Cultvating Sacred Space

We will undoubtedly at some point find ourselves in our life not relating to the space we occupy.  Maybe not at the  moment we move into a space, but sometime down the line we lose relationship with where we live.  We take for granted environments we fall in love with, much like the human/animal loved ones we purport to cherish.  We  may set up our sacred spaces with that love and honoring vibration present, but then we stop paying attention.  We stop paying attention to ourselves, our changes and this manifests in our environments.We internally become static.  Our external space in turn also becomes static.

I discuss this at length in the post Place, Space, Materiality and Health.  I hope in this post to expand on that previous post and discuss the relevant relationship of space and objects to myself and the reflection of my state to my space and what I surround myself with and how that relates to my well being.

As was mentioned in previous posts, everything is energy.  What happens when my sense of relationship with myself becomes thin or tenuous,  my sense of relationship to that which is outside of me becomes same.  As I renew myself regularly with hygiene practices, nutritious meals, clean water, movement and spirit renewal in regular prayer/meditation or play time, my external space needs to be considered similarly.  Space carries energy; objects carry energy.  This energy not only reflects on me but influences me.  We are on a continuous give and receive energy loop in relation to our insides and outsides.  When we break an aspect of this circulation by allowing stasis to move in, the rest of the cycle's rhythm and flow is arrested.  Our "castles" and "kingdoms" no longer are a place of haven and refuge, but a place that leaches on our energy and sense of peace.

Looking at space in relation to our well being is really interesting.  It reliably brings up my edges. My edges around my needs and wants, around the things I have and don't have, my longings and my discomforts. Everything I grapple with inside somehow manifests on the outside.  If it is one's tendency to become overwhelmed, looking at one's surrounds will probably elicit the same response in either an external emotional reaction or a shut down response.  A decade ago an exercise in maintaining an empty space helped me to look and consider space in an entirely different perspective.

I found myself with an almost empty room in my home and this was exciting.  I always wanted my own space a room of my own.  I had shared space with others for forever.  In my dreams, this room of my own would be empty.  When I found myself with this opportunity,  I made a pact that I would maintain the emptiness no matter what.  It took me six months of struggling to stay close to this wish to actualize it.  Not only did I have to fend off infidel household members who wanted to fill the space, I surprisingly found I was guilty of the same inclinations. There was no good reason not to fill it and I couldn't explain away to others or myself this pact.  But I gave my admittedly feeble reasons anyway ("just because").  And with some adamant vigilance the empty room stayed empty.  I meditated there.  I visited it often and wondered at the blank walls and open corners.  I rolled around on the floor frequently and layed in the sun spot which arrived between 3 and 4pm on winter days through the little attic window . And with the pleasure came the pain.  Those six months were very uncomfortable a lot of the time;  empty space, like a blank canvas is intimidating.  Initially, there is a lot of pressure to "do" something with it, to make it something, to identify the space.  It was uncomfortable for me to just let it be what it was, empty. I wanted to at least have a picture or a stool or little table there-- anything.  Letting it be empty was a direct reflection of what it was for me to allow an empty room to exist in myself, to allow space in myself to breathe.  It was a wonderful, revealing six months including more than a few moments of agonizing ambivalence. And with less and less struggle it stayed empty.  And now after that little-big exercise, creating and maintaining empty space for myself has been easier.

I mention this story because it illustrates how the animate and inanimate energetically move through periods together, influencing and creating relationship.  My usual self discounts this.  It doesn't recognize the relationship, the vitality and the drain that can be present in the relationship, the give and the take the influence on a self, on an intimate atmosphere.

Looking at personal space and making changes isn't something that should be quick or immediate.  Respect for the space is required and that means spending some time there without doing anything but sensitizing oneself to the qualities of the room.  How does the light move through, how do the walls, floor and ceiling respond to that?  What are the dynamic qualities in the room?  Where is it's magnetism, the place that draws my attention over and over again?  Like everything else in my life (hopefully) I need to make a relationship with it.  This means I don't bulldoze ahead and "do" stuff to the room.  I consider the room as I consider myself.  I take time with it and in it.

What do I need from the room? Is it a place I need a sense of repose and relaxation or one of stimulation?  Is it a community space, where I hope to gather others?  Is it a private place for my own beauty to show, a place for me to self-appreciate?  And what does the room need from me?  A warmth because it faces north? Help in finding its spaciousness due to its low ceilings? A grounding due to its odd dimensions or many corners?  The function of a room can change or can (or need to) harness several different functions.  How do I consider this in the quiet of my examination of the room?  Everything, including space has a certain energetic capacity.  How can I think about, be with the capacity of this room and help it keep its integrity (keeping my own in the process)?

