Mind, Body, Home: Transform Your Life One Room at a Time (34 page)

into will tell you that it feels like a personal assault, or even a violation of their physical body. This of course speaks to the strong energetic connection between the home and the body. When our home has been

intruded, our personal energy has as well.

There are several messages pertaining to a burglary of your home.

Because it is more akin to a physical invasion, the message will most

definitely hit home on a much deeper and personal level. It may take

some time to recover and fully understand the meaning and message

because of the trauma surrounding it. The energy around a burglary is

that of violation as it inevitably involves a “breaking in.” Is there an area in your life in which you are feeling violated, whether it is a particular relationship, job or situation?

Another meaning is that an unconscious aspect of yourself is at-

tempting to make itself conscious. If you’ve ever seen the remnants of

a home invasion, you know that every drawer, shelf, and cabinet may

be completely unearthed and scattered in plain sight. Ready or not, you are forced to clean up things that you perhaps have not dealt with in

years. This was the case with my client. Her break-in brought to light

just how much clutter she had accumulated. She acknowledged that the

break-in was a “wake-up call” for where she was in her life. In cleaning up the remnants, she realized just how much she needed to clean out of

her life in order to allow new things to come in.

If you ever have your home broken into, it is paramount that you

have your home space cleared by a professional feng shui consultant or

space clearer. The home itself experiences trauma and must heal ap-

propriately. In several homes, I have come across energy disturbances

for no apparent reason. When I asked my client about the area, it was in fact the entry area in which someone broke into the home years before.

Secondly, it is important to remove the energy of the intruder and clear the resulting trauma from the homeowners.

Ghosts

Ghosts are another intrusive energy that we attract. Whether you move

into a home with a ghost or attract one later, there is an energetic tie
Encroachments 219

or resonance between the ghost and the occupants. Ghosts, in general,

relate to past energy that continues to linger. So is the case with a ghost in your home—it relates to unfinished emotional business from your

past. This could include unresolved emotions or issues relating to your childhood family, dead relatives, or repressed memories and feelings. In essence, the ghost carries an energy that you are seeking and vice versa.

Refer to Chapter 5 for more information on ghosts.

C o n c l u s i o n

Integrating Your

Mind Body and Home

Our contribution to the progress of the world

must consist in setting our own house in order.

—mahatma gandhi



You are most likely seeing your home in a whole new light. The power

our living spaces have in our lives has been vastly underestimated. Our home is so close to us that we often have a hard time seeing the for-est for the trees. When we stop and look around our space with new

eyes, there is a world of opportunity to heal, empower, and to step into a higher consciousness. It is literally right under our nose. Our space holds the power of transformation. As we make changes to our home,

we make changes to ourself.

Alost everyone has worked on some aspect of self-improvement—

whether it is therapy, energy work, meditation, or yoga. Like most

things, the change has to take place on the inner in order to make per-

manent changes in our outer life. It is often hard to measure when to

make beneficial changes in our life until they manifest outwardly in our life, but our home is a physical manifestation of our thoughts and emotions. We can see the changes with our own eyes. And we can also see

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222 Integrating Your Mind Body and Home

what needs to change by simply looking around our home and noticing

the messages it communicates to us.

When we see our living space in disarray, we know that our life is

in disarray. When we see our home undergoing a renovation, we know

that some aspect of our life is under renovation. When suddenly we

can’t get into our own home because the lock is sticking, then we know

there is a troubling issue that we are not facing. Our home manifests

into the physical world the thoughts and emotions that we would oth-

erwise dismiss and put aside. However, in becoming conscious of our

unconscious, we enter a higher consciousness that is necessary for our

spiritual growth.

As you start to become more conscious of your living space, con-

sider the variety of ways in which your home is communicating with

you, as well as how you can make conscious changes in your life.

Changes are manifested through household accidents, improvements,

general maintenance, repairs, renovations, and even in moving. Each

of these holds a different meaning or energy, particularly when we are

proactive and initiate a change versus when something goes wrong or

accidental. As each of these come up in your life consider the meaning

and message and how it mirrors what is going on within yourself.

Household Accidents

In Chapter 6 we looked at how electronics are good indicators of how

our energy affects objects because they either work properly or mal-

function. The same is true for all inanimate objects. Just because they are not operational, all objects are symbols with a meaning of some

sort in our life, or else we wouldn’t possess them. Instead of malfunctioning, we might accidentally knock a vase off the shelf or repeat-

edly break an item. For example, a few years ago I was going through

a stressful time. Within a few weeks, I broke two toothbrush handles

while brushing my teeth and then a teapot handle. Both of these breaks

are extremely difficult to do, not to mention quite odd. I finally got the message that I was having trouble getting a handle on things. Once I be-Integrating Your Mind Body and Home 223

came conscious of the message, I realized I needed to “get a grip” and relax. Handles stopped breaking thereafter.

Accidents may occur even more randomly. Have you ever had an

object fall in the middle of the night with no explanation? This has happened to me many times in different homes—a bathroom mirror, a ceil-

ing light, a window decoration. Besides waking me in complete terror,

there was a message with each incident. In the same way we manifest

nightmares to get our attention, sometimes it takes a frightening event in our home to get our attention.

