Here is a simple ritual you can use to release negative energy from your personal relationships: Gather some large office binder clips or clothespins. Assign a relationship to each and clip them to your clothing one at a time. Think about where on your body each of these relationships attach. Take a few moments to notice how the clips distract and inhibit your own movement (leave them on all day if you need more time.). Then remove the clips one by one, smudging each and stating aloud why you are removing it. Then smudge yourself.

I did this ritual, and then the following teaching emerged:

The Women’s Collective:  It is important to look at what kind of relationships are in your life, how you are expending your energy. There will always be those who are not willing or able to do their own work. They find you magnetic, because you are open and empathetic. They mistake this for an invitation. It’s up to you to decide who comes in the front door and makes themself at home. It is easy to feel that letting them in is a form of compassion. Meeting them at the door is a form of compassion, but if your home is filled with the energy of the work of others, you will have no space to do your own work.

I know this physically: when someone is living in my house and taking up negative space, I get distracted and off-track from my own needs and directives and growth. 

Exactly. It is no different if the person’s presence is actually physical or “just” emotional. Your center is your Home. There is only room for one Being there and that is you. You have spent a lifetime accommodating those who have no business inhabiting your home. Their work is to inhabit their own home, so you are doing them no favors by allowing them to avoid their home. And you are doing yourself no favors by letting them crowd you out of your own energy space.

What is the difference between this behavior and compassion?

Letting them crowd your energy space is a form of co-dependency––they feel they need you to function in a certain way, and you feel guilty if you don’t do this. True compassion sees the other person’s feelings and needs but gently encourages them to live in their own center. Each one must exist within their own center. That is where this connection is available. Not just for teaching and learning, but for connection to the cosmos. 

This is the connection you re-made with your ritual. You came back to yourself as your center. This is the only place you can really exist, the only place where your energy is both concentrated and expanded. This is the journey of your spirit walking the Earth. It cannot be burdened by the past-present-future of others––then your own energy will be heavy and disturbed. You will not be able to do the work which you came here to do: to be a clear spring and generator of Life Force, a magnifier of Love Energy. 

You know this. You can feel it right now. And that is the feeling you want to be cultivating. It’s not that other people aren’t important. It’s that true alignment requires each one to inhabit their own energy center.

I’m thinking of how I feel when doing yin yoga in a group. We are each creating a clear channel on our own mat, in whatever way works for our body and our situation, but the group and the room (and by extension the Everything) is being enriched by the energy that each of us is moving. 

This is a good example. Consider this happening when multiplied by billions of people on the planet every minute of every day. How you live makes a difference. It is time for more people to move in this direction. The Singing Revolution is also a good example. Each voice is adding to a whole that is bigger than the whole, and also affecting those who witness it later. The Love Echo Effect.

Beautiful.

Beautiful and needed.