When I respect myself and a space, the energies of both join and I am informed in a clear way as to how to proceed.  The creative that lives in us both is the informant to the color and objects necessary to create the whole that is asking to be met. This is an exciting and exquisitely profound experience of being matched and bringing what can be a healing to both self and space.  Taste and aesthetic have nothing to do with it.  It's about what is right for the partnership at the time.

When I am close to myself and the room in all these considerations, there is no right or wrong, there is just what is and what must be. When I am not close to myself, I behave mechanically, I lose my thoughtfulness, my consideration of myself and the room.  My intimate, personal space of repose becomes cluttered with things I "love" but which energetically takes up a lot of soul/psych space.  This largely occupied space becomes about these things not about me and the rooms purpose.  This intimate breathing, dreaming space is considerably diminished because of these other energetic occupants.  We have to make choices for the room (table or altar) and myself on behalf of the relationship.  It's an interesting exercise to test for yourself how much (psychic/soul/physical) capacity the space has to accommodate objects before it begins to not feel like the relationship which is required now between you and the space.

Cultivating sacred space requires us to practice this type of cultivation within ourselves first. Allowing breathing spaces within, opens those private, intimate spaces inside ourselves creating a respect for the small, quiet and unexpected. That sensitivity creates a relationship that then can be recognized outside oneself.  Outer sacred space is but a reflection of one's inner sacred space. 

Building the Heart of Your Fire

There are four components necessary to start a fire:  a fast, short lived resource which ignites quickly (ie: paper), a fairly fast longer living element (ie kindling), a long lasting burning source (wood logs) and finally oxygen.  Master fire starters tell me a fifth element is key:  a Heart.  A heart in a fire is the successful combination of the first four elements, the thing that keeps the fire burning, the center of a good blaze.  When you lose it, you lose the fire.

And so it is with us.

Our bodies require different sources to create fire (energy) and this is multi-layered and complex.  We need clean, nutritious food, water and whole (as opposed to partial) impressions to keep our organism balanced.  We require different forms of protein, carbohydrates, amino acids and minerals.  Some of those components are “quick igniters” (carbs), others are slow forms of energy (proteins).  Again, the “heart” of the daily fires we build is the sublime combination of these foods, the movement of our body, the quality of the breathing we do.  When we lose the heart or balance in our daily life, stress and toxicity move in, we lose the fire.

And so it also is with our “spirit” life.

As in all things, our spirit life needs tending much like the daily blaze we attempt to build in this complex organism.  It actually is not separate, but very much linked to the food of impressions, something easily dismissed as extraneous as we are bombarded by them from the minute we wake up until we go to sleep.  But for impressions to be nourishing they have to be whole; that is more of myself engaged in the receiving of them.

The “quick igniters”, the paper of impressions are ever present.  We usually try to live off of them, but they are fleeting and insubstantial, have a chaotic sense about them.  They are the impressions of the executive self.  The momentary impression of a mug in a drainboard that needs to be put away, the feel of the dirt on a floor and the idea it needs to be swept up; the “busy” components that fill me from dawn to dark.  The kindling, slightly more substantial impressions are ones I engage with for a longer period of time: a telephone conversation, the hanging of laundry, a purposeful trip down a supermarket aisle.  And the “logs”, slower burning impressions are the detailed “projects” we engage in for lengthy periods of time.  The painting of a room, the article researched and written, the group of patients I take care of on a given day. They are layered and dimensional impressions and engage the organism over a block of time .

What could be an interesting notion is that any of these elements, the quick igniters, kindling or logs in my daily life are vital and necessary aspects to the Heart of my daily fire.  The Heart finds it’s rhythm, by slowing down and opening up, including all my resources.  I become aware of the attraction in my chest to the pattern and color of the mug in the drainboard.  The shape is squarely in the palm of my hand while my feet do their turn to place it with a modicum of awareness where it belongs on the shelf.  All of a sudden the cursory glance and impression are filled out, become more whole.  I’ve made relationship with the object.  More of me is involved, not just my executive decision maker.  Painting a room may involve many long pauses of consideration.  A slowness in my internal mechanism transpires, not necessarily in my external.  My interior becomes more spacious by including the light from the window.  It occurs to me to take better care, more thought in the laying of drop cloths, placement of ladders and paint trays.  They no longer are annoyingly incidental, but part of the process. My usually rushed end-product self relaxes into the fire being created, the impressions expanding (the Heart) in the process.

