There are some fascinating answers from Gwyneth’s regular contributors (which I’ll leave for you to peruse) including the very valid theory that if you are your authentic Self, you don’t need any boundaries. It struck a chord with me this month as that’s exactly what has been coming up for me.
I have a colleague who is entirely firm (if not a little strident!) about people not needing psychic or spiritual protection if they are balanced. Certainly any stray negative energy would think twice before pussy-footing up to her ... but just how balanced and authentic do you have to be not to get boulversé every now and then? I know I still check for negative energies and cleanse my aura regularly and I need to do so. And I can still be knocked for six by something unexpected. At least I could before my visit to my homeopath today... Muah-ha-ha-haaa
I think that we can be as authentic as humanly possible and still have holes in our aura that even the most loving people will poke (in fact, it’s their job to do so). Having learnt on a long and sometimes challenging road how to be prosperous and then how to be a teacher of prosperity consciousness, I certainly used to need boundaries around the question of money. For years I needed to avoid looking at images that would make me feel unhappy with my own situation. I kept away from events where I might feel less than prosperous and I didn’t dare look at celebrity news in case I felt resentful.
If you look carefully at most of the nay-sayers who have complained about the British royal wedding on 29th April, you can see that it's mostly issues about 'the taxpayer footing the bill for people who think they're important to have fun.' It's all projection around prosperity.
As I grew more abundant, I found that I didn’t need as many of these boundaries. I didn’t necessarily have that much more money than before; I just felt better about my situation. As soon as I stopped feeling such lack of worth in myself, other people’s physical or spoken expressions of wealth did not poke at me in the same way. Now I’ve written a whole novel (The Miracle Man – O Books) about the multi-billion-dollar celebrity world and the place of a Christ-figure within it. I’m quite happy with the concept of people (including me) having oodles and oodles of dosh and doing whatever they like with it.
But once I was over the prosperity issue, the hole-in-the aura just started turning up elsewhere. I created a situation where my professional writing work was criticized as somehow being ‘wrong.’ The critic was someone I loved and admired and that one took a while to heal too.
However, it alerted me to the fact that either holes in the aura can move or that it’s just one hole — the self-worth hole — manifesting in myriad ways to heal us at all levels. And I looked back over my life to previous situations where I’d been knocked flying to see whether that theory held water.
What I found will sound so simple to you but it blew my socks off: I realised that I had set up every single painful situation myself. Sometimes it was done at a deep subconscious level and at other times more obviously. Here are some examples.
I didn’t take any notice when my first husband told me he had had a malignant mole on his head; it never occurred to me that it would ever come back.
I forgot to query the fact that the bibliography section of one of my books wasn’t in the proof copy — I assumed that the publisher didn’t need it proofed.
I never for one moment assumed that the famous married older man who kept asking me out to dinner when I worked in TV actually fancied me; I thought he was just lonely in a new city until the day he made his move and I offended him deeply with my surprise.
I told myself I was being selfish when I didn’t want to turn my beautiful chapel and workshop room into a bedroom for an extra person who needed a place to stay for a couple of nights. I got away very lightly on that one which was a very good sign of recovery. But the error was still pointed out to me with an auric poke — albeit very gently.
What’s more, each of these taught me a valuable lesson once I was over the self-immolation and blame. They taught me that it was time to step up and own up and quit blaming anyone else.
In essence it all comes down to self-worth. If you value you, then others — and the Universe — will reflect that value back to you. And if you have self-worth, you don’t need protection or boundaries. You are inviolable.
There will almost certainly be areas where you value yourself more and areas where you value yourself less. But we can use the negative experiences to plot the ‘value map’ in our respective auras. Take a look — you’ll soon see the patterns.
‘But what about Jesus?’ you may say. ‘Surely he had self-worth, and look what happened to him?’
Yes indeed. But I believe that Jesus chose to walk into the valley of the shadow of death to fulfil his destiny. Great souls can do that. The way to tell if someone has walked with head high and open heart into what appears to be a terrible situation is whether they are at peace with forgiving those who harm them. Jesus definitely chose; he had three opportunities to walk away and each time chose to stay.
‘No one can make you feel inferior without your consent,’ said Eleanor Roosevelt. I don’t think that Jesus felt inferior for one second. And you can only feel inferior when there is a lack of self worth.
Well, what a surprise — money issues are about worth too ... so if your issue is financial, then there’s a hole in your aura trying to tell you something about your worth. Where is it that you do not value yourself? Where is it that you think others are more important than you are? Where are you not following your soul’s deepest desire? It will show itself to you (again and again), never fear. That’s one of the unsung jobs of the angels — to poke us in our wounds until we finally notice that it’s us not them.
Father, forgive them. It’s true that they know not what they do. How can they? They just walked into the hole in your aura.
So whoever or whatever is poking you, whether it’s the Royal Wedding, Simon Cowell, Donald Trump, Barak Obama, Katie Price, talent shows, soap operas, banks, ‘fat cats,’ politicians ... bless them and let them go. It’s not them; it’s you.
The Hawaiian technique ho’oponopono has a big piece of the answer. When you can say ‘I love you, I’m sorry, please forgive me, thank you’ to the person poking at that hole, you are threading the needle for a beautiful and effective darn that will hold your worth together for the rest of your life.
