Integrating my inner housewife
The surprising beauty of doing the dishes
I’ve been reading a bit about feng shui lately. It’s the study of how energy interacts with our environment—where it flows freely in our homes and where it gets stuck or stagnates.
Feng shui has its roots in China, just like qigong, which focuses on the flow of energy within us—through our body and mind.
I love discovering connections between the things I’m passionate about, so I was chuffed to come across the three pillars of feng shui:
Everything is alive.
Everything is connected.
Everything is changing.
Can you guess the connection I’m about to make?
These pillars map nicely onto Rigdzin Shikpo’s teaching of the three ever-present qualities of mind: openness, clarity, and sensitivity. And these qualities, in turn, connect to the vimoksha mukkhas—the doorways to freedom.
Everything is alive relates to sensitivity and the vimoksha of wishlessness: the experience of being fully present with whatever is alive in us right now, deeply sensitive to what’s happening.
Everything is connected resonates with the quality of openness and the vimoksha of emptiness. When we tune into openness, we see that everything is empty of divisions. Without divisions, everything is naturally interconnected.
Everything is changing reflects clarity and the vimoksha of signlessness. Though it is rather counter intuitive, when we stop pinning things down, labelling them and defining them they become clearer and more vivid.
This realisation opens up an exciting new thread for me: working with my home can also be a way of working with the lakshanas and vimokshas, and with openness, clarity, and sensitivity. So exciting, another way to integrate my inner housewife into my spiritual life!
