A few days ago, during the webinar “Being a Woman,” a question was asked: How does selfishness differ from self-love?
Svetlana Dobrovolskaya and I shared our understanding of this.
And now I invite you to look at this question through the eyes of Steve Rother.
The Core Life Lesson: Definition
Expressing Individuality Through Boundaries
This core life lesson is currently especially popular among women. Most people working on it are potential healers with a huge reserve of emotional empathy.
They connect to the emotions, thought patterns, and energy of other people so easily and spontaneously that they often don’t even realize that the energy they are feeling is not their energy.
Because of this, they inevitably have difficulties establishing proper boundaries for themselves. Possessing weak boundaries, they often attract manipulators into their lives.
What usually happens is this: when these souls leave or are removed from one set of “difficult” relationships without having mastered the quality of Definition, they unconsciously attract other, equally unbearable relationships into their field, which are meant to help them finally learn this lesson.
Most often, the catalyst in these people’s lives appears in childhood. If it carries a negative influence, it will threaten their boundaries so thoroughly and consistently that the individuals cannot help but understand that their main task is precisely to create strong boundaries for themselves.
Learn to define and protect personal boundaries.
Because their boundaries are weak or non-existent, the definition of their “Self” for these souls will also be weak or non-existent. If the catalyst turns out to be positive, it pushes the person working with this lesson from a very early age towards establishing very clear boundaries.
The key to mastering this very popular but difficult life lesson is learning to put yourself first. This is not so easy, since our society teaches us from childhood that being selfish is bad.
But in reality, no matter how hard society tries to convince us otherwise, putting yourself first in all areas of life is the most important thing. Treating yourself any differently means directing energy incorrectly.
“Putting yourself first” means placing yourself before your children, your marriage or sexual partner, your parents, siblings, friends, and work colleagues.
Does this call shock you?
But understand this: there is a huge difference between someone who puts themselves at the center and someone who puts themselves first. Yes, both place themselves first in the flow of energy, but the similarity ends there.
The intention of the one who puts themselves first is to fill their own Self first — so that they have even more to give to others. To achieve Mastery in the lesson of Definition, you must define your boundaries and get used to putting yourself first in all situations.
There is another aspect to this quality. Why do so many people engaged in this lesson have such difficulty defining their own boundaries? Because they have no concept of where their energy field ends and another’s field begins.
The paradox is that this extreme sensitivity is precisely what makes these people such powerful healers. If they can learn to define their energetic boundaries, they will discover that they can use that same sensitivity intentionally — to connect to the emotional energy fields of other people and facilitate healing.
Those who have mastered the life lesson of Definition become very strong healers. And the most powerful word they can learn to use is the word “no.”
From the book “Spiritual Psychology” by Steve Rother