Sacred Space: Boundaries as an Act of Love – Rev. Aimee Daniels
DESCRIPTION
What if setting boundaries wasn’t a rejection, but a spiritual affirmation of love — for yourself and for others? Through our spiritual practice, we can learn to say a loving “yes” or a compassionate “no”. Join us as we explore the sacred role boundaries play in our well-being, relationships, and spiritual growth and reclaim boundaries as a vital expression of self-worth, truth and connection.
SUMMARY
The key points from the transcript are:
- Rev. Aimee discusses the importance of setting boundaries and honoring one’s own needs, rather than sacrificing oneself to help others. She shares a story to illustrate this idea.
- She explains that healthy boundaries are not about separating oneself from others, but rather cultivating mutual respect and clearer communication in relationships.
- Rev. Aimee outlines three spiritual qualities or energies to draw upon when setting boundaries: divine power, divine love, and divine wisdom. She leads a meditation to connect with these energies.
- The overall message is about the importance of self-care, self-acceptance, and honoring one’s own path, while also maintaining compassion and forgiveness towards others.
TRANSCRIPTION
This transcription was auto-generated, please excuse typos, errors and omissions.
Rev. Aimee Daniels (00:01):
That was really beautiful. That song makes me all a little… I don’t know. It makes it like… it’s Mother’s Day and my mom’s not here. You know what I’m talking about. So Ben, could you pull up my first slide? So today is Mother’s Day and we celebrate our moms. This is my mom on her 80th birthday. It was a super happy weekend. All her siblings were still alive and they were all here. And I just look at her face. I’m like, wow, look how happy she is. Because just like all of us, not every moment of my mom’s life was happy. And so I love that picture and we’re celebrating everybody’s mom today. So I just invite you in your own heart to just think of your mom and think of your mom, whether she’s alive or she’s passed, my mom passed in 2011, and just hold them in your heart.
(01:07):
I think we can have complicated relationships with our parents. We can see what they didn’t do, and sometimes that overshadows what they did do. And on boundaries are actually an act of mothering because they cultivate and protect. And my mom didn’t know what boundaries were. Of course, she was born in 1923, so the world was very different. Think about how differently people lived. You’d come home from work and that’d be the end of the day and your phone wouldn’t ring and no one expected you to do anything and you weren’t available all the time. And my mom had this super tough German dad and they weren’t allowed to even have their emotions. So if you aren’t allowed to have your emotions, you’re not going to have any idea what your boundaries are. And if we think about Earnest Holmes, he wrote in the time period that my mother was born who was the founder of Centers for Spiritual Living.
(02:07):
And he didn’t write about boundaries. Why? Because people didn’t talk about ’em. But he did talk about being yourself. And I think for us to really be ourselves, we need to know what our boundaries are. And I think it’s so funny that I got this topic because this is the talk I need to hear too, because just being very truthful, this is something I am always working on because I’m a pleaser, I’m a conflict avoider, and it’s really easy for me to say yes when I don’t want to say yes or to be way down the road with something and be honestly like a little resentful. Why am I doing this? And so I need this talk too. So let’s dive in.
(02:56):
So once there was a woman who lived on the top of the hill and there was a light at the top of the hill. And that light was not just for herself, it was for everyone. It was to help travelers see their way. And she loved tending the light because the light gave her joy. And at first people were very grateful that she was tending the light. But over time, people became more demanding, turn the lamp brighter, put it closer to my house, keep it lit. Even when the storms come, don’t you know how much we need this light? And what happened over time is she felt guilty. So she worked even harder, and she put all of her oil into the lamp and eventually all her oil was gone and the lamp turned dark. And when the lamp turned dark, she wept. And then she heard this voice in her head that said, the light is divine, but the oil is yours to steward.
(04:01):
And so she realized that the lamp was meant to shine from her own fullness. It wasn’t to shine from her sacrifice. So she started to do things differently. She tended the lamp when she was rested and she refilled her own oil before giving light to others. And she trusted that people had their own light that they were carrying around. They had their own little lantern. And as she honored herself, the light shined even brighter and it spread out even farther. And that’s really a great example of boundaries, isn’t it? You might relate to the story because we’re responsible for our own oil and our own light. Nobody else can do that for you. You might have been taught that taking care of yourself is selfish. Anybody grow up with that or that love means sacrifice. And so as we go through and talk about this topic today, I just really want to invite you to notice the beliefs that are coming up for you about boundaries.