The thing about building a fire, is that you can watch a master do it, but you really don’t know how until you’ve tried and failed (repeatedly) in your own way yourself.  Tips are accepted, but it is taking responsibility for the event, the watching and waiting and inclinations one feels while the fire attempts to take off.  The subtle awareness one has in oneself, the seeing what it needs, the surprise, the doubt, disappointment and willingness to give it another go when it sputters out. Where is it waning? What does it need?  Where is the Heart?

And so it is with us.

Place Travel: Experiencing Culture

The experience of being in another culture foreign from the one you usually find yourself is valuable on many levels.  It forces us to alter our habits and witness the values of others, as surreal as it may sometimes be. There is an internal tugging that goes on frequently, when differences are before you.  "I don't like this.... I don't like that" are frequently felt.  It is liberating to have the experience of necessarily detaching from these likes and dislikes in order to get through the day.  It opens our internal doors and windows and allows another breeze to blow through.

One doesn’t have to go far to “travel” to other cultures.  The Mall and Walmart are foreign cultures to many:  Chinatown-USA, a boyscout camp, an outdoor fish market, a truck stop.  Cultural dynamics are everywhere; family of origin, college campus’, places of worship.  All geographical areas have their unique and peculiar culture (shore communities, wooded rural places, mountain, metropolis’, poor, working-class, affluent).  Fast food restaurants, Whole Foods, Starbucks, food co-ops, hospitals all work hard at evolving a human business culture.  The lighting, the layout of space, operation procedures are all ways they intentionally attract customers.

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Our bodies, minds and spirits are challenged on an ongoing basis when on foreign soil. Experiencing differences is the norm. Differences of energy, foods, people/personalities, sounds of places,-- ordinary sounds like languages and indigenous insects/animals wake up intimate parts of myself.  I begin to open, have an internal expansion, not only to the outside, but to the inside.  I sometimes experience a closing, when judgments or criticisms are ever present in small gnat-y ways and in larger reactions. I travel with these openings/closings as I traverse these various terrains.  I’m “shook” up by the cultural details and impressions.

Most of us continually make choices to travel or not, to subject ourselves to other cultures. We often choose to not enter cultures that challenge our own well established internal ones.  Probably the most rich aspect of “space travel” is a recognition of my own internal culture.  I begin to notice the flexible and inflexible parts of myself willing and unwilling to shift to accommodate the differences. My energy changes depending on an internal defense to the outside or conversely, a welcoming that is available to the foreign.  The more I am aware of this internal culture, the better prepared I am going to these other places.  

I know there could be tension visiting my friend because he doesn’t care about what he eats, but I care about what I eat.  I want to allow him to have his food culture, while still respecting mine.  Ahead of time I decide to not talk about food or nutrition unless he asks me with genuine interest, to suspend the likely judgment I will have surrounded by his white bread and make sure I obtain good, whole grain bread for myself for breakfasts.  Low and behold, our affection and care for each other is able to survive our differences.  And we both eat what we want with only a few shared loving wise cracks in between.

What resources of our own personal internal culture are available to us, that we draw upon whether it be on a hot crowded train, standing-room-only traversing India’s countryside or sharing a semi-private hospital room with a non-stop TV watcher-roomate? The answer can never be, not to travel.  Traveling is inevitable.  Cultures collide, they are around every corner. Perhaps, Know thyself.  Accept what is.  Enjoy life.

The Fine Art of Self Soothing

I’ve blogged regularly on the subject of anxiety (Oy Vay: High Anxiety),  the possible reasons for the exponential increase over the last several years of the culture’s anxiety and possible ways to approach it holistically.  Most of what I write about has been in the context of the adult population.  This post mostly concerns children and young adults.

Once upon a time, and long long long ago, generations of parents cultivated in their babies and young children the art of self soothing.  This was a spontaneous and natural response on parent’s parts, probably learned from generations before them, involving bed time rituals to settle their kids: warm, relaxing baths, melodically read bed time stories, oils massaged into their necks and temples and sung lullabies.  It was (subliminally?) considered an unconditional love time when the central nervous system settles down for the night, the mom and child’s breathing rhythms match up and synchronize and a sense of calm, all-is-well-in-the-world takes precedence.  Everybody in the home would dial it back a bit and a sense of safety, oneness and wellbeing was shared.

