“The walls you put up to protect yourself, are the same walls that are blocking your blessings”. Stephen S.

You can’t walk in fear of getting hurt, and expect to attract the highest possible love, the most amazing career, or the ultimate life experiences. Like everyone, I do have fears. And to protect myself, I created a belief system- as long as I stick to my strong beliefs, and I allow people with certain stringent qualifications into my sphere, I will ensure I am safe from harmful relationships. So I built an energetic wall, a wall of high standards and high morality. If you meet those super high standards, you get to be in my life. So, I eliminated a ton of toxic people. Guess what. The safe, non-toxic ones in my life, still manage to disappoint me, hurt me, prove to be fake friends or feeble lovers.

I can put up as many walls as I want, but I still block the good as well as the bad from my life. In doing so, I am restricting my ability to love and be loved because I walk in fear. If I say to someone, sorry I cannot love you because you are of the wrong political party, or you are the wrong religion, or you aren’t as educated as I am, I am placing conditions under which I can love, and placing conditions means I am participating in very conditional love.  Each condition you have is a brick in your protective wall. The more conditions, the harder it is to meet people who are your energetic equal.

The real me truly believes in unconditional love, I have written about that many times, therefore I must drop my conditions. That’s not easy. We all claim to want unconditional love, yet each one of us has at least a 100 conditions. Go ahead and list all your conditions on a sheet of paper. It will be very good for your eyes and your heart to get in touch with all your conditions. It is an eye-opening experience.

I believe in free, unconditional, pure love, yet I just realized that I have a long list of conditions I have not spoken out loud because I would not admit them to myself. With every breakup I thought I learned something- what I want in a man and what I don’t want. And after my last breakup, I added a whole bunch of conditions I never had before. I think it is normal for our list of conditions to adjust after every relationship. This is how we learn what works and what doesn’t work for us, and how we maintain focus on people we want instead of the ones we don’t want. I have been keeping such a list for years so that I can be aware of my wants.

All humans have their own requirements- people we are naturally attracted to, qualities and personality traits that work well with ours. We also have a long list of negatives, red flags and habits that absolutely do not work for us. Having such a list helps me maintain healthy boundaries, and maintain awareness of what I am doing, when I am dating people who really aren’t good for me.

But, when that list grows to unreasonable expectations, with each new addition, you are adding another brick on that wall around your heart. At a certain point we have to figure out which bricks are sensible, and which serve no purpose at all. I am one of those people who senses energy very well. I read other people like an open book, and when people’s walls are up, I know to leave them alone. There is no sense in crossing someone’s boundaries. That would be a very unhealthy and disrespectful thing to do to someone.

As a meditation practice, I often check on my own energies from time to time. I recently discovered a massive block, about two feet in front of me. I only notice it when I meditate, but it is huge. I have literally been pushing away people for the last couple of years.

I thought of it as cleaning house. Once I decided to clean my life and remove as many toxic people as possible, I started to filter. I like you, I don’t like you. You can come in, you cannot come in. You are on probation until further notice.

Did my house get any cleaner?  It may seem that way, but now that I look at this massive wall of bricks around my heart, I see that I am still sweeping the mess, and maybe the mess is getting bigger. When people see a wall, they do one of two things. Obviously, a wall is a massive obstacle, and sensible people walk around it. It really is the more logical thing to do, not to chisel the wall away, but to keep on moving. Healthy people will not see a walled up person and start climbing. Healthy people respect boundaries, so they leave you alone.

So who are the people who try to chisel your wall away? The ones who do not respect boundaries. The ones who resolve to rescue you from your prison. The ones who stubbornly want what they can’t have, and in an effort to obtain what the other won’t give them, they bring in the heavy equipment to bulldoze through your fortification. Do you really want those in your life? Well, that is exactly who snuck past my guards this year.

So how do we break down our own wall, and let our guard down? You don’t necessarily have to take it down brick by brick, it may be easier to create a new belief system. Remember, each belief is just a brick in your wall. Go through your list of requirements, and change your beliefs about them. For example, I do not like dating people who are older than me. I habitually date younger men because I find them uncomplicated, they have more modern attitudes toward women, they are unspoiled and unsoiled by divorce and free from children.

I truly enjoy relationships with younger men so much, that I have come to absolutely fume any time someone older asks me out. And my belief system about older men could definitely use a tune-up.  I doubt that I will ever be attracted to older men, because for me physical attraction is important, but at the very least I have to stop blocking and pushing away people who don’t meet my lofty standards. I don’t have to date them, I just have to find them acceptable, see the good in them.

If you meditate, clearing energetic blocks may be a bit easier. When I get centered, I tune into my own body and scan my own energies. I might see an old panic attack I had on a stupid subject. I use knowingness to clear the old energy, by logically knowing that the situation and my feelings about it are now irrelevant. Of what value is it to me to still stop breathing every time I recall that difficult client I had two years ago who threatened to sue me? Is my feeling about a person who is no longer in my life of any value to me now? Thinking about the validity of that past panic attack, and the silliness about my belief, makes the energy disappear. If knowingness is not your meditation tactic,  you might move the energy with your hand, and remove it from your body by wiping it away. Energy can be moved physically, mentally, or using any of the greater senses you may be in touch with while you meditate.

If clearing energy is not your thing, you can simply meditate on freedom. What does freedom to love whoever and whatever without fear feel like to you? This is a challenging energy to get into or recall, because ever since we started dating, we have been protecting ourselves from freedom, and free relationships. The thought of freedom might scare you. Rather than recall the energy of freedom as it pertains to past lovers, think of your love for your favorite pet. You had a dog and you loved it very much. What does that love feel like to you? Even if the dog has passed, your love for it feels just as good. Sit there in that energy, and simply feel love for your dog for as long as you can. Now think what it would feel like to have another dog? Could you feel love for that new dog too? Of course you can. Having another dog does not change in any way how you feel about your first dog. Your heart chakra stays just as open when you think of the two animals, then three, then all the animals in the world. Love is truly limitless, so why do we place limits upon it? Now think of that ex who hurt you. Do you feel the energy around your heart tighten up? Your throat or your solar plexus might twist into a knot. Free love, vs. conditional love feel very different inside your body.

Living without barriers or a brick wall feels freeing, so meditate on your own sense of liberation. If you don’t meditate, and you can’t sense energy, please see a therapist. Use whatever method works for you, but the goal is not to continue to make a case for your wall, or argue for your blockages.

We can’t walk in fear and expect wonderful things to happen. We cannot build a protective wall around us, then expect the most dashing lover to break down those walls. If he did, he would be overstepping our boundaries- and that would qualify him as a psycho 🙂 So, my next goal is to tear down my own walls, open my mind to new potentially hurtful experiences, and allow myself to get hurt again. I might be a little wiser than I was last year, so hopefully the lessons won’t be so harsh.

But, unless I take a chance on me, what good could possibly happen?

S