Who are you allowing into your energy field?
Over the past two weeks in Peru, I’ve been contemplating growth … and the people I choose to grow beside.
How do I want to continue evolving as a guide, a friend, a lover, and a human being?
An indigenous shaman shared something with me yesterday that landed deeply:
Sometimes, when we sow seeds of love, joy, and service into the earth, insects, fungus, and animals will try to feed on them before the tree is fully grown.
A young tree needs protection, and so do we.
Last night, I joined a group call with some old friends whom I see only once every two years.
After so many heart-opening experiences here in the Sacred Valley, I found it difficult to engage in conversations filled with gossip around American politics.
At one point, I said: “I’m not really sure who or what you’re all talking about. It isn’t in my awareness.”
One friend replied: “Oh, so because it isn’t in your awareness, it isn’t real?”
I clarified: “That isn’t what I said. I didn’t say it wasn’t real. I said it simply isn’t in my awareness.”
There is a difference.
I have very few remaining friendships from my old life in New York.
I am the strange one who left the nest and built a life across three continents.
I am the strange one who chooses to sit with shamans and tend to the soul rather than continually feeding my mind with the most salacious, fear-based news.
To some, this can look like indifference.
But I try to live by a principle reflected in the Bhagavad Gita: the wise person learns to live beyond the polarities of the material world.
In other words:
How do we live fully in this world without allowing it to own our attention?
Does feeding a particular story help me live with more truth, compassion, and purpose?
Or does it deplete the energy I need to tend to the life directly in front of me?
One of the deepest fears I hear repeatedly from clients devoted to personal growth is that they will reach the end of their lives and realise they wasted their potential.
To grow into that potential, we must become discerning about what enters our awareness.
What people, places, conversations, and stories are you repeatedly giving your energy to?
Are they nourishing who you’re becoming?
Or are they quietly chipping away at your roots?
Just as the Harvard Researcher Dr. David McClelland highlights, “the people you habitually associate with, determine as much as 95 percent of your success or failure in life.”
We are powerfully shaped by the people with whom we habitually spend our time.
Their beliefs, emotional patterns, ambitions, and limitations begin to influence our own — often without us realising it.
And then comes the more difficult question:
What do we do with old friends who appear to be walking a very different path?
Do we cold turkey break up the relationship?
Do we maintain occasional contact as a practice of compassion?
Do we accept that love can remain, even when closeness changes?
In my own journey, I have cultivated enough boundaries to protect my roots. I trust myself not to be swept back into old patterns simply because I briefly revisit an old environment.
But if you are still learning to establish yourself … if your roots are still tender … distance may be an act of wisdom.
Not every boundary is rejection.
Sometimes a boundary is simply the fence around a garden that is still learning how to grow.
The SAGE Oracle card I drew today felt perfectly aligned with this reflection:
Wadjet — Guardian, Protector of Vitality
“My sacred ‘no’ guards my flame. Power held is power honoured.”
Wadjet is the ancient Egyptian cobra goddess and protector of the pharaohs. According to the mythology, she helped shelter and nurse the infant Horus, protecting him from his murderous uncle Set until he had grown strong enough to meet his destiny.
She reminds us that protecting your energy is not fear.
It is sacred guardianship.
Your energy is sacred.
Your attention is sacred.
Your evolution is sacred.
Sometimes your most loving answer will be yes.
And sometimes, the answer that protects your life force will be a sacred no.
So much Munay (love) from Peru,
Johnson
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