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How can we draw clear boundaries with people in our lives if everything we’re seeing and experiencing comes via the gift of Thought? Today we explore the difference between circumstances and experiences and how this awareness can inform us and help us to understand when a healthy boundary might be appropriate.

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Transcript of episode

Hello, explorers, and welcome to Q&A Episode 16 of Unbroken podcast. I’m your host, Alexandra Amor. 

And today I wanted to examine the question: 

If our reality is created by thought, then how do we deal with boundaries?

So this really has to do with relationships and situations in our life where we’re dealing with and interacting with other human beings. And I’m specifically thinking about personal, intimate relationships, partnerships, that kind of thing.

When I first started exploring this understanding, I noticed a lot of confusion and I still do occasionally from people. When we start to understand that our life is an inside out experience and that thought is being created through us, coming through us from the formless into the form. And the idea that what we experience is based on that thinking rather than based on the actual events that are going on outside ourselves.

The concise way to say that is we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances.

Occasionally I see people exploring this, and then we get to the place where we realize that or we start to question how does that apply to intimate relationships? So, for example, if someone is feeling like they’re in a relationship that is unhealthy, that is whatever shade of that it that it could be, like, manipulative, or they’re dealing with a narcissist, or someone who’s maybe abusive, that kind of thing, verbally or otherwise.

The question becomes, if I’m creating that experience via thought, or, in other words, if I’m having that experience, and my understanding of it is always through thought, then how do I draw boundaries? And I see people ask, should they even draw boundaries in a situation like that? And it’s such a valid question. And it’s so important.

When I was in Portland a couple of months ago with Michael Neal and Barbara Patterson, Michael drew this diagram on the whiteboard at the front of the room. And he wasn’t talking about relationships at all. But I came away realizing this was the perfect way to explain this conundrum that people get into when they’re exploring this understanding.

The diagram looked like this:

His point was that in our lives, there are always these two different things going on. There’s the circumstance that’s happening. And I’ll give some examples in a second. And then there’s the experience that we have of that circumstance. The experience is our thinking, that’s where Thought comes into play.

Let’s say you had a circumstance where you stubbed your toe.

That’s just a hard fact. You ran into the foot of the couch, and stubbed your toe. That’s the circumstance.

The experience, then, is how you experience that circumstance, via your thinking. So let’s say you’re in a rush to get to work, you might have a lot of thinking about how you’re going to be late. And this is going to screw up your day. And maybe you’re going to miss an important meeting, and all that kind of stuff, you’re going to have thinking of course about how painful it is.

Or maybe you’re someone who’s kind of hard on yourself, you might have a lot of thinking about how that stubbed toe is just a sign of your clumsiness, or the fact that you weren’t paying attention, that kind of thing.

You can see that all that thinking is variable. It depends on the person who’s encountering the circumstance. But the circumstance stays the same. You’ve stubbed your toe, that’s the fact.

Now we can drill into intimate relationships and dealing with difficult people.

It’s exactly the same situation. So the circumstance could be that you’re having an argument with your spouse, or perhaps you feel like maybe your spouse is being verbally abusive, that could be the circumstance. And then your experience of that is going to be all the thinking that you have that’s related to that circumstance.

I had Phil Goddard on the show a few weeks ago, and he talked about the different the number of people that are in a relationship, it’s not just two. There’s my experience of me, there’s the other person’s experience of them. There’s the other person’s experience of me, there’s my experience of them. It goes on and on. It’s like one of those halls of mirrors.

When we encounter a difficult person, or a difficult situation, naturally, I mean, it just the way it works, we are going to have our own thinking about that situation. That’s the experience. That’s the thought that’s going through us. Additionally, what’s going on is the circumstance. And this is the place where we can draw boundaries.

I think it’s really important to see this with clarity.

Because I think what happens sometimes is that people hear that we’re living our lives from the inside out, we live in the world of our thinking, not in the world of our circumstances. And what they hear from that is that whatever’s happening in our lives, whatever’s going on, it’s because or what’s the right way to put it, it’s, we’re experiencing it through thought, which is absolutely true. And what happens, then, I think, is that there’s some confusion about the idea that circumstances can actually happen.

So in other words, if you’re in a relationship with somebody who is perhaps being verbally abusive, there is your thought based experience of that. But there’s also the circumstance that has occurred. If you’re in a relationship with somebody who does things like maybe locks you out of the house, when they get mad, or something like that, that’s a circumstance that is very real. And, yes, you’re going to have your own thinking about it. And that thinking might be, could be anything from feeling sorry for yourself to feeling angry, what all all of those feelings on the spectrum and you might encounter any of them.

It’s okay to see that there is a circumstance happening that is not appropriate, that is damaging to you, or to the people around you.

I wanted to bring this up, because it was so clear to me that this was the answer. When people have questions about relationships, and get a bit confused about how thought plays a role in our relationships with other people. So I hope that brings a little bit of clarity, if you’ve ever had that question about where to draw boundaries with people and how that looks when we are experiencing life via thought.

Both those things are true and like people say, these days, two things can be true at the same time. You can be living in the world of your thinking, which we all are in a given relationship and the circumstances of the relationship, maybe are not healthy.

So yeah, I just wanted to bring that up. It’s been on my mind for a little while. I hope that’s clear. If not, please let me know. Please send me your question. You can do that at AlexandraAmor.com/question.

Thank you for listening. I hope you found that helpful. And I look forward to talking to you again next week. Bye.

Featured image photo by Randy Fath on Unsplash