Spiritual Boundaries for Energy Fields - Should we create personal boundaries as protection?
by Ask a Healer
Related Article: How do you spiritually protect yourself?
Question on Spiritual Wellness:
I am really struggling with feeling other people's energy in my own energy field, especially those who are in negative states and want me to be there too. How do I set spiritual boundaries to keep my personal energy field free of the negative thoughts of others around me?
Healing Facilitation Response:
This question reminds me of an exercise I once did in a spiritual class. The teacher had a ball of twine in his hands. He began to unroll the twine and then he handed it to me. He instructed me to continue rolling off the twine until I had enough to create a physical representation of the amount of personal space I needed around me, to feel safe in the world.
Without thinking at all, I began rolling the twine he had unrolled back on the ball until it was all rolled back up and I handed the roll back to him.
He was a bit perplexed and asked me if that meant I didn't create personal boundaries at all. I said that was correct. I explained that I strived to live without spiritual boundaries between me and whatever came into my energy field. I told the teacher that I believed anything that came to me came because there was something in me that drew it and that I had something to learn, give, receive or become more aware of in allowing it to remain.
However, having the intent to live in a spiritually open energy field doesn't mean I always live that way. There have been periods in my life when I turned off my empathic sensing altogether and other times when I relied obsessively on clearing tools such as smudging, chanting, prayers of protection, crystals, etc.)
As the exercise progressed, each of the other participants rolled off the amount of twine they felt they would need to create a physical circle around them that would represent the amount of personal space they felt safe having and the boundary against the energy of others that felt good to them.
As I stood off to one side and watched all these circles form around everyone, I suddenly felt very small, vulnerable and alone. I didn't know I was seeing something profound. Later, it dawned on me that one of the reasons I have felt so alone on the planet was all the invisible boundary circles that, apparently, more people want than don't want.
In the Spiritual Minority:
I was the only one in the class of 9 or 10 who chose to be without spiritual boundaries or protective energy.
If that little microcosm of experience was like the macrocosm, then no wonder I've felt alone in the world.
So do we go through life without spiritual protection?
I believe we are endowed with all the naturally functioning diagnostic and alarm system features we need to know when we have allowed our personal energy to replace the gift of universal life force energy with others.
Constructing personal boundaries in addition to our naturally-occuring sense of space is an attempt to protect and control and always stems either from the vibration of fear or the temporary need to isolate what is us vs someone else, for clarity. I've created personal boundaries of varying strengths for both those reasons even though I was aware that my natural state would have made such artificially created protection unnecessary.
All that having been said, I don't know anyone who hasn't used artificial or additional means of spiritual protection at some point on their path. As I mentioned before, I certainly did. And then....there came a point where I recognized the huge amount of energy it was taking to maintain all those boundaries and protective structures.
In making a conscious decision to let personal boundaries as a protective device go, I rediscovered my natural ability to be safe and aware. It had been blunted by trauma at an early age so I grabbed the lifeline of spiritual protection tools and energetically constructed boundaries until I felt safe enough to look for my Self, within myself.
Suggested Resource: Cloud Atlas. Wow, a fast-paced and very intriguing look at the concepts of reincarnation, karma, past lives and choices. About the movie; about the book.