There is a natural response to the sun setting, darkness moving in, and the universal signal by our circadian rhythm to quiet and sleep.  There are many variations on this.  In a darkened bedroom, a parent sitting with a child listening together to the crickets or bullfrogs outside, something they do in the summer months when the windows are open, the curtain fluttering languidly against the sill.  Sometimes there is a few spare murmurs between them on the mutuality of the share. Night sounds. Sounds that becomes associated with rest, repose and comfort.  Subliminal images and an ambiance that trigger in oneself from an early age that all is well. It just as easily could be the urban sound of cars moving on the street outside, an occasional muffled horn sounding or the magical non-sound of snow falling, collecting on trees or pavement.  There is a sense of safety in the nightly being tucked in in a particular way and the comfort of no light, maybe sounds of family moving in a kitchen, inaudible voices in conversation or other household members making their own sleep preparations.

I think these night-time rituals must still go on to some extent in most households across the world; how could they not, they bring delight and peace to all.  But it is a different world we live in now, and the children are anxious. There is a trend of popping Melatonin for 12 year olds and kids reporting they can’t go to sleep for hours after lying down. The members of today’s nuclear family often each have a bedroom of their own, thus the comforting sounds of a sister or brother in a bunk above snoring lightly aren’t present to a sibling as they find their way to sleep.

It’s a more complicated world, with more tenacious tensions. And somehow, parents (for all the reasons mentioned in my other posts dealing with anxiety) aren’t managing their own tensions well, which obviously osmotically affects their children. Adults perhaps don’t have a sense of their own containment or a value for the sublime and ephemeral markers which produce a perfect repose.  It may be akin to the difference of writing a letter by hand instead of sending an email or singing a song instead of playing it on a CD player, or reading a story aloud instead of hearing it on an electronic device.  Something of great value transpires in the direct human expression that will never be matched otherwise by anything else.  Children energetically require this.  And they are missing it.

So, we have children experiencing adult challenges (like insomnia) and being treated like adults in how it is remedied. Especially babies and children need to learn the fine art of self soothing. And probably direct information is not the best approach (breathing techniques, relaxation exercises, etc).  Accessing their imaginations in a positive way around the ending of a day and the beginning of a night, providing markers and repetitive opportunities to help them identify in their own unique way that which relaxes them would be a tremendous act of charity they will have their entire lives to draw upon. Parents realizing one’s own held tensions, hypervigiliance, lack of trust of the unfolding of the day, of a childhood, of a life is a big start.

For many families, child-rearing has become a very tense, uber-planned, perfection-oriented feat to perform.  When really, it is this natural exploration of being in relationship with someone who has these huge growth and evolutionary leaps over a twenty year period.  Life moves extremely quickly when raising a child, we want to grasp a knowing what to do when we’re stymied.  Understandably.  But this inability to have a spontaneous response and reliance on contrived and strategized approaches can be stifling, especially to an open perception, which is a child. 

I have a sense this is anxiety producing for kids; this lack of trust of the unknown which their parents and other adults around them suffer.  And nothing makes a kid more anxious than (energetically) witnessing a suffering parent.

Nature as Healing

If you had told me last week I would be studying a chipmunk, it's movements and apparent hygiene habits for over an hour on a given day this week, I probably would have said you were crazy.  But it happened.  Who has the time (besides a rodent-ologist) to do that?  Anyone who spends a prolonged period of time out doors is subject to nature's spell.

"Nature's spell" being, a much slower vibration than the modern, technology-fraught one most of us are subject to all the time. We are subject to nature's energies when we are among trees, plants, water, wild animals, air currents and the stars for lengthy periods.  They impact us.  Their vibration is much slower.  Nature's energy is a-buzz with constant activity.  But its layered and varied and harmonious with that which is around it.  Most of all, it is related.

From the decaying matter at the forest's sub-terrain with it's trillions of microbes, bacteria and insects relating to its matter and each other to the wild animals that navigate it and interface with it's layers.  Woodpeckers impact a tree's life by it's constant hammering, drilling holes, releasing from layers of bark the life working in the tree. Wind and storms topple weakened trees providing homes to live in, mulch for the ground below, fertile foundations for moss and fungi to thrive.