The next time you have something that breaks, falls, or malfunc-

tions, consider whether there is an underlying message. Is it more than a random incident, or is there a deeper meaning? Where did the object come from? Did someone give it to you? Who or what does it re-

mind you of ? What were you thinking about at the time the accident

occurred? Also consider the symbolism of the object that is involved in the incident. Consult a dream dictionary for its symbolism on the collective unconscious. That being said, objects can also hold the energy

that we give them. A picture of your family on your desk holds the

energy that you have toward your family. Thus, that picture has a sig-

nificant energy and symbolism specific to you.

Personal accidents around the home, ranging from stubbing your

toe to falling down the stairs, happen far too commonly. When these

unfortunate accidents occur, they too may have a message. Beyond the

mind body relationship, the location within your home is significant information. For example, did you trip going up or down the stairs? Did

you stub your toe in the bedroom or in the kitchen? Consider the lo-

cation of each accident and consult the corresponding chapter in this

book for more insight.

Repairs and Maintenance

Have you ever felt like you can never get around to making improve-

ments to your home because you are too busy fixing things? Or maybe

you spend so much energy on just maintaining your home that there is

neither time nor money left for improvements. There was a period in

224 Integrating Your Mind Body and Home

my life when maintaining the yard took so much time that I never had

time to plant new flowerbeds. Or maybe you would love to splurge on

some new bed linens, but know you need to get the gutters fixed. It is

only when you get your head above water that you are able to make im-

provements. And so is the case in our own life. For example, you know

you need to start cooking healthy meals, but can’t seem to find the time or energy after work to do so. Or you would love to get in shape with

an exercise regimen, but get set back with an illness or injury.

If you feel like there are improvement projects around your home

that you would like to do, but just can’t seem to get around to them,

then take a look to see if this is also happening in your own life. Sometimes we feel we are just trying to make it through the day, let alone

take steps to
improve
our life. If this sounds familiar to you, take a conscious look at what you have trouble maintaining. Once you learn the

message, you can then move on from it and begin making the desired

improvements.

For example, is it something that keeps breaking or in constant need

of repair? Or is just keeping your house clean overwhelmingly difficult?

If it is a pattern, recognize it. What is your house trying to tell you?

Often, recognizing the problem is all that is necessary to stop the cycle.

In more severe cases, you may need the help of a professional to stop

the pattern on the physical, emotional, or spiritual level on which it is occurring. However, stopping the pattern in your home is a great place

to start.

Many of my clients are overwhelmed with deciding where to start

in their homes. In some cases, my job as a feng shui consultant is more of a project manager—helping prioritize the order of projects rather

than anything else. As a general rule, repairs take first priority. Having broken, inoperable, or damaged parts of a home is equivalent to an illness or injury within the body. The energy emanates from the injury

and lowers the overall vibration.

Just like the body, when there is an injury the blood flows to that

section to try to heal the area. As a result, the rest of the body is affected in order to keep some semblance of balance within the system.

The same is the case with our home. For example, if you have an area

Integrating Your Mind Body and Home 225

with water damage, it is like an injury to the home that lowers the overall vibration of the home. If not repaired, the damage will start to infect other parts of the home.

It is advisable to not keep even small items or appliances around that

are broken, for example, a toaster, a lamp, or even a cracked frame. Our subconscious mind picks up the energy of something being broken.

Even if you are not thinking about it consciously, each time you enter that room your subconscious mind registers the energy of the broken,

cracked, tarnished, or whatever the state of the object. I had one client who kept a bird figurine on her kitchen windowsill. One of the wings

had broken off, but she couldn’t bear to get rid of it. When I asked her why, she said the bird reminds her of herself. I encouraged her to let the item go when she was ready to fly. When she became aware of the symbolism and how it was keeping her from her dreams and desires, she let

the item go and never looked back.

Improvements

When you make repairs to your home, you are inherently improving

yourself as well. The overall energy of the home returns to balance and restores order within the home. The injury is repaired and the correlating aspect within yourself is also healed. When you voluntarily make

an improvement to your home, you are consciously making a self-im-

provement of yourself as well. When you are conscious of the effects of your improvement, the change can take place in an even more profound way.

For example, once I had finally completed an overall updating of the

plumbing, electricals, and HVAC to just
maintain
normal living conditions in my home, I was ready to start an
improvement
project. This time it would be because I wanted to improve my home, not because it was

vitally necessary. I knew I had reached a new level of growth within

myself at this point. I decided to paint the exterior trim of the taupe, adobe-style house to add some curb appeal.

I set out to paint the brickwork around the windows a red brick

color and the window trim turquoise to bring out my home’s charm

226 Integrating Your Mind Body and Home

and character. With each window its personality became more and

more apparent. It then hit me one day while painting that the exact

thing was happening in my own life. After spending a year fixing things in my life and starting to feel whole again, my personality was coming

out more than ever. I was coming out of my shell, so to speak. The

quiet, shy, blend-in taupe house transformed into its own unique ex-

pression catching the eye of all who drove by.

It is not always necessary to actually do the labor yourself to have