(05:09):
And the reading that Gordon did for us is from a y Lavan. I don’t know if anyone’s familiar with her, but she was first popular around the time I got divorced from my prior husband. And I read every single book she wrote because she talked about how she was finding herself again, and she would go lock herself in the bathtub by herself for hours so that she could get reconnected with herself. That was how she did it. And so we’re all in relationships. Some of them feel healthy to us, some of them don’t feel healthy to us, but our boundaries are the key to things feeling healthy for us. And we need to recognize as Gordon read to us that what we need doesn’t come from the outside. So often when we’re overgiving because we’re trying to please someone so they love us. And this is normal.
(06:07):
But you want to begin to notice when you’re really doing it at your own expense. And when we’re centered in our spirit, then we’re clear about what’s ours to do and what’s not ours to do. And I know for myself, I often don’t know that in the moment because when I’m around other people, I’m picking up everybody’s energy and I have to go away by myself and meditate or be alone for me to be clear. I’m like, what is mine? Or am I taking on something that I shouldn’t? So first we’re going to talk a little bit about boundaries and how to recognize when we need to set ’em. And then we’re going to talk about some spiritual, I’ve been struggling to decide what name I’m using for this. I said principles in my slide deck, but really they’re really qualities of spirit and energy that we can call in to help us set our boundaries.
(07:05):
So my slides are not advancing here. Bear with me here while I get my act together. So Reverend Mark talked about belonging last Sunday, and Brene Brown teaches us the true belonging doesn’t require you to change who you are. It requires you to be who you are, which is beautiful and daring to set boundaries is about having the courage to love ourselves even when we risk disappointing others. And she says, clear is kind, unclear is unkind. So as we think about boundaries, we want to think about boundaries actually as bridges to belonging. We want to think about them not as separating us, but as if I can show up and I can tell you what I need just in a kind of neutral, not demanding crazy space, we can get in our relationship, right? Then I feel more connected to you. And if you can do the same with me, it cultivates belonging.
(08:06):
And so Henry Cloud says, boundaries are where you end. And another begins. They protect your responsibility for your own feelings, your own actions and your own choices. And so healthy boundaries help you take responsibility for yourself. They protect your spirit, they honor your emotions, your values, your thoughts, your choices, and they help you communicate clearly and they also empower you through mutual respect like I’m sharing with you what I want so that then you can feel free to share with me what you want. And how do we know when our boundaries, not when we don’t have healthy boundaries? Here’s a clue. Do you feel like a sense, I don’t know a better way to say this, other than energetic creep where you feel like the other person’s energies is in your lane or maybe they’re in your business.
(09:08):
That’s a clue. It could also be someone guilting you into doing something that you really don’t want to do. Or it could also be that you’re in resentment. I know that’s a good one for me. If I notice I’m starting to feel resentful, that’s a clear clue. I’m not setting my own boundaries. And Dr. Cloud talks about the difference between being responsible for someone else and responsible to them. And so when we’re responsible for someone else, then we’re taking responsibility for the consequences of their action or we’re trying to fix things for them. And I’m not saying this is criticism. I did it for a really long time with someone in my family, and it’s hard for me not to take responsibility for someone else’s feelings because I’m a pleaser. But recognizing, no, they’re responsible for their choices. I’m responsible to them if I love them.
(10:12):
So responsible too is the other thing. I’m responsible to them if I love them, meaning to show up with love and caring, but not taking responsibility for their own life and their own path and were the consequences of things. And Dr. Cloud also tells a story about a couple that came to him about their son, and he said they came and they said, we’re having trouble with our son. And he said, well, why is your son not here? And he said, well, our son thinks it’s our problem. And Dr. Cloud said, I think he’s probably right because the story was that their son wasn’t going to school, their son wasn’t working, their son was doing drugs in their home, but there were no consequences. And so every time something went wrong, they’d bail ’em out, they’d fix ’em or whatever. He said, you are the problem. You’re upset by the action, but you’re not doing anything about it. So that’s a good way for us to know. If I’m more concerned than you are concerned about what you’re doing, then that means I don’t have a boundary. So here’s just a little affirmation you can use for yourself if you want to remind yourself, I’m responsible for myself, I honor others by letting them be responsible for themselves. You want to say it with me? I’m responsible for myself. I honor others by letting them be responsible for themselves. We all need that reminder.
