Boundaries are essential to life.
I recently saw a documentary that speculated about the origins of life. Crucial to the beginning of life was the formation of some sort of molecule (a lipid, I think), or chain of molecules, that could create a boundary, an interior space, because life cannot happen if its contents are just spilled out into the environment.
"Oneness" is one of the great principles underlying everything, but it is also part of a paradox pair, and the other side of that paradox is "eachness." One of the first things that should strike us about the phenomenal world, as William James pointed out, is that nature loves eachness. We see highly individualized and differentiated trees, not a homogenous mass of treeness. Life loves eachness, and for there to be eachness, for there to be individuality and what Jung calls
individuation, there must be boundaries.
But we live in era where people love to confess their deepest secrets on national television and Twitter away their every inner content for anyone one who will pay attention. Many people lose their chance at individuation, at individual evolution, because they never have strong enough boundaries to allow themselves to become distinguished from the collective.
One of the extreme examples of poor boundaries is sexual promiscuity, a dangerously naive practice that will often be recognized in nightmares as an extreme danger to the individual. In the waking life the dreamer may feel that "casual sex" is a healthy thing, that one should "let go of inhibitions" and may even feel they are being daring and avant-garde by sleeping around. But there is no dumber oxymoron than "casual sex." It is not casual on the microbiological plane, and it is not casual on the bioenergetic and spiritual planes either.
Jungian analyst Edward Edinger wrote,
"..allowing unknown persons into their homes and into their bodies and into their psyches — with no sense of individual boundary. This is an exceedingly dangerous thing to do, on the physical level alone, inviting robbery and even murder. Psychologically, it is just as dangerous. Yet, these individuals feel so profoundly empty within themselves, that there arises a compulsion to be filled with some kind of intimate contact. Compulsions, however, do not work; they are unconscious behaviors and merely repeat themselves. Sexual promiscuity is the sort of behavior that reveals a grave defect in the "boundaries" of individual identity. These boundaries are lacking, or they are porous, and the psychological doors are wide open."
Promiscuity is part of a general sickness in which we do not recognize the value of our individuality and desire causes us to become submerged in collective values and identity. Our life force spills out into the environment and becomes indistinguishable from the collective energy.
In
Mysterium Coniunctionis, Jung wrote:
"You too are infected with this collective sickness. Therefore bethink you for once…and consider: What is behind all this desirousness? …The more you cling to that which all the world desires, the more you are Everyman, who has not yet discovered himself and stumbles through the world like a blind man leading the blind with somnambulistic certainty into the ditch. Everyman is a multitude. Cleanse your interest of that collective sulfur which clings to all like a leprosy…This means burning in your own fire and not being like a comet or flashing beacon showing others the right way but not knowing it yourself."
Strong boundaries are what you need so that you can glow and become luminous with your own fire rather than be consumed by the general conflagration. Consider this a propitious time to build and repair the good fences in your life.