Walls in Auras, GUEST POST by Anabela
October 17th, 2007 by Rose RosetreeWhat are walls, really?
I’ve built many walls, that is, a complete shutdown towards a person or situation. A lot of it has to do with empathy — mainly, I think, I take on intellectual shape-shifting and emotional oneness with others and then am appalled, especially when I yearn for greater closeness with people and they seem just fine without me.
Then I feel disillusioned that people don’t process emotions or even have the same minimal ethical standards as
All these experiences have contributed to walls. I have trouble, really, balancing proper vulnerability and rational self-protection.
In the past, I thought I was protecting myself but I was really only creating my own island that no one would visit, and yet I longed for visitors. Or I would open myself at inappropriate times with inappropriate people…
Example: I would shut down and not express intimate parts of myself, as if suffering were a trophy. So I attracted cold and aloof people who actually were cold and aloof by nature, unlike me who is inwardly the opposite. So, of course, this set me up for more blows.
When I try to be a tough guy, does it work? No. No greater happiness comes, only more alienation and strengthening of the walls. These, in turn, attract more lamentable episodes increasing the pain that caused me to put up walls in the first place.
Please, I would love to hear about all your experiences and insights, as all these thoughts are quite new to me. Of course, I would never be able to discover these insights at all if it were not for Rose’s guidance… Surely, this life contract was scripted to have Rose or I’d have drowned.
Thanks for listening and good luck.
I read about ‘emotional’ walls and how they can be pulled down, for example in regression therapy the client may destroy them once he ’sees’ them, using a tool that matches the wall (concrete wall: machine destruction, rose wall: hedge scissors, and so on…). Apparently Rose also does removal of walls. I am glad I never had any, I simply kept away from people who annoyed me.
Karin, you are so funny! And you’re absolutely right that there are plenty of positive alternatives to putting up inner walls. That includes walking through them (via a door) to get away from people you don’t like.
Seriously, it is true that sometimes I use different techniques to facilitate removal of walls–or other kinds of astral debris that limit a person.
More important, I would like to comment about the “technique” you described, “using a tool that matches the wall, etc.”
I think I speak on behalf of many healing professionals when I say that it is no bargain to read about a technique in this fashion. It isn’t a technique but a concept.
Given the professional training I’ve received, I can imagine a situation where one would use this concept, in context, so that it might be helpful. (Other techniques I have learned or developed would be far more effective, for me, but that’s just for me.)
Something that happens a lot on the Web is that a well-intentioned new healer–not you, Karin but many out there whose eagerness to learn surpasses common sense–some hypothetical guy going through that stage–he will read something like “using a tool that matches the wall,” understand the concept, and then think he now owns a really valuable skill. Not true, alas.
So here’s a message to all who would be smart consumers, whether as healers or as clients. When you hear someone describe a concept, it is very important not to equate that with mastering a technique.
Maybe you would benefit from learning how to be more detached.
Some people say that thoughts and emotions cannot be separated, but this is not true.
Detachment, for me, is a valuable skill and a purely intellectual process where I briefly put my emotions aside and examine a situation before I decide how to proceed. For example, if I determine that a person enjoys being a victim, then I am not going to become emotionally involved with that person.
We all (empaths and non-empaths alike) have to be picky about the people with whom we become emotionally close, otherwise we will end up giving away our energy to the point that we do not have enough left for ourselves.
Think of your actions in terms of the energetic consequences. Deeper perception a great tool for doing this. We all have a level of detachment that is healthy for us. I am naturally very detached, and this is a healthy way for me to be, but you will have to find your own appropriate level of detachment.
I just want to throw in my two cents here, for what it’s worth.
I feel the same way that Rose does - and have to admit that I react in two ways… One, reading about something and understanding it (the concept) is not the same as mastering it. Second, understanding a concept is not the same as implementing it. I could give you some books on anesthesia and surgical techniques, for example, but I doubt that you would now think, “Hey, I’m as good as an anesthesiologist and a surgeon, let me do some self-healing” and then go ahead and sniff some nitrous oxide and take a scalpel to yourself. I certainly would hope you wouldn’t hang a shingle advertising these services, and if you did, I’m sure you’d be slapped with a lawsuit.
I’m sorry if this sounds harsh or elitist, but I can’t stand the cavalier attitude that people have in the spiritual community when it comes to energy and people’s consciousness. Just because we can’t see energy doesn’t make it less real or less potent, yet anyone and everyone and his neighbor and brother thinks they can create healing, and that more than bothers me. It disturbs me.