(11:54):
So here’s a visual, and this is just to help us understand when we’re not practicing good boundaries. So this is a woman and she set out to water her lawn. You see that in the picture? She’s set out to water her lawn, but she’s watering her neighbor’s lawn. And guess what? Her lawn’s dying. And so that’s a great example just to hold it in your head. Am I watering my own lawn? Because a healthy boundary is there to help you understand what you need to take care of, and it keeps out what doesn’t belong to you. And it also has a gate, right? You decide what you let in or don’t let in when you have a boundary. So that’s just a good visual to hold in mind.
(12:49):
So map con says that we treat boundaries. They’re sort of like a karate chop. When we want to set a boundary, we often are going like, no, right, we can do that. We can be kind of aggressive. No, I’m not doing that right? But he says that boundaries are how I teach myself how I deserve to be treated. And boundaries are kindness to self and forgiveness to others. I like the second part, forgiveness to others because sometimes people in our life are at a place where they’re not ready maybe to show up the way we want them to. And so we need to focus on being kind to ourself and then having compassion. And he also says, you can love people without giving them unlimited access to your life. Sometimes we need a little space in a relationship if we’re trying to set a boundary or to have a new experience.
(13:55):
And so let’s talk about it. How do we start to do this? One of the met cons, first tips is stop speaking harshly to yourself. Anyone speak harshly to themselves? That voice in your head, that’s critical. We all have it. I’m humming. Am I humming? Sorry about that. I’m humming. But we all have that voice that speaks harshly to ourself, and we have to quiet that voice because when we’re in that voice, we’re really in the triggered part of our brain. We’re not in our spirit. And the second thing is to honor your energy, your capacity and timing. When someone makes a request of you, if you’re like me, you might be like, oh yes, of course I can help. But sometimes we’re just not in a place where we have the energy to do it or the capacity or it’s not the right time.
(14:50):
I have a recent examples. I was asked in my work to consider working with this company and what they expected in terms of how much time you’d give and how quickly you’d be available. There was just no way that that would work with my life. And that I realized right away and told her. But I had another situation with a friend who’s going through a little bit of a hard time, and they wanted me to do something at a time that I was traveling for work. And so I’m like, well, if I leave my meeting early and then I drive back, I’m going to be like three hours away from Chicago. Well, maybe I can make it back in time. And then I realized I’m like, what am I doing? But I also had this realization that in that particular relationship, I’m super sensitive to the fact that the person’s sensitive.
(15:39):
And I know if I had just said, Hey, you know what? I really can’t do this right now. They would’ve been okay with it, but me, I’m the one who couldn’t say it. So these are the things we want to begin to notice. Do I have the energy for this? Do I have the capacity? Do I have the time? And when someone asks you, it’s perfectly okay to tell them I need to think about it because if you’re like me, I don’t know how I feel in the moment. I got to go sit with it. And that’s okay. You need to give yourself time to sit with your spirit and also be gentle with yourself about any needs that you have that aren’t being met. We all have them. We have them in relationships, we have them everywhere. But be gentle with yourself about that.
(16:29):
If you are feeling sad that you have an unmet need, that’s a great opportunity to just get reconnected to your spirit and to say, what is this need telling me? What does my spirit want to say to me? And then when we begin to connect to our spirit, we start to get more clear about our yes and no when we listen within. And you might say to yourself like, wow, I’m a nice person. I need to do this. If I don’t do this, I’m not nice. But Brene Brown and her work said the most compassionate people were the most boundaried. And Dr. Cloud reminds us that boundaries are not getting someone else to change. They’re about making it clear what works for you. And so if you think about even a boundary is spiritual, because everything is consciousness. We teach that, right? Everything is consciousness. So when we set a boundary, spirit responds to that. I say yes to more of this, and I say no to that, but we want our energy focused on our yes, not on our not this. And I guess one other thing I want to say is sometimes someone might respond poorly to you setting a boundary. Has anyone ever had that happen?
