If you learn to tell the difference between the content of your life and the discovery of that content, you enter into new, enriching worlds.

Becoming aware of what is happening as it happens is the heart of the spiritual journey.

Many of us know this. And yet we can live more immersed in content than we want to be.

Within the mechanics of normal communication, it is easy to speak from my usual range of content and for

you to speak from yours. These patterns of content often contain much of what we learned to attach to long ago, forged in painful experiences or troublesome family dynamics.

On the other side, we can have profound, intimate, life-altering experiences. Moments when time slows and we are both the actor and the director of a beautiful movie that hits all the right notes. Life becomes imbued with meaning when we truly find each other beyond content.

In these moments, we transcend the form. We are no longer restricted by what is unfolding; we are able to discover what is happening as if it’s something new, fresh, alive and deeply intelligent. We suddenly feel a sense of spontaneity, as if we are moving through life with flexibility and creativity, really being ourselves.

• • •

We can always wake up to the newness of whatever content we are living in. Right now, you might be doing something mundane, well within the realm of the known. What if you look closer?

And yet, isn’t it also true that you are doing something fresh and new?

This moment is completely unique and happening for the first time; it will never happen again. Does this give you a bit more of a sense of discovery?

If you look really closely as you read this, could you open a little more to how little you know?

Do you know the limits of how much you could transform right now? Do you know every sensation buzzing in your experience and all the miraculous things your body is doing to sustain you in the wonder of being alive? Do you know what might happen next? What about the sounds around you, the texture of the air you breathe?

I now notice the subtle anticipation that my wife may walk in any minute; I can hear her in the garden. What a gift, what a complete unknown. This strange, loving, sometimes cranky, civil, wild being. The mystery that she is, somehow staying closely connected with whatever I am, in this place we call home, in this time that will soon become part of what we call history.

I could keep discovering us for an eternity when I wake up to the unbound depth of what is here inside the content.

How little of this I will see if I am immersed, as if everything were already known and predictable.

The truth is, I likely see little of what is possible, even when I willingly try to open up and become aware of the content.

It is still so worth the attempt to taste a little more of what life is right now. Even a little glimpse of the infinite, the groundless love of existence, changes me forever.

As I point to the content of your experience and the potential to discover its complete newness and miraculous nature, are you a little less immersed in it?

• • •

Next Article

Discovering content becomes especially alive through human connection. It is one of the most common pieces of feedback I give the leaders and practitioners I work with: “Did you notice in your response that you were not discovering your experience; you were in the content?” In the next piece, I will take you inside a live dialogue, so you can see more of how this works in communication and how to sharpen it.

If you're interested in going deeper with me into the nature of boundaries in deeper connection, check out this course - https://www.transformationalconnection.com/offers/uRDBPmDa/checkout

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Navigating a Boundary Crossing in Real Time

I was leading a Transformational Connection group at a winter workshop, in a beautiful space, with snow falling outside and a fire crackling in the room. We were a few days in, and a deep collective presence was palpable: focused, intimate, transpersonal. Magical things were happening in and between people all around the circle. Then someone said something to me with force and judgment.

“Why are you doing nothing? Can’t you see what is happening? I’m seeing no leadership here, just negligence.”

Thesis

This piece explores why certain communications affect us so deeply. In essence, it examines what lies at the core of relational boundaries. You’re going to see how, in this situation, I was able to be present enough to sense some of what was happening; however, at this stage, I did not have the sight I have now.

Essentially, I did not yet have the capacity to bring the situation to new levels of awareness and embodiment. This includes staying clear and grounded in challenging situations and reducing the need for lengthy, emotionally charged repair conversations. Ultimately, this is about creating transformational boundaries.

“The heart is a secret garden, its flowers unseen until you open its gate.”

Hafiz, The Gift, trans. Daniel Ladinsky, 1999, p. 172

Unable to Act

Going back to this poignant moment, I received what was clearly a forceful, charged communication, and it had a definite impact. On the surface, I stayed calm; underneath, I was stunned. The communication hit me sideways and left me disoriented.

I could feel the impact clearly, but I could not see why it affected me so much. My first instinct was to stay above it, mindful, embodied, regulated. I could tell myself this was clearly more about the person communicating, since it was so charged. Likewise, I could try to use this inner pep talk and mindfully, non-reactively ride the charge.

