Energetic Boundaries, Avatars, and Attraction

First off, a quick reminder that the Walking the Mystic’s Path Teleseminar begins this weekend. If you are at all pulled to it, please read through the description and email me with any questions (email is on the description page.) Or, if you aren’t pulled to the word ‘mystic’, read through how I use this word in an old post Are You a Mystic?

Now to the topic at hand – energetic boundaries and avatars. First, a quick definition of how I use these terms:

Energetic boundaries are the subtle body emanations we use to filter the external energies that we come into contact with, allowing only those of benefit or use to us to enter our own energy field.

Energetic avatars are a kind of boundary we consciously emanate to fulfill a certain role in our life, and/or to attract the people/places/experiences we want to have.

Both of these differ from auras or energy fields, although both could be said to be a kind of aura or field. The difference (as I use the terms) is that auras and energy fields are what unconsciously emanates from our chakras and energy/subtle body. They are based on the totality of the vibrations operating in each of our chakras. Boundaries and avatars are emanations we consciously strive to create, to serve a specific purpose.

We of course aren’t always conscious of everything we are emanating – this is exactly the point of the spiritual journey. As we move through our path, we become more and more conscious of our depths, and as we do so, we are more conscious of what we are taking in, and of what we are emanating. So to a very large extent, our ability to create and maintain healthy boundaries and avatars is dependent upon our level of self-awareness. The more conscious we are of our demons, our shadows, our triggers – and all of the emotional and mental patterns that are generated by them – the less of an unconscious hold they have on us. As we our liberated, our vibration and all of our energy fields shift naturally.

For this reason, I am always somewhat reluctant to talk about energetic boundaries. We are conditioned to think in terms of all of our problems and causes of suffering as being ‘out there’ in the world, and so focusing on energy boundaries often plays into this. We think ‘this person is sending me negative energy’ or ‘that person is an energy vampire’ or ‘this place drains me’, and then we expend a lot of energy trying to avoid or fend off those people or places – energy that we could be utilizing to pursue goals or awakening.

The truth is that we can never 100% control the ‘outside’ world, or our circumstances. We can, however, live from a place ‘inside’ ourselves that cannot be touched by any of this. The best boundary is actually knowing how to find and maintain our center. Then no matter what happens to us, or what energies come at us, we do not suffer. We cannot be triggered into an emotional place or ‘story’ that makes us unhappy. It is all just the tides of our world, and we greet it with equanimity.

That being said, in today’s world, it’s not an easy task to find and maintain our center, and so developing some boundary techniques can be very helpful. For women especially, I find that a phase (at the very least) of consciously focusing on generating boundaries can be life-changing. Women in particular are conditioned to take on the energies of others. We are conditioned to take responsibility for others’ emotions, and for the social dynamics of any group we are in. This can be a tremendous gift once we are conscious of it and can work with it strategically at work or in our homes. But for most of us, this conditioning operates under the surface, resulting in us taking on energies that are not ours from our partners, spouses, friends, children, and extended family. We create co-dependencies or ‘contracts’ where it is our job to process others’ emotions, in exchange for some perceived role others are playing for us (often not an even exchange.) And if the emotions or energies we are processing are anger, fear, depression or anything heavy to carry, it can completely eclipse any sense we have of our center, or even contribute to illness.

When it comes to ongoing relationships in which we do this, we are really dealing with more than poor boundaries – we are also dealing with energy lines or cords. That’s another topic for another time, but if you would like to do some energy line and clearing work, please check out either my DailyOm course or my free e-book, as both include an easy exercise for this, and you can do it outside of the context of the rest of the course or book. However, consciously working to generate boundaries for a few weeks or months will most certainly help you get a sense of what you might be taking on, and to filter enough out that you can begin to find your center again. Usually, after this amount of time you will develop a habit of creating this boundary, and will no longer need to sit and go through the steps (although it’s always good to do so.)

Boundary Exercise

There are lots of ways to generate an energetic boundary, but like all subtle body work, it is mostly about intent. In today’s world, the most useful everyday boundary is one that draws mostly upon our root (first) and navel (third) chakras. Our root chakra connects us to the earth and our physicality, and our navel chakra  represents our personal power and will (among other things). To combine these two, along with the intention to filter out that which is not useful or beneficial to us, is the fastest and most effective boundary to develop. So just to break it down, here are the steps:

– Focus on your tailbone – your root chakra physical focal point – and visualize a vibrant red light shining there. Imagine this red light is fueled by earth energy coming up through your feet into your root.