I also think people take very good concepts, e.g., Louise Hay, and take them too far - rather than using them as a wonderful adjunct, they go crazy with them. E.g., “Since illness is a metaphor, I will just imagine that I am well and my cancer will just naturally shrink and go away. I don’t need to see any doctors or get chemotherapy. The law of attraction and my own thoughts will create the miracle that is supposed to manifest. If it’s meant to be, it will be.” I respect a person’s free will, but isn’t the advent of modern medicine a miracle itself?
As for detachment, I would take what Ryan said one step further. For me, detachment is a wonderful concept - and it does work very well for non-empaths in the way that Ryan described. But I have discovered via personal communication with other empaths I know that it doesn’t work very effectively for them. They may be able to avoid people at work or keep them at a distance or tell themselves, “I will not let this person bother me,” but then they go home and obsess about the person there or wonder what they aren’t doing or feel inadequate or whatever.
This is, again, where I think energy is very real. Since empaths literally join their consciousness with others, join up their energy with others, they can’t separate themsleves - detach themselves - in the way that non-empaths can. Just because their eyes can’t see that this is happening doesn’t make it less real. It would be like me asking you to separate out the molecules of water from one another. You just can’t do it, and if you’re a molecular empath, you’re going even deeper than two molecules of water sticking together. Your very molecules are joining up with and intercalating with the molecules of the other person - even influencing their molecules, that person’s very self, at the finest and deepest levels.
What do I think when spiritual people play with approaches like the one you suggested, Karin? It is doing the equivalent of saying that they can get a nutritious and well-balanced meal from McDonald’s. I love a good McDonald’s meal every once in a while - nothing against McDonald’s - but I don’t depend on it to sustain me for every meal.
If you want good quality spiritual healing, you can’t just go to Barnes & Noble, pick up a nice spiritual book from the self-help section, “think happy thoughts” (a term my friends like to use), and be healed. You can create a better mood for an hour, but you won’t have deep healing.
But, as I said, I respect people’s free will, so feel free to try it.
I’ve heard comments about finding “greater detachment” all my life and they aren’t very helpful - one of the reasons why walls went up in the first place. They aren’t just a question of boundaries of whom to be close to or not: walls go up when there is an inability to communicate the heaviness (due to picking up other’s stuff in addition to your own) and feeling isolated as a result of.
I agree with Anita - all energy dynamics among people are intimately experienced. For unskilled empaths are no black-and-white “this is where I begin” and “this is where others begin” categorizations.
Unskilled empathy is when other people’s stuff somehow creeps into your consciousness and experience without your conscious knowing, and that happens whether you are emotionally attached to that person or not. Rose has plenty of techniques to turn empathy “off,” which would otherwise be daily hell.
So I’m getting better at turning my empathy “OFF.” What about the pain that remains?
You can see if you have a cord of attachment. You can work with people like Rose and Bill Bauman, one of Rose’s colleagues - people who are very experienced with spiritual healing. If you are so inclined, you can also find a good psychiatrist, preferably one who is also an empath and can hold a space for you during sessions (incidentally, Bill Bauman does have a PhD in psychology and used to run a community mental health center, but he no longer does personal sessions with clients).
I choose to take strategic physical distance from people around whom I routinely feel drained, tired, overwhelmed, or misunderstood. If that is not possible, then I at least try to make sure I’m not having to spend time alone with that person. Physical distance is key!
Once I’ve had some time alone to collect my thoughts, I ask myself the following questions:
1) What sort of behavior or treatment would I prefer, if I could make it so?
2) Is it possible for me to give myself (or find someone else to give me) what I wish the other was giving me: eg, space, attentive listening, respect, honesty, etc?
3) Is this present pattern triggering sad and hopeless feelings from my childhood?
4) Am I willing to change my thoughts, understanding, or behavior so that the situation is more likely to shift - not that I have to know how to change, and not that I ever have to admit this to anyone; simply that I am open to noticing if there’s a more effective way to be/think/feel, for my own sanity?
Often, after step 3, I realize that the current person is reminding me of hard issues from my childhood - and the anger / despair I feel is more about the helplessness I felt then. Which helps remind me that I can change now, which softens the charge against the current person.
After step 4, I usually become compassionate to the person who was irritating me, and sometimes their annoying behavior ceases. Other times, the situation changes so that we are not bumping against each other, or we find some common ground that overrides competitiveness or mean-spirited-ness. And other times, I go thru the compassion thing but the other person continues to be a pest, so I just stay away (self protection is essential) and wait for another door to open.
I would never opt to turn off my perception “off”, though.