Boundaries

One of the biggest challenges I’ve had and lessons I've learned recently is to set and maintain boundaries. This is especially difficult as I am in a completely different culture, while also living in a vortex town. What do I mean by vortex town? There are places that attract people in search of healing.  Maybe these places have a strong spiritual energy, and a certain kind of seeker is drawn to them. Realistically, my experience of locations like this is that many people come here to seek out some kind of savior, to engage in ceremonies, and/or to escape their life somewhere else. This also applies to me, although there were other reasons why I came here and chose to stay as long as I have. I haven't felt the spiritual energy in the way I imagined I would, but I've gotten a much clearer perspective on myself and my beliefs. When a place attracts many spiritual seekers, it can feel very detached from reality. At some point in the efforts to reach a healed state, enlightenment or ascendance, seekers lose touch with things like personal responsibility and boundaries and, as a result, their humanity. They have tricked themselves into believing they no longer need to navigate their humanness or the humanness of others. This manifests as a lack of respect for other people’s time, commitments, limits, and energy. There is also a lot of drama in the spiritual community.  This shows up as competition to be more spiritual than the next person and battles of the ego. Their definition of spirituality is an energetic free for all, and many of their practices may leave them detached from reality. By reality, I mean the human experience.

After gaining an appreciation of how much energy I was expending on things and people who didn't align with me, or that took my energy without giving anything back, I started to speak up for myself and say “No” to things I didn't want to do. This is challenging enough to do in the average community, but, when you add in the toxicity of people who believe they are beyond human, it can start to feel lonely when you realize how many cords you really need to cut. Besides that, the local culture is much different from my own. Here, it is not common to ask for space or set boundaries. I learned this from my experiences in dating. Communicating my boundaries often led to me being told I was “jealous” or “cold” and being made to feel like a bitch for asking for what I needed. I had to accept that was happening, but not take it on.  All these transitional emotions I experienced were worth it. I moved beyond guilt, shame, and feeling like I was asking too much.  I stripped my life down to the bare bones and only added things back in that truly felt right for me. The peace and productivity that followed were incredible. I found I had so much extra “space” in myself to create my life the way I wanted it. These realizations and the changes I made because of them provided valuable growth for me.