(17:55):
And it’s so hard, isn’t it? It’s so uncomfortable. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do it, right? And Don Miguel Ruiz says, if someone has a bad response, don’t take it personally. If you think if you’re disrupting a pattern that you’ve had for a long time, I’ll just own it. I had one of my nephews live with me for five years, and I would jump in and save things. If I was worried about how he was doing, I would jump in and I would try to fix everything for him because I was terrified what would happen if I didn’t? I mean, I’m just being real here. And some of my colleagues that I work with are like, yeah, you have to stop doing that. You have to treat him like he’s competent. And I had to go talk with my sister about it and say, we both do this, so we have to stop.
(18:59):
We’re not actually helping him. But I was in his business and it was hard at first when I asked him to move out, I felt pretty terrible about that. I’m going to be honest, I felt pretty bad about it. But you know what? He went on and he met his wife and he’s doing great. So what was that in me that thought I knew better? So we have to trust that spirit is taking care of the other person, just like spirit is taking care of us. So let’s talk a little bit about some spiritual, I called it spiritual practices, but really these are spiritual qualities or energies. And this is based on the philosophy.
(19:52):
Master Rezi is the person who actually taught this. If anyone knows who he is, I sometimes play around with some tarot cards. And I get this guy’s face all the time, and I’m like, I better go understand what he teaches. He taught the philosophy. And so the first energy, I’m going to call it an energy. I like that word for that is divine power. So divine power, God is all there is. There’s a power and a presence and we’re part of it. But when we’re connected to divine power, then we have the inner strength to stand in truth, in our own truth, without force, without forcing anything and without being fearful. And we can also be in the energy of right action, not letting our ego drive the car, but just really surrendering to show me what right action looks like. Here, show me how I would be acting if I trusted that.
(20:53):
And when we trust spirit, then we’re confident. We’re accepting responsibility for our own life and using doing in our practice, we’re affirming what we’re calling in. And it also gives us clarity. When we take the time to connect either through prayer or meditation, we usually come away more clear. So this is the presence of the divine expressing through you. And in new thought, we teach that divine power is the individualized expression of spirit acting through you, acting through your consciousness. And as we think about boundaries, it’s to affirm your own value and take action in alignment with that, to use universal law, universal spiritual principle to practice that.
(21:50):
And we can affirm this to ourselves in our prayer and our meditation by saying something like, I choose to honor my path with strength and grace. It’s really drawing on this power to honor our path. So I’m going to ask you to say it along with me. Okay? I choose to honor my path with strength and grace. The second energy is divine love, unconditional love. We say that in our mission and vision, but unconditional spirit is always loving you. We say that love is the self givingness of spirit and that recognizes the sacredness in everyone, and that includes you. So when we’re in that energy of love, it can soften our defensiveness. If you think about when our boundaries are violated, aren’t we defensive? I am. I don’t know about anybody else. I’m defensive. And then I can draw on that to set my boundaries and not guilt the other person or blame the other person. If I’m upset, that’s on me. It’s not on them.
(23:10):
And it’s not self-sacrificing love. It’s more like I care deeply about this and this is what I need to say to be true to myself. And I love this quote by master Rezi is first name is just way too hard for me to say. So we’re just going to call him master Rezi. True love does not enslave or abandon. It empowers and freeze all beings to walk their sacred path on their own path. It might be not be the same as yours. Some people are on our path our whole life. Some people are on our path through just a season of our life. Some people are on our path for a particular reason. Maybe they’re the person who brings us a lesson in our life that we really need to learn. But when we are focused on the divine love, we know that we’re always okay.
(24:05):
So I want you to affirm with me this affirmation here. I honor the light in you even as I honor the light in me. Let’s just do it again. I honor the light in you even as I honor the light in me. Beautiful. And the last energy, the last divine energy is divine wisdom. This is that still small voice that you hear when you get quiet, and it allows you to discern the most loving, best course of action. That’s what that voice does. It’s your truth. It’s going to tell you this is enough. I’ve had that voice say to me, you know what? This relationship you’re in, it’s complete just out of the blue. You’re sitting there. No, you’re complete. This contract’s done. So we want to take the time to cultivate this voice, and it also helps us to be compassionate in our interactions with others, just a higher wisdom.
