Barriers

Consider any person and the emotional barriers they have around them. I'm picturing concentric circles. The closest is a high stone wall, almost a tower. This is their innermost protected self (their ego's space). But around that are several, much smaller walls or even fences. Each layer is purposefully harder to get inside of, or penetrate. Strangers mill around outside the furthest fence, but it usually doesn't take much to get inside one level. To get inside the innermost is reserved for very close life-long friends and mates. There's a fundamental challenge here of course in that everyone milling around in your layer of walls each have their own walls. When you're both in the equivalent circles of each other, things are fine. But there's a risk of heartache and pain if the levels don't match up. If Jane lets John into her innermost level, but John doesn't allow her into his, there will be suffering eventually in that relationship. There's also only so much space available at that innermost level. Too many people there, they compete for your heart strings, and the ego can't keep everything under control.

Now picture a person without all those walls. Call him Wall-Less Guy. He's got just a single fence out there, and many people can be held inside. Once inside, they can migrate and orbit as they need to - sometimes very close (they've let him into their inner wall) and sometimes further out. But it's fluid within that space, and there are no additional walls to climb to get closer. There's a challenge here as well. Maybe several. First, there's still a finite amount of "close" space (there's only so much time in a day and days in a week). Second, the others out there still have their walls. So even though they have the opportunity to move closer, Wall-Less Guy may still need to climb their walls or allow opportunity for the walls of others to open to him. Finally, and this one gets tricky, is the perception of walls that aren't there. Everyone is used to life where you have to navigate around, between, and over each other's walls. There's an implicit assumption that everyone has walls. Now you meet Wall-Less Guy and cannot figure him out. He is often told that he's "tough to read" and nobody can figure what he's really thinking. But that's only because you think he's got sturdy walls in place, keeping you blocked out from the sacred inner courtyard. You're already there - stop looking for walls.

It can get more interesting when two Wall-Less Guys meet. The outer fence is easily breached, and then you're there. You can share freely, move in and out of each other's lives with ease - close when you need to be, but at arm's length when you don't need to feed off each other's energy. Imagine how grand life would be if everyone could get past that Ego that builds the Walls and just experience each other without the Barriers.

"As you get closer to your true self, you begin to sense that you are part of everything. Boundaries soften and disappear." -- Deepak Chopra