Shifting the Energy of the House

"You know," I said to my husband while he played Bejeweled on the office computer, "if we put the bed on that wall and the dresser here we could put our room in here."

He glanced at me nervously. I get this feeling every now and then where I must rearrange things. Usually it's just the couch or a table. This time I was talking about flipping two rooms. The internet cable. A huge heavy desk. Book shelves. He's less than thrilled when I move around the contents of a room, something I've done since childhood; when I start moving whole rooms he gets downright freaked out.

"Why?" he said cautiously.

"Because the office would fit better in our room. It would be nice to have our room closer to the bathroom and the office off the kitchen. It would be cozy in here, but... it would work."

I started to get excited. I began to picture the soft white curtains in our "new" room. The kids' art table under the window in our "new" office. I spent the day convincing him. I bribed him with a shoulder rub if he'd go down in the (gross dusty spider-infested) crawl space to figure out the internet cable situation. Finally he agreed, saying he actually liked the idea. If not of moving stuff, of having it all moved.

Long, boring, dusty story short, we did it. We've slept two nights in our new room and the new office is mostly set up. There are odds and ends we need like closet organizing and that darn cable moved (we went wireless on both computers), but the big pieces are in place. It feels really good - but also very unsettled. The baby napped poorly yesterday. I yelled at my daughter twice yesterday (I'm not proud to say). Things feel like they are floating off the floor a half inch. But it feels like the rooms are finally in the right place (we've lived in this house over four years), as if we'd swapped two puzzle pieces that finally clicked into place. When the dust settles (the invisible energy dust, I mean), the Feng Shui of our house will feel so much better.

Does your house feel unsettled? Bedrooms should be in yin parts of the house; in our case we moved a room from the front of the house to the back. They should be near bathrooms and away from public areas like the kitchen. Public spaces should flow from one to another, including living room, dining room, kitchen, and playroom or family rooms. Walls and doorways slow energy. Large windows let in energy from outside, which was one problem in our "old" bedroom, since we had a large window facing the street. I often felt unsettled and on alert while I slept. If you're having trouble sleeping, try moving a bed or even your whole room. The adjustment period can be unsettling, but you'll know it when the pieces click into place and it will change the energy in your entire house. And since our house is an extension of our selves, it can affect your health and happiness as well.


For more on Feng Shui and the energy of place, check out these books.

Nature Spirit in Artist's Photograph

A fantastic artist named Rosemary Ranck contacted me for information about nature spirits as she had just captured one in a photograph. She wrote, "I was lucky to have a sweet, cute elf like image appear in a photo I shot while photographing changing leaves a month or so ago." And later said she "never saw 'her' [the spirit] until it was uploaded."

Here is the original photo untouched:










Again, Rosemary did not see the little face until she uploaded the photo to her computer.

Here is the photo lightened and sharpened some:










You can't really tell the size of the little face, but you can clearly see her curiosity with the camera and/or Rosemary.

Rosemary wondered why the little elf revealed herself to her. In looking at Rosemary's paintings, it's clear to me that Rosemary's intuitive abilities tend towards the visual. She felt attuned with the place and the beauty of the changing leaves, and her friend came to say hello. Now Rosemary is hiding little nature spirits in her paintings.

Here is some of Rosemary's work. You can see her heart and soul in her paintings.















Thank you Rosemary for sharing your story with us!





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For more on nature spirits, devas, elfs, and fairies, I recommend the following books:

The True Meaning of Yule

We hear a lot about the true meaning of Christmas, and I remember when I was a practicing Christian the holiday held a deeper meaning for me. Now my spirituality includes not just mystical Christianity but also Paganism and a sprinkling of Buddhism and Taoism. So while I celebrate Christmas Day, largely this is because of family tradition, and because many Christmas traditions come from Yule traditions. I think more about Mary and her unassisted birth than about the baby she bore (at least on Christmas). As a Pagan I also celebrate Yule, the day after Winter Solstice. The holiday celebrates the return of the light through the rebirth of the Sun. As I stared at the Sun low in the sky one afternoon last week, I wondered about a deeper meaning to Yule - the real meaning of Yule, if you will. In Christianity the "reason for the season" is the promise of the baby who will grow up to save humanity from darkness. Is there a larger magic to Yule as well?

