Mind, Body, Home: Transform Your Life One Room at a Time (23 page)

to helping us see a situation more objectively, dreams can allow us to

practice for real life. We often use dreams to play out different scenarios before we do so in real life. Dreams can also help us overcome patterns.

In the example above, the dream may have continued with the dreamer

seeing the shark turn into a frog, a symbol of transformation. Or, perhaps the dream plays out to where he or she stands up to the sharks.

Dreams can also be a red flag for something of which we were to-

tally unaware. This is the case with prophetic dreams. Because our sub-

conscious mind is constantly recording everything, it picks up on and

knows things before our conscious mind does. Our subconscious mind

makes up 83 percent of our brain and controls 96–98 percent of per-

ception and behavior.13 It processes 400 billion bits of information per second compared to the conscious brain’s mere 2,000 bits of information per second.14 When we are finally still, with all of our systems in 13. John Assaraf and Murray Smith,
The Answer
(Atria Paperback, 2009), 48.

14. Ibid.

138 The Language of the Home

temporary hibernation mode, the subconscious is finally able to com-

municate to us. In fact, it is not uncommon for people to have dreams

alerting them of a particular illness of which they were otherwise unaware.

Dream symbols pertaining to the home are also common. Since the

beginning of dream interpretation, the house and its components have

represented aspects of the Self. The house is an archetypal symbol for the Self, or Soul. I often have what I call ‘home dreams’ that convey

information about my health and well-being through symbols of the

home. For example, in one dream, the exact right half of the home was

being completely renovated, while I was only living in the left side of the home. It was as if a line had been drawn down the middle. This was

a representation of the left and right sides of my brain. At that time, I was transitioning from practicing law to the healing arts where I was

starting to use my right brain on a whole new level. My right brain was undergoing a renovation.

A few years ago, I was able to use my dreams to help diagnose ab-

dominal pains that I was having. I had to wait about a week before I

could get a doctor’s appointment and ultrasound. In the meantime, I

had a series of three dreams that showed me the problem through sym-

bolic interior images of homes. In addition, the people and the story-

lines of the dream helped me understand the mind-body relationship of

the underlying problem.

Symbols not only appear in dreams, but also in our waking life. The

only difference is that we usually don’t notice these signs and symbols in our waking lives as we do in our subconscious dream state. For example, perhaps you take the afternoon off and go to the park. As you

start walking you come upon a pond and notice a school of fish swim-

ming. Even though you have walked by the same pond numerous

times, this is the first time you have noticed fish swimming. Seeing the fish swimming in a pond in waking life may not trigger anything out of

the ordinary because it has a normal context. Our logical, rational mind just brushes it away.

However, if you see the same thing in a dream, then you may won-

der why you are seeing a school of fish. If this still isn’t enough to get
The Language of the Home 139

your attention, perhaps the next time the fish will be chasing you. In

all instances, however, seeing the school of fish symbolizes that certain things have been surfacing or are being revealed from your subconscious mind to your conscious mind. Unless we are consciously looking

for them, the signs and symbols in our waking life usually don’t get our attention like those in our dream state. Either way, however, the meanings are the same.

In the book
Sixth Sense
, author Stuart Wilde explains that external symbols (or symbols in our waking life) will be grouped together. For

example, you’ll see a man fall off his bike and later that day, you will see a tile fall off a roof and hit a truck. The point of these grouped symbols is to see a larger theme. In this example, the theme or message would

be balance. What do you need to balance in your life? Wilde also makes

the point that waking symbols will often show up in your dreams as

well. They are messages from your subconscious mind trying to get the

attention of your conscious mind.

Our subconscious mind picks up on things in our environment of

which we are not consciously aware. For example, a friend of mine sat at a wood desk that was teetering on a broken leg for about a year. Each

and every day that she worked at the desk, her subconscious mind reg-

istered the broken leg. Even though she wasn’t thinking about it con-

sciously, it was impacting her subconscious mind. Then, one day she

had a random accident at home, breaking her own leg. Not coinciden-

tally, while she was out of work recovering, a co-worker finally got

around to wood-gluing the desk’s broken leg. She came back to work

months later to a sturdy work desk.

In any space in which we spend a lot of time, our subconscious mind

will constantly pick up on things in our environment whether we are

consciously aware of them or not. This is why our, environment—

whether it is our home, office, or car—impacts us so greatly. While a

messy car, desk, or kitchen may consciously drive you crazy, just think how your subconscious mind is responding. By living more consciously

in the present moment, we can begin to tune into these symbols

throughout our day and in our home.

140 The Language of the Home

As our body is a manifestation of our mind, the home is the next

closest extension of our mind and body. As you delve into the follow-

ing chapters, you will start to make the connections with yourself and the different areas of your home. Your experience may coincide with

the symbols that are a part of our collective consciousness, or you may have your own personal experience that is completely different based on your past associations. You will begin to decode the language of your

home as it actually speaks your mind. And as you make changes to your

home, you will also see correlating changes take place within yourself.

C h a p t e r 8

Floors:

Levels of Consciousness

I always thought of myself as a house. I was always what I lived in.

It didn’t need to be big. It didn’t even need to be beautiful.