(25:06):
Show me the greatest good for all concerned in this situation. Just give me the wisdom. I think Ernest Holmes would say like divine wisdom is the perfect intelligence of the universe That’s expressing through your consciousness. That’s what it is. Divine wisdom expressing through you, and it’s allowing you to make decisions that align with what your spirit is calling you for. And just like all the other spiritual qualities, it’s not shouting, it’s not ego, it’s quiet and it’s quiet clarity that comes when you pause and ask, what’s mine to do or not do in this moment?
(25:50):
So our affirmation on this one is, let me just say this one thing. Your wisdom guides you to distinguish between your fear-based reactions and your soul guided truth. So often our reaction is fear or anger or something our ego wants because we kind of got to manage our human self, don’t we? Because this part of your brain, the part that gets triggered, works way faster than your conscious mind. So the reason we practice is to clear the space so that we can connect to our conscious mind and our spirit. So here’s the affirmation on this one. This is, you can use whatever words you want for what you call God, but this is, I used spirit of wisdom revealed to me the highest good in this situation, and I’m going to have us say it together in a minute. But what I want to say too is so often we pray and we meditate, and then we go out in our day and we forget everything we know, right?
(26:57):
We do. And so like little affirmations like this are just taking a minute to just say, you know what? I need to take a minute to center right now. I can tell I’m in the wrong place. If I’m making up a story in my head about what someone else did or their intentions or anything like that, then I’m in the wrong place to really act with my spirits. Let’s say this together. You ready? Spirit of wisdom reveal to me the highest good in this situation. So we’re going to move now into a little practice together of these three spiritual energies or qualities. And Ben has come back up here with me. And what I want you to do is I want you to close your eyes and I want you to center in your body and just allow your body to relax. Let’s take a few deep breaths together, just breathing in and breathing out.
(28:03):
Breathing in and breathing out. Just bring your awareness to your heart center. And if you want, you can put your hands on your heart. If that feels good to you. Just imagine a small flame burning in the middle of your heart and feel the energy and the warmth of this flame. Your spirit. It’s your spirit. And in this flame, I want you to imagine that on the left side, part of the flame is blue. This is the blue flame of divine power. It’s strong and it has clarity in it. And then on the right side of your heart, I want you imagine the yellow flame of wisdom.
(29:26):
It radiates like the sun. It’s warm, it’s steady, it’s illuminating your path, and it’s giving you insight, clarity, and understanding. And in the center of these flames between the blue flame and the yellow flame, I want you to imagine a pink flame, which is the flame of divine love. It pulses with unconditional kindness, with forgiveness, with compassion. And just allow this love to soften and expand throughout your entire being. Power, wisdom, love. You can call upon these energies at any time. And as we sit for one more moment, just invite you to ask your spirit, what would spirit like you to do to nurture it? What should you say yes to? What do you want to say yes to? There’s no should in God. What is calling you to your yes. And what is spirit asking you to say no to? With love and clarity,
(31:34):
Just breathing into this, ask your spirit. One last question. Where might setting a boundary deepen my love for myself or another other? Where might I deepen my love for myself and my other through setting a boundary? And now I want you to imagine the three aspects of the flame, the blue, the gold, and the pink, that they are just moving together in your life as one flame and just feel this flame burning bright within you and spreading out into the world, into your life. And in this moment, I just know that divine power, divine wisdom, divine love, are all that there is, that they are part of this magnificent creative possibility and presence of spirit, the one life that we are all part of, that this energy of love, this energy of wisdom, this energy of power is the truth of each of us. And I know that as we turn within, we are drawn to the clarity of spirit about our lives.
(33:10):
And so I know for each one of us, that clarity is emerging and that what emerges from a boundary being set a divine yes, is energy, joy, peace, love, happiness, deeper relationship, deeper connection. This is what I say yes to for all of us. And I just know that spirit supports us in saying yes to this sacred space, to our own sacred voice, and to a higher expression of life in in, through us. This is what I’m saying yes to on all of our behalf. I’m grateful for this. I know this prayer is fulfilled and with so much gratitude, I simply say, and so it is. Amen.