Boundaries

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Understanding boundaries will precipitate the dimension of Love. Part of understanding this dimension of Essence is seeing that the action of Essence is love. One realizes that it is Love that ultimately dissolves ego boundaries. Love is not bound by separateness; it is what penetrates it. Love is also what gives the individual the security and the trust that makes it possible for him to cease identifying with ego activity. When there is Love then there is no need for desire and no need for hope. One can relax, let go and even forget the whole issue.

Love is what the personality needs in order to feel secure and safe. It is the absence of Love that brings the need for defense, resistance, restraint, hope, desire and so on. But when Love is present one can afford to just be, and not engage in the feverishness of ego activity. – The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of Personality into Being, An Object Relations Approach, Ch. 33

Experiencing this ego state gives the final understanding of what ego boundaries truly are. Here one knows that a boundary is not an objective and ontologically real phenomenon, but a reaction, a contraction. In this experience, typically the skin is a little hot, a little prickly, a little dry. One feels somewhat frustrated, but also empty. One feels like an empty shell, and the shell is nothing but a very thin layer of a frustrating kind of prickliness. This state of boundaries is nothing but the sense of surface tension itself, a slight contraction all over the skin. It is ego boundaries in the state of pure contraction, the presence of negative merging affect all around one’s body. The dissolution of this boundary can bring about a state of emptiness, a deep level of Space. One feels as if he is going to fall on his face, and fall forever. One feels so open, so spacious, that there is nothing between one and the world. As these boundaries dissolve one frequently feels as if he is going to lose his breath, because there is no control on the breathing function. One feels directly in touch with everything, as if one’s chest contains the whole universe. One feels as if he extends forever, for then, one is the spacious, boundless void. It is interesting that this level of ego boundaries is related to the state of negative merging. Although one feels distinctly separate, one still feels somehow connected to his mother, the primary object of ego. This indicates that the development of ego boundaries is closely related to the negative experience in the symbiotic stage. – A. H. Almaas, The Pearl Beyond Price: Integration of Personality into Being, An Object Relations Approach, Ch. 34

When the personality is gone, you feel alone, because the boundaries—your ideas and memories—are your father and mother. The separateness is your memories of your mother and father, your relationship with them and all your past experiences which you’re bringing into the present.

Your past experience separates you from the now. That separation from the now is a boundary around you like an eggshell. To let the boundaries go means accepting aloneness. When aloneness is accepted, there are no boundaries. What you perceive then is just lack of boundaries. This will be experienced as a newness, a rebirth. – A. H. Almaas, Diamond Heart Book Two: The Freedom to Be, Ch. 10

Synonyms:
separateness
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