At times, the wisest, most skillful, and most compassionate action is to establish a boundary with another person. To stand up and assertively say No. To move in an empowered and swift way to protect your own integrity. To privilege your own autonomy and interiority. To meet narcissism, abuse, and neglect with a fierce, firm and direct response.
This is not only the case with “external” others – other people in your life – but also with the multitude of “internal” others who surge into your inner narrative from the psychic underworld, taking form as voices and figures in your interior self-scape. You might recognize them by their predictable and familiar refrain: “There is something wrong with you. You have failed. No one will ever love you unless you change and become someone different. You are not okay. You have fallen short. You have done life wrong. You are no good. You are uninteresting. You do not belong. Your sensitivities and eccentricities are not welcome here.” These are the voices of the past, the shadow of a family's pain, the echos from a materialistic and greedy culture, the wailings of transgenerational trauma. These are the voices that perpetuate your disembodiment, that insist on insensitivity to the truth in your heart. These are the voices of a social ego that has lost touch with the natural world, with the place your body holds in the natural world. These voices are separated from the wonder and creative forces of the imaginal realm. When these voices or forms approach or enter your open, sensitive nervous system they must be met with the boundaries of discernment. It is important to recognize and realize those moments when you fall out of your wisdom-presence in the here and now and tumble into the time machine of the “there and then and them.” If you can, engage in a dialogue with these parts, voices or forms and proclaim your own basic goodness. Declare from the rooftops that sensitivity is not pathology, that the shaky tenderness you feel is not pathology… but path. It is the path to your essence, to the truth of what you are. Do not merely accept their conclusions, their unreality vortexes and downward spirals. The lenses through which they have come to see things are warped and distorted. Cleanse these perceptions with your deep clear-seeing and the wildness of your truth-knowing, self-knowing love. Take the risk of telling the true story of you; declare your vision, your dream, speak to the future you see for yourself. Bow your head and allow the tapestry of your life to be unfolded before you by the great Weaver of Life Herself… Let yourself become what you have always been becoming . . . that vessel in which life herself can come alive . . . here . . . again.
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