– Visualize this red light moving upward, to just under your navel (although the navel chakra color is often considered to be yellow, for this exercise you will stick with the red light from your root.) Take a moment to feel yourself calm and centered here in your navel, in your power. From your navel, imagine this red light emanating outward to create a protective, luminous red ball of light all around you.

– State an affirmation along the lines of “This boundary filters out all that does not benefit me. May I only take in those energies that are beneficial or useful to me. May all other energies dissolve upon coming into contact with this boundary, and return to the universal energy from which they came.”

You do not need to spend a lot of time on this. Try it at the end of any meditation practice you have, before you leave the house in the morning, and any time during the day in which you think you need boundaries. Of course, if you feel it is not working, take a look at the situations in which you are feeling the most compromised, and assess what patterns are being triggered in you. Boundaries do not change what others direct at you, but they can help you change your response.

Avatars

Ok, on to avatars, which as I said, are a type of boundary. We create avatars to project a certain vibration into a role we play in our life, and to define interactions we have as part of that role. Mommy Mystic is my online avatar. It is more than a website name and picture, although that is part of the mechanism of the avatar. It is an energetic emanation that represents the ‘teaching’ and ‘energy worker’ side of me. It is not the totality of me, or even the totality of what I teach and do within the energy work sphere. It is the vibration related to the work I do here, through this blog, and its related courses and writings.

As such it also serves as a protection of sorts (something I feel everyone working online needs) – anyone interacting with this blog is interacting with the energy of ‘Mommy Mystic’, not my own subtle body. They are of course related, but in a controlled way. It is so helpful to have avatars for exactly this reason – we do not need to bare our entire subtle body to everyone we interact with in every situation. Our roles play a purpose, and working through them is not inauthentic – it is simply a bringing forth the relevant parts of ourselves energetically for each sphere of our life. We may have avatars for work, family, or other hobby or social groups.

It can be very clarifying just to think about what avatars you would like to work from in your life. To do this, simply list the different ‘roles’ you play, and then list the words that represent the energies you most want to emanate as part of that avatar. For example, for Mommy Mystic, I of course want to emanate from a place of compassion and healing. But I also want to emanate from a place of confidence in what I say and do. And I want to create a shield, so that on the (rare) occasions when someone wishes to attack something I have written, it does not reach me personally. It is buffered by my avatar.

To practice generating your avatar, you simply do the boundary exercise above and then focus on cultivating within your awareness the energies you have chosen for that avatar. Feel them in your being, and see them emanating just outside your boundary as an energy field. Then imagine you are linking them with anything you create as that avatar. After a time, you will not need to do this as an exercise anymore, it will simply happen naturally.

Attraction

When we talk about ‘attracting’ that which we want into our lives, from an energetic perspective we are talking about boundaries and avatars. Of course at any given moment what we emanate influences what we attract, and so again self-awareness is essential. We can say we want a healthy relationship, but until we have surfaced and let go of the parts of us that believe we don’t deserve it, we may continue to attract from that place. The same can be said for any other ‘goal’ we have in our life. The purpose of vision boards, affirmations, and other tools of this type is to shift our awareness into a place from which we can truly attract that which we want (of course knowing what we want is a topic unto itself, but we can tackle that another time!)

When it comes to working with avatars as a form of attraction, we are trying to put into our avatar the energies and qualities we wish to attract into our life. Most of us do this to some extent with our sexual energy – we develop avatars of flirtation that may be very different from our regular energy. This is one of the ways humans channel their sexual energy (and in many cases waste it!) – into their flirtation avatars. Any kind of charisma or presence goes far beyond physical appearance or personality. It’s an energetic attraction field that someone has learned to project (whether consciously or not.)

Working with an attraction avatar is very similar to developing any avatar – simply list the energies or qualities you wish to attract, generate them in your own awareness, and picture them forming a field just outside your regular boundary. Of course you can do this with any kind of goal – abundance, joy, creativity, insight. If you can find it within yourself, and emanate it outward, you can learn to work with it as a force of attraction in your life.

The deeper work, of course, is to ask yourself what it is you think you will have when you do attract what you want, that you don’t already have? If we seek to attract in the ‘outside’ world as a way of distracting ourselves from what we really need, or if we think anything we ‘get’ will be the magical ticket to fulfillment, we will be trapped for a long time. If we can use boundaries, avatars, and attraction as ‘tools’ for truly bringing more light and love into our lives, without becoming absolutely dependent upon the ‘results’, they can help us open amazing doorways.

And if you really want to explore energetic boundaries in depth, try Cyndi Dale’s Energetic Boundaries: How to Stay Protected and Connected in Work, Love, and Life.

So please share your own thoughts – what are your boundary needs? Avatars? Attraction fields? Namaste-