Part of wanting to brush off a hard communication is a learned image: composure and presence are what a good leader embodies.

I actually do agree in large part with the ideal; a leader can keep growing in how they stay regulated and connected under pressure.

I also believe leaders are called to be real, more human, and more able to take ownership of their experience, especially when they feel compromised. In that moment, I had some composure, but I was also triggered into a survival response – my back tightened, my heart rate increased, and I was tense.

Things went further, just as I have watched them go for thousands of people facing difficult boundary negotiations over the last fifteen years. As the circle continued, whatever I did from there felt slightly off-key. I had lost the enriching flow and could not simply will my way back into it. The connection with the person who confronted me felt subtly fractured, distant.

Alongside the composed part of me was something far more primal: anger, defensiveness, and a readiness to fight. In that state, it was hard to tell what was truth and what was reaction.

This time, I decided not to act, as I did not have a move that seemed right. The group moved on, and so much opened up. In time, the reaction receded and the flow, for the most part, returned.

Alas, the rupture returned, not in the room where the conflict happened, but at three o’clock in the morning, when I wanted to be asleep.

As I lay there, my mind replaying the scene, I could feel a heightened restlessness: my kidneys subtly ached, and there was adrenaline in my system. I could bring some acceptance to it and take it as a chance to be with the deep layers within myself. Being more open and attuned than usual after a full day of practice made that easier.

Truth be told, I would much rather have been asleep than have such unfiltered access to the inner workings of my survival nervous system.

A New Way

What made this 3am inner wake-up worthwhile was a new approach I have been taking to conflict. For a few years now, I have been working to build what I call transformational boundaries into every part of my life. And the bottom line was that this time, I could not find the clarity I needed.

The Old Way

Some might ask: why not simply go into connection with this person? Isn’t that the practice you lead? Isn’t that what you teach? Of course, there was potential for reconnection by exploring what had happened in this moment of tension; I share the impact, and I explore with the other what is happening in them. If both sides are willing, it can be a meaningful process. I know that path very well. But what drew me this time was the question of boundaries.

Can I set a boundary that addresses how people communicate with me, without requiring deeper conflict resolution or building a wall that pushes anyone further away than I want to?

Could I prevent the conversation from escalating into conflict and reduce a charge that would not need to be processed? And then a step further: could I draw a line that inspired others and myself into more presence?

I knew it was possible to draw a line that stops a conflict at its source, keeps me regulated, and deepens the connection without requiring lengthy inner processing at the same time.

But as I lay there, I had to admit I could not see that boundary in the moment. All my ruminations and speculations did not resolve the charge. Something had crossed a line in me, and I could not say where.

The Core Line

This is the main insight, drumroll, please.

Our core boundary is the line between what is truly inside our experience and what lies outside, especially the experience of another.

Understanding boundaries begins with seeing the line between what is truly inside me and what is you. Another way to put it: the threshold between the external world of form and the inner formless world of experience.

When I say “line”, I do not want you to picture a solid wall inside you. Our experience is far more complex when we look closer. However, at the beginning, it helps to clearly distinguish between my experience and yours.

This boundary is what we are always negotiating in relationship, and the capacity I am pointing to is to notice the moment our inner world becomes entangled with someone else’s.

“The world we inhabit is not just a collection of objects but a participatory arena where our inner processes of meaning-making shape and are shaped by reality.”

John Vervaeke, Awakening from the Meaning Crisis, 2019, Lecture 10

The Inner and the Outer

These are not two separate realities. There are two ways experience shows up. One is what is happening outside of you, all around you. The other is what is happening within you. Boundaries begin with learning to tell the difference and recognising how our communication often reveals our struggles to make this distinction.

When we cannot perceive the line between these two worlds, we cannot navigate their subtleties. We go blind, even clumsy. We override the inner cues, the intuition that an agreement does not feel right, the belly discomfort that tells us something is not quite right in the communication with someone we love.

And we can easily confuse the two directions: we assume our anger or sadness was caused by another person’s words. This mixing of the inner and the outer is where relational drama, codependence, and double binds are born.

What is Truly Inner

Here is the part that makes the line more than a tidy distinction. This core boundary is also a gateway to the depths we each carry. And to understand it, we have to accept something humbling: we don’t have easy access to our own depths. Most of what is inner to us lies beneath our ordinary, everyday self-consciousness.