It just needed to be mine. I became what I was meant to be.

I built myself a life. I built myself a house.

—george in life as a house



• Foundation

• Basement

• Main Level

• 2nd Floor

• Attic

In the 2001 movie,
Life as a House
, the main character, George, played by Kevin Kline, embarks on building a house while battling cancer and

mending a troubled relationship with his son. Their relationship was

slowly built just as the house was—one floor at a time starting with the foundation. Whether building a relationship or a house, it is essential to build a strong foundation before moving to the higher floors.

141

142 Floors

On the energetic level, each floor of the house represents a different

level of consciousness. This metaphor was depicted in the movie,
Inception
. While Leonardo DiCaprio was in a constant struggle to determine which reality was ‘real,’ he would travel up and down the floors of his consciousness via an elevator. The lower down he traveled in the elevator, the deeper he went into his subconscious mind.

In Iyanla Vanzant’s self-help book,
In the Meantime
, she organizes the chapters according to the floors of a house working from the bottom up in order to “clean house” before entering a new relationship.

Likewise, she uses each floor metaphorically to represent each level of consciousness. In all of these examples, the lower floors represent our lower subconscious mind while the higher floors represent our higher

levels of consciousness. Just like building a house, let’s start with the foundation and work our way up.

Foundation

To build anything with integrity, especially a house, it must have a

strong foundation. The foundation of the home literally represents our

foundation or grounding. This relates to the First Chakra. The foun-

dation is in direct contact with the Earth and the Earth’s energy. The

more solid and secure the foundation of your home, the more ground-

ing you will experience while living there. There are many clichés that we already use in our everyday language that point to this. For example,

“having a strong foundation” is often used with regard to starting a relationship, project, business, or anything with a new beginning. It is common knowledge that we have to “build a strong foundation” to make

anything worthwhile last or succeed.

There are several factors in determining how well a home’s founda-

tion is built.

The actual ground or land on which the foundation is built is an

important factor affecting the strength of the whole house. Whether

you are building or buying a home, take time to inspect the ground to

determine if it will make a proper foundation. In states in earthquake
Floors 143

zones, this is required. Otherwise, call in a professional if you are un-sure.

What is the topography of the land? Will it be conducive to proper

water drainage? Is the mineral composition proper for a foundation? I

once had a contract on a home that seemed like the perfect home. I was

swept off my feet by the beautiful screened-in porch off the back. Upon receiving the termite report, however, I realized that this home was not for me. It had had severe damage in the past to the point of having a

structural engineer reconfigure the foundation. Not only that, but the

home showed current termite activity despite having been treated an-

nually.

Ironically, I ended up purchasing the home next door that never had

any issues with termites. There was something about the conditions of

the ground and the first home itself that attracted the termites. Luckily I was able to discover the truth before purchasing it. Unfortunately however, sometimes you don’t know what lies below. One client, upon

excavation, ran into the remnants of a previous structure on the lot—an old nursing home.

“Settling” Into Your Home

It is common for houses to naturally “settle” over time as the founda-

tion sinks farther into the ground. The settling should be done natu-

rally and gently, otherwise the house may undergo structural damage.

If a home has foundation problems, that energy will be felt throughout

the house and affect its occupants on an energetic level until or unless the foundation is corrected. Its occupants may struggle with laying a

proper foundation in relationships or projects. Another challenge may

be a lack of proper energy flow in the lower chakras, which will lead to over-activity in the mind in the form of worry and anxiety, as well as physical problems in the legs and feet.

People, couples, or businesses without a strong foundation may at-

tract a house or space with foundation problems due to a vibrational

match. The owners will continue to be ungrounded as a result. This

will continue until the owner is forced to either remedy the problem

144 Floors

or move. By this point, it is likely that the occupants are going through their own breakdown of sorts, physically, mentally or emotionally. Because the foundation affects the entire house, it will correlate with a major shakeup in the lives of its occupants.

If the owner has the financial resources to do so, it can be beneficial for the homeowner to go through this time with the home instead of

escaping it by moving. In doing so, there is an opportunity to make a

major transformation in not only the home, but their life as well. For

example, if the owners are having marital problems, then fixing the

foundation may help the couple rebuild their relationship as well, per-

haps in the form of couple’s therapy.

Most likely, at one time or another, you have lived in an apartment

or house with uneven flooring due to foundation problems. If so, think

back on what was going on in your life at that time. Were you experi-

encing major change, shakeups, or wakeups? For me, it was my first

college apartment in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Sinkholes run rampant

throughout the city due to the vast cave systems below. My roommate

and I found it endearing the way a glass would literally slide off the kitchen table because the floor was so slanted. Luckily, we were just

students enjoying a carefree college life as opposed to a couple, family, or business trying to establish themselves.

A house with previous foundation problems that have since been

fixed will hold the energy of transformation. Because the house has un-

dergone a transformation itself, it will have that effect on its inhabitants.

This was the case with my previous home. Being an unusually heavy

cast concrete home, it settled in a less than gentle manner resulting in foundation problems. A telltale sign of a home settling is visible hairline cracks on the interior drywall or exterior masonry of the home. You