Boundaries, Feeling, and the Two Pillars of Inner Work
Límites, sentir y los dos pilares del trabajo interior
A question about the difficulty of setting boundaries, and how the avoidance of uncomfortable feelings drives reactive patterns.
Boundaries, Feeling, and the Two Pillars of Inner Work
A question about the difficulty of setting boundaries, and how the avoidance of uncomfortable feelings drives reactive patterns.
I was wondering if you could say something about boundaries. I feel like I'm not very good at them. There's a pattern of not speaking up when someone is being slightly invasive, and then only speaking up when I'm already really angry, pushed to a certain limit. I don't know whether I'm just avoiding the confrontation initially, and then it gets too annoying, to the point where I don't care anymore whether there's a conversation about it. It's just not something I handled very well recently with a colleague of mine. She doesn't have much awareness of other people's space. But then I was also quite reactive when she went too far with something.
I understand. There are two aspects of this work. One would be waking up, which is what I speak to more directly in the meditations: the recognition of our true nature. The other aspect is what you could call growing up, and it has to do with the development of how to live. The question you're asking is about that second aspect, but it's not second in importance. They're like two pillars, and these two pillars support each other. As we grow, we discover that we can go deeper into knowing ourselves, and vice versa.
Every challenge as a mirror
In a sense, every challenge we have is a mirror of these two aspects. Every challenge in life, for example what you're describing, is an area where we can grow. It's also mirroring where we can know ourselves more deeply. The key question is: what do these have in common? What is it that brings these two together in one process? It has to do with feeling. There is always, in a challenge, something we don't want to feel.
What you're avoiding feeling
When, for example, you say the challenge is boundaries, we talk about boundaries, but at the core it's going to be about feeling. As you describe, you have a challenge in setting a boundary or speaking up. Until you express yourself, you cross a limit where you invoke anger. Up until that moment, there's something that is hard for you to feel.
I'm speculating here, but for example, it could be that to speak makes you uncomfortable. To express what you really feel, what you really think, makes you uncomfortable in a way that you would rather risk not speaking than feel that discomfort. Until a balance gets crossed, where the discomfort of the situation becomes bigger than the discomfort you're avoiding. Then anger becomes a way out. Either you're triggered, or sometimes we invoke anger as an energy that helps us express something that's painful.
I'm speaking generally here, but the work is always going to be, especially in this pillar of growing up: what are you avoiding feeling? It's always going to be case by case, moment by moment. It could be one thing one second and a different thing the moment after. But we can start discovering something. When I'm experiencing something I don't like and it's repetitive, I can look at the behavior and ask: what is the other side? On one side, it's something I don't like; it seems not to work. But on the other side, what is it providing? What am I gaining? For example, it could be that I don't have to feel a certain discomfort. I'm using the word "discomfort," but it could be insecurity, vulnerability, nervousness, fear. And we're going to have stories and rationalizations and explanations that guide this behavior.
Waking up supports growing up
That's why the other pillar of waking up also matters here. The more we can see these stories, the more we can, for example, sit in meditation and start to disidentify with thought. We can recognize: oh, this is the image in the mind that I have of myself. But if I am observing this "I," could I possibly be this "I"? Now that core central character of the story, the one that feels at threat or is struggling or having a hard time or trying to figure this out, becomes something I am observing.
Then the narrative is easier to navigate. It's easier to make different choices, easier to feel more deeply, to listen more deeply, because the feeling and the understanding and the behavior aren't coming from identification with a story. The story is still appearing. The mind is still creating this image and narrative. But now there's a space. And in that space, there will also be glimpses into our psychology, where we can see: oh, actually, what is supporting this narrative is that I am afraid, or I feel extremely vulnerable.
Feeling beneath anger
As we are able to feel more deeply what we really feel, we discover there are layers. Behind anger, there's going to be something beneath it. It's very rare for anger to be pure, and when it is, it's usually very short and fast. When it's a recurrent, habitual thing, anger is a mechanism to help us function when we're afraid, or to protect from pain by numbing it. That's where we can go deeper and start feeling. If there's pain fueling anger, as I feel the pain, the anger dissipates. And as I feel the pain, things start to shift.
Transmutation through feeling
There's a process that has been described as transmutation, where our emotional body, our deepest energies of feeling and emotion, start to shift in ways so profound that it's mind-blowing. We really had no idea that something horrible and scary and painful could become so beautiful and loving. But it happens through the heart, through feeling. It's an embodying of the process of waking up. These two pillars are very much working together, and it's really one process, but it's important to see them as complementary and distinct.
Let me know if anything resonates or if you have any questions.
As you were speaking, I realized it was more than just conflict. It was bigger: speaking up in any situation, even in this one here.
Yes.
The goal isn't really to act on the feelings. It's just to recognize them and how that is the engine of emotions and thoughts.
A direct relationship, not just recognition
Yes, and also to have a direct relationship. You say "recognize," and one thing about that word is that it invokes a more detached kind of knowing or labeling: "Oh, this is the feeling." But what I'm pointing to is a full, direct, raw relationship, where I am completely swimming in the feeling. It's going to be grief, sadness, joy, excitement. It's often really strange because it's so unfamiliar, and sometimes hard to name. It's often uncomfortable because it's spacious and unformed. There will be a mental process trying to make it something known. For example, love can be made into pain. Excitement can be turned into anxious worry. Open, loving vulnerability can be turned into shame and embarrassment.
Why do we do that?
Good question. There are many reasons. One of them is that we cannot exist in the way we normally are simultaneously with these feelings. The "I" that we believed ourselves to be cannot swim in those depths. And yet it's what we long for.
I guess it's the ocean of feelings versus the waves of emotions that we're caught up in.
Exactly. A teacher you might have heard of, Eckhart Tolle, calls this the pain body. I would say he's describing and pointing to exactly this mental-emotional loop that we identify with. It creates a localized, centralized, knowable sense of self.
It's like we're not seeing the bigger picture.
You're not seeing things as they are.