Ever realised you suppress anger, or the full spectrum of your sexuality, or a memory from the past, or even have a hidden belief that creates codependence?

Anyone who has meditated, done therapy to any real depth, or kept a spiritual practice knows that what is truly inner takes practice to perceive. Much of what passes through our inner space consists of conditioned, learned patterns running on a loop, not always as connected to our depths as they first seem.

Ever heard yourself say, “I was not myself”, “I feel disconnected,” or “I don’t really know who I am”? These communications reveal that we are outside the deeper inside.

So when I point to this boundary, I want to challenge you to look closer at it. Can you allow some uncertainty about whether you really know this line, especially in the difficult moments? At the very least, is there further you could go in distinguishing your inner world from everything else around you?

Lastly, part of the challenge is that the line is not a fixed, unchanging object. It is evolving, emergent, relational, and something to be discovered again and again. It can be frightening to perceive our inner depths. But once we do, we begin to navigate the boundary with far more skill.

The Inner is the Gateway to Profound Human Connection

It is vital to recognise that, when it comes to our inner space, we want a gateway rather than a barrier or a blur. Entering the inner realms is how we deepen intimacy with others and with the world. When you remember the most powerful moments you had with other humans, they are often about being deeply seen, going through a tough challenge that enabled you to access inner resources together, or experiencing a profound moment when something opens up deep inside.

Many would describe meeting another in our inner realms as a spiritual experience. However, it actually restricts what is possible if we get entangled in who we are and who the other is. Intimacy comes at too high a price if it does not honour our own sovereignty, and that of those we want to be close with. That is precisely what relational boundaries safeguard.

A Client’s Journey Back to Regulation

I once worked with a client – I’ll call her Joan – who was experienced in inner work. She came to a session noticing a loss of confidence, a quiet drift from her spiritual practice, and a new reluctance to take on leadership. She arrived ambivalent and found it hard to settle.

As we came together in presence, something surfaced from six months earlier, a moment she had not fully registered at the time. A leader she was assisting had, while she was visible and vulnerable, said something she deemed shaming. In her interpretation, he had, in effect, assumed authority over her inner experience, telling her who she was in that moment.

This would be a definite boundary issue in a working relationship. Six months on, she was still inwardly organising herself around that moment without knowing it.

The instant Joan could see the line, could feel clearly that her inner experience had been crossed into, and that this was not acceptable to her, her whole organism came back into regulation. Not gradually. The six months of low-grade suffering simply evaporated. Nothing about the past event had changed. What changed was that she could finally see where her boundary was.

Furthermore, when she brought this to the leader, he was grateful that she would address it with him, and it turned out she had misunderstood what he had said all along.

Addressing the boundary not only strengthened Joan’s sense of standing up for herself but also helped her discover a significant misunderstanding in an important relationship. It also made it clear to her colleague that Joan was being sharp about the boundaries in their working relationship.

That is the power hidden in seeing our core boundary. It is as if the parts of us that are easily triggered or hurt relax when we are able to stand up for ourselves.

At the same time, it is worth noting that a boundary issue does not always announce itself in real time. It shows up in symptoms: a loss of confidence, a retreat from practice, a withdrawal from the person involved, or an inability to return to deep rest. I have seen it many times in clients, practitioners, friends, leaders, and myself, including on one snowy winter day in the middle of a workshop I was leading.

Returning to the Group

So let me go back to the winter room, the fire, the communication that hit me sideways.

Lying awake at 3am, what I could not find was the line. I knew something had crossed it; the proof was in my aching kidneys and the adrenaline that would not let me sleep. But I could not name what had been crossed, and so I could not address it, not in the room and not in my own body afterward.

What was clear was that another person was telling me how I should be perceiving the situation (can’t you see what is happening) and, from a place of authority or without curiosity, judging what was happening inside me (negligence, no leadership, doing nothing).

Then it dawned on me: she was taking a position of knowing my inner world, and more importantly, coming towards this part of me with what seemed like aggression and little openness.

Suddenly, I could see a broader picture, making it far easier to find my truth, even as I remained mindful of the inherent vulnerability that comes with directly addressing a boundary conflict.

What I saw this time was that I did want the feedback, especially her true experience of being in the group. In fact, I need it. As a leader, I require truthfulness from the people around me. So the feedback itself had not crossed any line. What crossed it was the manner: the force and judgment in how it arrived. The way she related to me was misaligned with how I want to be met in most situations.