From a human perspective, nature can be violent and apparently ruthless. But somehow it is always related.  The great black bear of Alaska in salmon season can be seen grabbing flying fish in mid-air, taking down it's prey in a gory spectacle.  But it never takes more than it needs.  No wild thing acts outside of it's nature, because it is living it's nature.

I think we become more sensitized to outside nature's vibrations just because its mass is so immense (compared to our own relatively puny mass); our internal senses are trumped by the shear mass of nature's relating vibration surrounding us.  Our own nature's vibration is Us.  You'd think it would be hard to miss, this nature running through us. But much of our internal workings are automatic (thankfully).  We don't have to think or have an awareness of our respiratory, endocrine or cardiac systems for them to function.  Whereas that is very convenient on most days, the other side of the coin is that we take our functions for granted and usually have forgotten they are doing a massive job without any of our (gross) attention. This lack of awareness in a way desensitizes us to the more opaque layers of our energetic self.

What could be the importance of having an awareness of one's own nature?  The awareness of having a more sensitized connection to external nature is a clue.  We "See" as we become more sensitive to nature's vibration, we begin to experience the layers of relationship. We naturally start to develop an appreciation for that and a more acute energetic listening capacity.  The same is true when the nature springs from within. Becoming more aware and connected to this deeper vibrational aspect of nature and myself can only support our health, function and sensitivity to same.  This relatedness we bring to the world and our relationships is our human inheritance, a gift from the natural world.

photo courtesy:  Mie Sato

Place, Space, Materiality and Health

Everything is material.  Everything is energy.  Everything has Qi. A closet, a room, a house are layers of embedded self.  Our "stuff" is charged with energy.  Likewise, most of our other stuff crammed into closets, buried in corners never to see the light of day, are energetically static, becoming a drain on our personal energy, and the collective energy of the space. A room, a house, objects are living, breathing things.  They bring life or they don't.  What animates them is my relationship to them.

Besides for hygiene purposes, we regularly bathe to clear our inner and outter energy fields.  Usually, we relax in a bath or shower, breathe deeper (moving the internal energies) and cleanse that which has energetically stuck to us on a given day.  Why would it be any different in a world where there is Oneness, even in regards to inanimate objects?  That which we surround ourselves and live with needs to be cared for in a similar way in which we care for our bodies.

Our materiality needs to be met, attended to.  Things that remain broken and uncared for reflect our own defunct state.  Things that are in order support a life, allowing it to work well.

What makes us so attached to the things we own, the things we don't really want or need?  Why don't we want to take care of what we have, what possessions we surround ourselves with?  What makes us hold onto more than we can handle, more than what we can attend to?

What does it mean to attend to an object, to exchange energy with something that is material (usually inanimate)?  Giving attention to an object is an exchange of energy; it acknowledges the space it takes up and therefore the space at large.  We create a place with our attention to that which we live with.  Looking at a picture, admiring it or disliking it, moving one's memory in regards to it is "owning" it and reaffirming one's relationship to it. Running a cloth or duster over objects is recognizing them, recognizing their need to have attention.  In the act of care, we acknowledge our relationship to it.  Similarly, our act of neglect recognizes our lack of relationship to the object.

What is the first thing I wake up to?  An altar created with prized objects that affirm their worth, my worth, that changes periodically depending on where I am in myself?  Or do I wake to a pile of dusty books? unfolded laundry? spent flowers in a tired vase? Papers stacked on a side table I don't want to deal with? Is the first thing I see upon waking energizing, hopeful, an impression that beckons my life to this new day ---or is it another  unattended "thing" to be ignored for the millionth time, unseen, unloved, uncared for?  This connection to inanimate objects are real and vibrant relationships that manifest all types of energy through my life and effect me and my health every day and every night.

How do I take care?  Where don't I?  How is that related to my present day reality? Does the pattern of attention (or in-attention) follow me from room to room?  Where is the place of choice?  Having choice as to what is in my life and what is not in my life. Is the collection of objects or clothes or shoes a decision not to make a choice?  Accruing materiality.  Crowding inner and outter space.  Denying Place. Not facing the energy gotten and given by such things, not acknowledging the depletion, sometimes depression these things (by no fault of their own) exert.  A type of negativity is rendered  because of my refusal to validate the relationship I have with them. How many decades has it been since I pulled that book off the shelf?  How many years ago did I last wear that dress?

Forget the psychology of objects, and "owning".  Remember the energetic dynamics that play on and impact one's life with these things and the subsequent layers of memory, influence and connection created. Engage with the concept of being a "good householder".  One's health depends upon it.