The best boundary is to develop the capacity to maintain the awareness of being an emotionally separate person while relating to somebody who is very important to us and is going to affect us.
There are physical boundaries and emotional/psychological boundaries. Physical boundaries are fairly cut and dry. They clearly distinguish me from you, and you from me. I can never "get inside of you" and experience what it is like to be you from the inside out. I can't physically merge with you to the point that my own self disappears.
Further, it is obvious when you violate my physical boundary, and it is obvious when I violate yours. If you do something to my body without my consent - or with my active dissent - you are violating my physical boundary. And, obviously, vice-versa.
So, a physical boundary isn't necessarily something we do, it is something that simply is. I have my body, and my physical boundary is where my body ends. If my body-boundary is at risk of being violated, I might physically fight you off of me, which would be a case of me actively protecting my physical boundary. I am not setting a boundary, but merely attempting to preserve one.
All of this holds true for psychological boundaries, too.
I have my psychological sense of self, and you have your psychological sense of self. Notice that I don't have your sense of self, and you don't have mine. Again, there is a clear divide between you and me.
Only, things tend to get murky here.
In a variety of ways, I might attempt to betray my psychological boundary and to violate yours.
For instance, I might act as though my emotional and psychological well-being is in your hands. I might give disproportionate significance to the things that you say and do. I might make us both believe that you are responsible for my state of mind. I might make you out to be responsible for my feelings. I might act as if you have control over my life and my world. I might use you to make me feel ok. I might make you the basis for my existence.
When I behave in those ways, I am attempting to transgress (move beyond) my own psychological boundary and violate (break into) yours. I want to be able to locate my psychological, emotional self inside of yours.
On some level, you are likely to feel violated. You are likely to feel that you are holding something that doesn't belong to you, that isn't yours. If you are the sort of person who likes to feel responsible for others, you might enjoy my psychological boundary-breakage, but that only means that you, too, are violating your own psychological boundaries (by pretending to be responsible for me).
The thing about all of this psychological boundary transgression/breakage is that, at the end of the day, it is imaginary. It is a game of pretend. I only pretend to project my life and well-being into you.
Just like I can't actually get to the other side of your physical boundary and live from inside your skin, I can't actually get to the other side of your psychological boundary and locate my sense of self inside of yours.
I might claim that my well-being is your responsibility, I can even delude us both into believing it, but it is still delusion. At the end of the day, like it or not (and many of us don't), my feelings are my feelings. My state of mind is my state of mind. My psychological well-being is my psychological well-being.
This is why Bruce writes that the best boundary is to maintain awareness of being an emotionally separate person. Many of us tend to lose that awareness. Losing the awareness that we are emotionally separate doesn't mean that we actually cease to be emotionally separate. It just means that we delude ourselves into believing that we are no longer emotionally separate.
We then behave in ways that are suggestive of emotional fusion. You turn away from me, I feel bad. You give me a compliment, I feel good. You're happy, I'm happy. I am acting as though my emotional life is a product of yours, but that doesn't mean that it fundamentally is.
Let's look at the other side
What does it look like to manifest as an emotionally separate person?
When I maintain active and ongoing awareness that I am emotionally separate from you, I am not going to make you the location of my emotional well-being. This means that you can live your life without being constantly vigilant of stepping on eggshells. You get to have your stuff, all of it, and I won't attach myself to it as though it were also my stuff.
In a paradox of sorts, this means that I can actually risk getting more close to you emotionally - and you'll likely feel safer letting me in. You can leave, you can say something mean, you can hurt me, but, because I am not making you responsible for my state of mind, all of those things no longer threaten to destroy my emotional or psychic self.
In the above quotation, Bruce includes "relating to somebody who is very important to us and who is going to affect us." The recognition of the reality of emotional separateness doesn't mean that we are emotionally isolated, emotionally impenetrable, psychologically unreachable.
We are significantly impacted and moved by the people who are closest to us. The distinction is that we don't pretend to give ourselves away to the person who moves us. We allow ourselves to be moved, and we recognize that we are choosing to participate in this mutual movement, and that the one who moves over there is different - physically, emotionally, and psychologically - from the one who moves here.
I'll close with similar words from the Dzogchen teacher James Low:
"You are the basis for my existence." This is ludicrous, laughable. How could you be the basis of my existence? That is an idea of fusion. When you put food in your mouth, my stomach doesn't get filled.
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