The boundary had felt difficult to locate precisely because two true things were tangled together: I wanted to stay open to her truth, and I needed to address the way it was delivered. Held as one knot, it was unsolvable; every move felt like either moving away from myself or rejecting her. Separated into inner and outer, it came apart cleanly.

So the line I can now draw sounds almost ordinary:

“I welcome your feedback; I actually need it. And for me to fully engage with your challenge, I need to feel a sense of presence and curiosity in exploring what is happening here.”

Now, there could be many ways to express this kind of sentiment. What is important, however, is that I am not demanding anything. I am not telling her what she may feel or instructing her how to behave. I am naming a boundary, naming the value it protects (presence and curiosity) and letting her know it is my standard for the kind of connection I stand for.

That is what I mean by a transformational boundary. If the person is willing to meet my values, the conflict is addressed at its source without me hurting myself or the other person. It keeps me regulated rather than triggered. And, vitally, it maintains the dynamic tension within the connection rather than discharging it.

What I have seen since is that if I had been able to see this and say it in the moment, there would have been no 3am lying awake, no need for a repair process, and more of a boundary between my experience and those around me. Seeing the line is the foundation. Everything else is built on top of this.

Boundary Series

This is the first in a series of articles on transformational boundaries. Next, we will dive into three of the main parts of our inner experience that we are navigating in transformational boundaries.

— Next in this series: Identity, Destiny and Responsibility

Also, check out this link if you would like a short course to support you in developing this understanding in your own relationships: https://www.transformationalconnection.com/offers/uRDBPmDa/checkout

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I was not comfortable with such intense eye contact.

Time slowed, and my hearing became so sharp that I noticed even the distant bleeping of the pedestrian crossing outside. I felt like I was on some kind of psychedelic substance: my heart was pounding, my legs lit up with electrical pinpricks, and I could feel a vivid tingle along my spinal column. Such sensitivity wasn’t normal for me. Although every impulse urged me to avert my eyes from the friend sitting opposite, I felt the faintest whisper of instinct telling me to go on.

*

It was a bitterly cold winter’s night in Shrewsbury, England, and I was sitting opposite my friend John Thompson in an inauspicious bedroom in his mock-Tudor house share, looking deeply into his eyes. The connection between us was neither romantic nor confrontational. Instead, we shared a determination to find some inside ourselves that we knew wouldn’t be easy to discover. At this early stage, I wasn’t sure whether I had what it took to find the treasure I was seeking.

John and I had little to go on. We’d been inspired by a group of people who founded a San Francisco-based organisation called Authentic World. They had developed a gem of a practice that taught people to be extraordinarily present and authentic in their relationships. When we watched videos of them doing this practice, it was mesmerising; real, elegant, deep, playful, natural connections between people.

To date, we had only seen a handful of examples of this way of relating, but it exemplified everything we wanted to do ourselves. As professional sports coaches, we thought this way of relating was real gold. We could build relationships and inspire transformation with athletes, parents, other coaches, and the sports governing body we worked with in a subtler and more powerful way. It was more than this, though. John and I had become interested in integral spirituality, passionate about awakening. We wanted to bring real spiritual depth into daily life, starting with our own.

Three pointers guided our experiment in John’s room that evening:

1. Be present as if meditating.

2. Stop messing around and really look at each other.

3. Wait until you find a real question you are truly curious to ask.

As simple as that sounds, it was hard. I thought I knew how to do each of those three things: I’d been meditating on and off for a few years by then. As weird as it might feel, I surely could look John in the eyes. I was confident I could come up with questions I cared about rather than defaulting to small talk. In reality, however, I found it surprisingly difficult to find a question I was really interested in deeper down, especially doing it on the spot. Furthermore, doing all three at once felt like juggling.

Of course, you can’t force or fake your way into meaningful connection. And that’s what this experiment was all about. With the hindsight of two decades of practice, it’s easy to see the naive struggle I was in. All my efforts were only provoking more racing thoughts, more tension, and a greater desire to get somewhere that seemed so elusive and otherworldly. I judged myself for my lack of ease and, at the same time, a lack of attention. I wanted so much to open something up inside me, yet struggled to access that effortless, intuitive place our role models seemed to find so easily.

That was when something happened I couldn’t have planned.