I believe that we are all on the path of the Christ. We can all become Christed, or evolve into Christ consciousness, also called non-dual consciousness (for a deeper discussion of this see Jim Marion's Putting on the Mind of Christ). The journey towards non-dual consciousness is central to our incarnating on Earth. The birth of the Christ child is a metaphor for our own continual rebirth into higher levels of consciousness. And therefore so is the story of the birth of the light at Yule. It is our own light that is reborn at Yule.

I began to see how the Wheel of the Year, the progression of holidays spiraling through time as the Earth revolves around the Sun, is a story about our evolution as souls. The story of the God and Goddess through the Sabbats is our story. In fact, not just the earth's journey around the Sun, but the universe's story is our story. Or rather, our story is the universe's. As the universe exploded into being from the void, so did our souls. As it expands into the unknown, so do we. Eventually we will rejoin with the Creator, as planets do when their star expands into a supernova. All is one Story.






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Finding the True Self: Yuletide Dreams

A chilly snow fell all day; we went out several times to replace the frozen chicken water. A few days ago I collected eggs so frozen they had cracked the shells. The birds are puffed up and probably not terribly comfortable, but they are fine. It's a dry snow, so different from the heavy wet doom that fell in my childhood in the Pacific Northwest. It makes me love the Rocky Mountains, love Denver, love winter.

We put up our Yule tree yesterday, purchased from Tiri's garden which offers sustainably harvested trees and supports children's charities. Christmas when I was little was about my dad, who died a year and a half ago. Putting up the tree and listening to carols reminds me of him. I miss him. When I was younger I always dreamed of the Christmas I would have one day, my mom cooking dinner with excitement for a new recipe, my dad watching from the couch with a twinkle in his pale blue eyes, my husband and I laughing, and my children playing by the tree. This dream Christmas took place in the Pacific Northwest, green and salty and damp. We never had that Christmas, and now we never will.

I remind myself that in reality Dad was unhappy and cranky near the end of his life. The little time he did spend with my daughter, he didn't interact with her much. We found visits awkward because he was so in his own little world. But I can't help but wonder what he would have thought of my son, who is already, at three months old, so like him. They share the eye twinkle, the interested brow wrinkle, the open smile. I can't help but wish that Dad had gotten the medical and psychological help he needed to grow into a healthy sage man so that he could have met my son and spent Christmas with us here in Colorado, or we with them in Washington.

Instead, this year we celebrate with my husband's sister and niece and their families, who have, in all but history, become my family as well. My husband and I have had to do the dance of whose family traditions we will follow, but since we both come from midwestern Germanic stock the traditions aren't so dissimilar. And then my husband and I have also included Yule in the winter celebrations, not formally a part of our childhoods. I feel both sad to let go of the past and filled with joyful gratitude for the present.

I had a dream a few nights ago that I was searching for my birth family. In real life I am not adopted, but in my dream I had been. I told someone that I had to know who I might have been so that I could let go of that person before I could really be my true self. I feel like reflecting on the fantasies I once had around family and the holidays is a lot like that dream. Who did I want to be? Who will I never become? Who am I now? Most importantly, what can I release that no longer serves me, and then whom can I step into as my present self? The truth is, while a part of me longs for the Pacific Northwest and childhood dreams and traditions, I hate heavy wet snow and love the dry mountain air. I love my chickens. I love that we bought a sustainable tree that supports charities. All of these yuletide gifts are tied to the present in Colorado. So the fantasy yuletide I once dreamed of back in Washington state in some ways will never come true, and yet is manifest in ways I never could have dreamed of.

I imagine my father standing in my snowy backyard, laughing at the chilly puffed-up chickens, a cigarette dangling from one hand. He would have loved it here. I believe in some ways he is here, in me, in my son, in the life I've created as a suburban homesteader, for it was he who planted those seeds of self-sustainability when I was a child. Now he is free to be his true self, unencumbered by the struggles of his mortal life. Just as I am free now to continue to seek my true self as well.