catapult magazine

Dream home

by Nancy Joy

When considering a new home, questions cascade like a waterfall. What will it look like?  Will it feel cozy or feel spacious?  Where will it be?  How will the sun hit it? Why is this home necessary? And so on.  In some of this drenching torrent are dreams of our own castle, memories of treasured homey places, projections into our future. Gaston Bachelard the French philosopher said, "The chief benefit of a house is to shelter daydreaming.  Home is a safe place to let our minds drift."  If this is so, it is no wonder that this one structure alone can bring us to our knees with questions of why, what, when, where and how to proceed as the idea to form sheltering space begins.

Bringing into being the shelter that will accept our dreams, our memories, and our hopes demands monumental effort. What makes a home the exquisite shelter in which we may daydream? As a holistic practitioner of subtle energy and a feng shui consultant, I am conscious of the home's influence on the inhabitants. The environment we create reveals our story and our journey and at the same time our home informs our self in the story and the journey. Consider the different story and different journey two different refrigerators could reveal. Contrast the refrigerator size of a Midwest college student with the refrigerator size of an organic farming family of six in Oregon. Focusing on the refrigerator alone while walking through these two homes reveals some of the inhabitants’ stories and journeys. So it is with every aspect of the shelter we create in which we choose to daydream.

Take the dreams you wish to bring into being and allow those dreams to answer the where, the what, the when, the how, and the why necessary to fulfill those dreams. Everything matters. The more aware we become, the more we become aware. Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he offered Mary the ability to possess such knowing—such awareness—that out of her inner most self would flow an unending source of refreshing cleansing power for her journey. Give your home some good scrutiny when you walk to your front door or the front door you want to create. Is the path easy to find, is it unobstructed, is it well lit, can you find the door handle, is it clean, does it work? How do you feel?  Are you welcome here, do you want to try another entrance?  Is this a place of social gatherings, or a place of quiet?

The tales our spaces tell of us reverberate with what is important to us.  This message continues to reinforce itself coming back to us over and over again as we move through the space we have created. Our life is a living creation and our shelter is part of our treasure from which we move inward and outward.