It was a delightful surprise to discover that when I make a boundary, I meet you.
I remember clearly the first time I made a boundary consciously. I was twenty-one years old and visiting with my parents. As a good girl, it had never occurred to me that I could say Stop! to my father or my mother. Like any child raised in a culture in which children never learn what it means to be Adult, or that it is possible to leave childhood behind through authentic adulthood initiation processes, I thought that I will always be the child of my parents. At twenty-one years old, I still believed my parents had decision power over my life. If someone could make a boundary, it was them towards my choices — not me towards their invasion. Even though it was annoying to me, I had not learned to use my anger consciously.
On a summer day that changed for me. A conversation with my parents turned into an argument, then suddenly I was faced with my father’s rage. His temper rising quickly he stood right in front of me, his nose an inch from mine, threatening me with his whole demeanour to accept his worldview as true. But I was not backing away this time.
I looked him straight in the eye and set a boundary with him for the first time in my life. The exact words I do not remember. Yet the meaning was crystal clear: “Stop! Do not come one inch closer! This is my personal space here and I do not permit you to enter my space and threaten me ever again! Your power games do not work with me anymore!”
Where did I all get this clarity and decisiveness from? How come it was possible for me to set a working boundary for the first time in my life with my parents?
The short answer is: Rage Club.
The longer answer is: Rage Club offers you a new relationship with your anger. In western modern cultures, you most probably were taught that anger is to be avoided because it is irrational, dangerous and childish. You learn to stop your inherent life forces called feelings and try to be normal and adapt to a culture that kills life on planet earth at the fastest rate possible because the culture values money and profit more than everything else.
Yet your power is not lost. It is dormant and waiting to fuel you. Rage Club is the space in which you can wake up your anger again to take back your own authority, your own voice, your own ability to choose. You learn to say ‘No!’ and ‘Yes!’ and ‘Stop!’. You practise navigating your relating spaces in a nourishing way by using your anger. Conscious anger is the energy and information you need to tackle the problems you are faced with. With anger you can use your willpower effectively to say what you want. A boundary is saying what you want and what you do not want.
Through a boundary your Being gains substance because you become visible with who you are and what matters to you.
Startled by my unusual clarity, my father stopped speaking. His face fell and I could see fear in his eyes. Later he told me that in this moment he had realised that I was not his girl anymore but a grown-up woman. Through my boundary he was able to come to meet reality and me in who I really was. All this time before he had seen me as his child. Something many parents do just by habit to think of their offspring as children for the rest of their lives. This habit is a manifestation of thoughtware. Thoughtware is what you think with. It shapes the way you interact with the world. Like parents interacting with their children through the identity of being a parent because that’s what they think they are and forever will be. You take on thoughtware from the culture you are born and raised in. We live in a culture in which there is no initiation into adulthood so it is not surprising that people see their children as children for the rest of their lifes.
This is only one example of the human ability to live in self-fabricated storyworlds. We human beings are storymakers. You can make up any story about anything and find proof for it. This way you have something to rely upon in the midst of the unpredictabilities of living. We are seemingly safe in storyworlds. It might be safe yet you cannot radically relate from one being to another in storyworlds. You only get to relate to your story instead of the magnificent being in front of you. Stories exist in time and relating happens in the now. Radical relating is an ongoing conscious act of creating together the space, the connection, the intimacy that you want.
A boundary is a way out of storyworlds. Not only did my boundary crush our illusions, it opened a new way of relating.
A boundary is a 5-body decision that comes with precise clarity and is not negotiable. Your physical, intellectual, emotional, energetic and archetypal body are aligned to the same course. A boundary includes all four feelings (anger, sadness, fear and joy). You communicate your distinct perception of the energetic effect that the action or inaction caused by another person has on you and what you feel about these actions. You say what you are not available for, what stops, what you are not willing to sacrifice anymore. At the same time, you declare how the world is for you now, how you want to meet, what you want, what you stand for and who you are. No explanations.
In the archetypal domain a boundary works when there is coherence in your stand. your word and feelings match with your awareness, your will and the meaning you source which is bigger than words. You take responsibility for your capacity and that causes integrity. Your inner cognition and resources align with your actions. In other words: you walk your talk.
What if a boundary is not a No but rather a huge Yes for a relating that nourishes the both of you really? Consider this: you make a boundary to continue relating with someone. If you would not make this boundary now it would mean relating through a show, a mask, a storyworld that “maybe someday…”.
You want to meet the other person truly as they are otherwise you would not be reading this article.
I offer you the experiment to complete an incomplete communication. Making a real boundary directly with the person concerned is scary if you have not claimed your conscious anger back. So the very first step is to find a Rage Club online or offline here and sign up.
Then make a list of 10 “open threads” in your life. This can be situations with a neighbour where you did not say what you actually wanted to say, a friend who you feel angry with, your boss loading more and more work onto you, moments where you wanted to say No but could not and even moments in which you wanted to have said Yes but were too shy to be so excited.
Like most healing processes, you cannot do this one alone. Like Werner Erhard said “Healing happens in public”. It doesn’t have to be a big public, one person is enough or go to the nearest Possibility Team. Pick one person from your list and ask the person across from you to represent that person on your list. You now say what needs to be said. Use all your four feelings. Start with “I feel angry because…”. The listener can repeat back what they heard you say. Loud feelings are allowed. Speak until you can sense the communication being received and complete. Then switch so that your practice partner can also have a go. Done regularly this prepares you to be confident and clear to set boundaries and say what you want as you go about your daily life.
Another experiment you can try this week (and you do not have to ever stop) is establishing a heart to heart connection. No matter who you meet — the woman in the bakery, your friends in a cafe, your partner, the person sitting next to you on the train,… — look at them with your eyes. Breathe. And now look at them with your heart. Let yourself feel your own heart beating, sense your own feeling being and from there connect to their heart. This is not about feeling their feelings and getting confused. This is about greeting people in a different way. You meet them as they are from who you are — right now, right here.
Written by Sophia Wegele
