people to target you. Being unaware makes it easier to become a victim. Your boundaries have to allow you to be aware of what is going on, the question is how aware do you need to be? I had to leave the city without fail at least once a month, because even the parks were too crowded - I needed to be further from people. The city is too much for me.

Many people who have been victims work on making their barriers bigger and stronger. They become harder, more cynical, more dangerous in some ways. They are trying to deal with threats on the term of the threat. I had a bad experience many years ago and I remember making a choice mentally that I did not want to become hard and cynical. I wanted to be open to future relationships and happiness without being a victim or a perpetrator of nastiness.

One time, there was a black energy that was following me. I have no idea where it came from, but it used to un-nerve me when I felt it - often at night. I told a friend over the phone one time and then she felt it too, that night at least. In order to feel safe, I would cast a circle and call the elements and ask them to watch me as I slept and keep me safe. Then I could sleep.

I remember one time I traveled to stay with family at a very special place and I could feel the thing at the gate, stuck, unable to come in. And there was no physical barrier there other than the fact the positive energy of the place was such that it could not enter. I think this is how our energy boundaries should be - they exist because of the strength of what is inside, us. But being spiritually wonderful is not somewhere very easy to get to, and quite often we need to clear space in order to learn to even begin getting there.

These are some of the tricks I have learnt...

Visualisation

• Clean your aura (I take a brush and give mine a good clean out).
• Snipping energy links to other people (we don't need their energy and they don't need ours, not set up as permanent links like this anyway... healing is different but should not be a permanent drain...)
• Visualising an 'energy' cloak all around you as a shield

Grounding
However you ground it is always a good way of allowing negativity to flow out and good energies to flow in. I like to connect myself upwards to the sky and down to the ground and breathe the energies in both directions.

Policing Your Mind
It is easy to get trapped in negative thoughts - don't! They just make you feel negative. Don't repress them, feel them, express them, journal, do art, whatever, just don't let them become a track round and round inside your head, because this is a trap. Change the subject, make yourself think of other things, do other things, distract yourself. Don't dwell.
Meditate and practice thinking nothing at all....

Doing

• Dance or listen to music
• Do physical activities that don't give you space to dwell
• Nature... being with nature is for me, the best balm in the entire word. The wind blowing salt and sand into my face is one of my favourites for making me feel alive and good.
• Love - taking a moment to really feel love for those around us, so that it bubbles up through us.

Protections
Kyanite is a great crystal to carry, as is Smokey Quartz.
Carry any talisman of positivity and contentment that works for you.

I don't believe 'Happy' is a good goal - happy is a momentary feeling and implies you will be sad in the future. Contented is where you want to be - it allows space for happy without being sad un-necessarily. And we all need sad sometimes, it can be a very healing emotion, and it should be expressed - otherwise it turns to depression. It is depression really that we are fighting here I think...

But contentment is something you practice. If you work at being contented, eventually, some chemical trigger in your head might just get the point and suddenly that glass will be half full. And really, that's all you need to change... I have a book called the Happy Book which is a book of prompts to turn the book into a collection of stuff that makes you happy. Lists of memories, smells, objects, people. ideas of happy things to do... So that whenever you are feeling negative you can get out the book and see all the things that make you feel better. A lovely idea.

And that thing about something switching around in your head, well I guess that is what happened for me. Now I find I need to think about clearing my boundaries less. I don't even have to consider sleeping inside a circle - I have not had to do this in years! i don't feel like a victim but when bad stuff happens, I am more able to feel it with out getting stuck in it...

Now don't go thinking I know all of this and I am never negative... I have just learnt how to deal with it better than I ever used too. I still have lots to learn. There is always so much to learn.... But making sure you are not carrying around other peoples emotions makes it easier to do the work on yourself and we have to work on ourselves. If we don't, we have nothing to give anyone else....

p.s. Just read a post which gave a very timely reminder, there will always be situations where you should make your boundaries really, really strong. For instance when healing. Sometimes you just should not take things in to your self or put things out of yourself. I guess it is about adjusting yourself so that you are in balance with the situation you are in... Flexible but strong boudaries!