Creating Sacred Space
How can you find refuge from the pressures of your daily life and the reports of turmoil in the world?
How can you honour significant moments in your life or even enhance your appreciation of the small gifts in your everyday life?
And how can you reconnect with your spiritual centre on a daily basis?
By creating "sacred space" in your home, office or garden, you can make a place of renewal, where you can retreat and recharge for what lies ahead. You can be strengthened by reconnecting with Spirit in your everyday life and you can celebrate moments both big and small to also replenish your soul and sense of gratitude for what is right or special in your world.
We all pretty much like to decorate our homes, we paint them, we fill them with objects, or sometimes leave them very Zen like and spare. We clean them, we play music in them, we put pictures up, we garden around them. In many ways we are already, unwittingly perhaps, creating what can be called sacred space in our lives. Most of us are fairly conscious of creating a comfy place to lay our heads. But I am suggesting that a little extra awareness of how symbolic a home can be can take you so much further.
Having recently completed certification in a brand of feng shui called Interior Alignment® Instinctive Feng Shui™, this has become more and more apparent to me, although I had already been doing a lot of things to create sacred space in my home, some unconsciously, and some specifically for supporting the work I do as a Soul Coach, where I create a place to work in that reflects the intentions I am holding for the work I do with clients...in my case giving them supportive symbols to enhance their experience in a spiritual, uplifting and empowering way.
Denise Linn, my teacher and creator of both Soul Coaching® and Interior Alignment®, wrote a book back in 1995 called Sacred Space, and explains in great depth about "Clearing and enhancing the energy of your home" and indeed, Denise coined the term "Space Clearing".
Much of the book is a detailed account of how you can "clear" a space and change it's energy through both ancient and modern techniques. This includes everything from de-cluttering and cleaning on a very mundane level, to using color (paint and textiles and objects or art), to adding or being aware of symbolism and metaphor through the objects in your home. She addresses using techniques such as sound (bells, music), scent or smoke (smudging, incense, essential oils), water that has been "infused" with intention for what you want in your home (like your own "holy" water really), to other techniques about the placement of objects, the flow of energy and some of the traditional "cures" or "enhancements" drawn from traditional feng shui.
What's the purpose of all this you might ask? Just to make it look and smell good? Well, that may be an effect for sure, but this goes much deeper into the idea of what a home can and does represent in our lives, or could with enough awareness.
"Our homes are mirrors of ourselves", says Denise in the first line of the book, and "tell a story about how we feel about ourselves and the world around us."
Our homes are where we can rest, restore ourselves, retreat from the world, where we feel safe, nourished and re-equipped to attend to whatever we need and want to do in our families, our communities and our world as a whole. They are where we can pursue interests that we are passionate about, attend to our spiritual needs and sense of connection on a daily basis, take care of our health and physical well-being.
Therefore it is important to have a home that reflects our highest values and sense of who we are so that we feel in alignment on both an inner and outer level. And this is why Denise created her system of feng shui, drawing on both ancient Chinese and other world traditions, ancient and modern, and called it "Interior Alignment"®, because what we strive to do as practitioners is help a client move into alignment with their soul, with their deeper values and sense of self and purpose and so have their environment support and reflect and reinforce that purpose.
That's why feng shui works, we really put kind of an "energetic imprint" out there by what we place and arrange in our homes, what objects we keep, what colours we use, what sounds we allow, how clean and uncluttered it is. Feng shui looks at whether these things are in harmony with what we are trying to achieve or be in our lives or not, and also to some extent how it harmonizes with our natural surroundings as well, or how the exterior environment in turn supports us.
The underlying belief here is that everything has energy, everything has consciousness, and you are not really separate from the world around you. (basic premises of Interior Alignment®)
You know instinctively those times when you walk into a room or a building and you are either turned off or inspired immediately. It feels good or it feels not so good, or sometimes neutral. Sometimes it is decor, or colour or architectural details. Both colour and shapes have a direct impact on mood. Sometimes it is the smell or the lack of cleanliness. And sometimes there's a "vibe", an energetic imprint that you can't quite put your finger on but something makes you feel uncomfortable. It may be the people there, or it may be residual energy either emanating from the objects or even just the style, or that is held in the room from something that has happened there, perhaps even from a long time ago. Sometimes feng shui adjustments and/or redecorating can help a space, sometimes energies need to be "cleared" ceremonially and with intention (ie "Space Clearing" or even "ghost-busting"!), and sometimes it is the personality imprint/mood/attitude of whomever is there or who owns or resides there.
The idea of sacred space is nothing new, ancient cultures have always done things to try to bring their homes into harmony with the elements, the gods and their communities, often through ceremony, prayer, sacred smoke or smudge, scents, chanting and symbolic designs. Some of it might have been more fear-based in more superstitious times like trying to appease angry gods when in fact there was a weather or astronomical phenomenon that was not yet understood. But due to our innate longing for connection through tradition and ritual, we are still drawn to use many of the same methods to create that sense of specialness in our daily lives to enhance our feeling of well-being in our homes and a sense that we are connecting to our Source, however one may perceive that.
In my view, even without any knowledge of the concepts of Sacred Space or any sense of overt ceremony, we create sacred space all the time, we just don't call it that. When we lay the table for dinner and use nice place mats or a cloth and put out the flatware neatly, especially when we go a step further and put a candle or some flowers on the table, we have created sacred space. We have created a space that honours the meal and the people with you, and ideally that honouring is reflected in how people behave in that environment...they take more time and care, engage in conversation, appreciate the food when attention is given to how it is presented.
When we arrange our family photos in a collection of frames on a wall in a certain place or on a mantle or piano top, we are creating an unofficial "altar" to honour family and our connection to them. We should select pictures of those we love and respect and be conscious of the energy in the photographs, that we are at peace with whom is in them and how they were at the time of the photo, otherwise the energy coming from the image can be counter productive to our seeking a sense of peace and connection. Not many other objects we possess hold the kind of energetic imprint that family photos do, so it's good to be aware of this when displaying them.
When we prepare a special corner for ourselves to meditate or pray we can easily see that we might call that sacred space. But even when we have a favourite corner of the sun room, for e.g.., or by the fireplace, where we have "our chair", maybe a favourite throw blanket or pillow, a stack of our favourite books and perhaps a certain keepsake or photo that we love, that too can be sacred space. It is a place we have created just for ourselves, a spot we go to, probably regularly, to rest and recharge our batteries, unwind from the day and renew or take inspiration for the next.
Indeed what is more "sacred" than making special time in a special place that helps you not only honour those things you value most in your life...family, nourishment, spirituality, learning, love, but that helps you rest and feel better? Taking that time and creating those places in your home, your office, your life, helps to make you the best person you can be to live out your own purpose and to make whatever contribution to the world you have.
Denise says our homes can become "a collection point for energy" that in turn "will radiate this energy in the form of love and light to the rest of the world and the universe beyond."
I would add that not only would the home be radiating this energy, but if we can restore ourselves there this way, then we too radiate this energy. You know what it feels like to run into someone who drains you compared to one who inspires and uplifts? We can become the ones who inspire and uplift when we have been replenished by living in a harmonious and balanced home that supports our values and simply "feels good". Like the stone in the pond, the ripples of our energy and that of our homes travel out far beyond us. Why not choose to be a positive ripple?
Write a comment
- Required fields are marked with *.