I don’t remember exactly what I said. I do remember that, through the struggle, a question suddenly arrived. I can recall the sense of truthfulness about it. It was a relief and it felt so alive, slicing through mundane speech. John returned my question with his own, just as authentic, and it hit like a torpedo: ‘What do you really want to share inside of you?’

English men are not known for their emotional attunement and openness; we are rightly known for our polite awkwardness. Despite this, I trusted John’s question and it led me to ‘follow my body’. To those of you who have experience of following your body, this will make obvious sense. For those new to embodied presence, there is a way we can flip the switch so we are not controlling our body top-down from our mind. Instead, we can allow our body to move in its own intuitive way. There comes a profound sense of connection if we find this way of communicating within ourselves. This was one of the first times I got such a clear sense of this.

I knew somehow to move my head to the left and look downward, and my voice became higher-pitched and more childlike. I was hesitant to keep trusting this; I could imagine John laughing at it, finding it absurd. Suddenly, shockingly, the room seemed to fill with a foreboding horror. I was not in immediate danger; I knew it was more like entering an earlier period in my consciousness. It was showing me an environment filled with suffering; something very bad was happening around me. I was vulnerable, anticipatory and hyper-alert, but with a sense of innocence and powerlessness. Instinctively, I knew not to interrupt what I was starting to feel; this was clearly some kind of revelation of what was normally in my shadow.

From stories I had been told, I was aware that my first three years of life had been traumatic. Ever since I could remember, I had lived with a subtle sense that something was unresolved within me. I experienced symptoms like fatigue and challenges creating healthy structure, especially in my early adult life. I had been learning a lot about how these symptoms were related to deeper emotional pain, but until this point, I had no way of connecting these symptoms to what had actually happened and how it still lived in me.

Suddenly, in this unlikely situation, just me and my friend, I was getting a vital download of what had haunted me. Accessing what I had always intuitively known was there. Instead of a story told to me by others and a blank space inside of me, I was accessing my own visceral experience. I felt as though I’d reached the eye of a storm; there was an eerie sense of calm.

I thought that was the breakthrough, but then it went even further.

With an unbelievable buildup of energy, I felt my face contort, expressing an emotion I couldn’t identify at first. It was pure terror, I realised, on a different scale from any I could remember experiencing. It seemed to emerge out of the very bones and blood vessels of my body. This time, it was like the danger was here in front of me, imminent and deadly.

Until this moment, I had found it very difficult to access deeply buried emotions to come to the surface, even though I knew the benefits of doing so. What I could never have expected when this happened was that the terror would feel this enthralling! An ecstatic sensation gushed through my veins and surged in my heart. I could almost see the air thicken around me, shimmering dream-like at the edges of my vision.

Through sheer beginner’s luck, John and I had come to the periphery of the promised land of consciously connected human relating. At the heart of it was letting things arise organically from the present moment. My being had wanted this horror and terror to come through and release, so that I might integrate its intelligence and come to a deeper rest. I would never have done this without the intensity of the connection shared with John that night.

*

That was the beginning of the practice John Thompson and I have been refining and teaching for over a decade now: Transformational Connection (TC). It took years of beautiful, challenging, dedicated exploration before I could consistently inhabit and map this territory; it was not all deep terror and ecstatic heart energy. It has been the full spectrum of human experience. Today, TC is a practice that invites a way of being together that lets what is already alive in us become known, with the encouragement to follow and unfold what opens up.

What John and I found that day, in that unlikely setting, was not unusual. It can be consistently discovered, and many people are now doing so. There are many modalities for this kind of work that you may have heard of, in addition to TC: circling, authentic relating, focusing, non-violent communication, and other presence-based practices. Connection is always available when two or more people are willing to be more honest about what is happening between them and learn to trust what arises. We often find what we didn’t know we were looking for, and it is often as much about our light as it is about what’s in the dark.

After years of facilitation, the way I envision these practices is different from when I started, and I want to share more of this landscape here, in my new Substack. What is really happening between human beings when we really discover the subtleties?

Coming Soon …

Transformational boundaries will change everything. They are a doorway into deeper contact with reality. They can inspire profound shifts in our identity, our destiny and our sense of responsibility. Once you see and feel the core boundaries within yourself, you will possess a master key to connection. Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing my first series of articles about Transformational Boundaries: one of the many inner dimensions of connection.

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