Everything in Our Environments Affects Us


Wherever there is a touch of color, a note of a song, grace in a form,
this is our call to love.
�?Rabindranath Tagore, Nobel laureate and Indian poet, 1861�?941


Have you ever felt irritable, annoyed or perhaps argumentative with your spouse for no apparent reason when you were out shopping? Have you felt rushed, distracted or spacey after spending a few minutes in a retail store? Have you ever walked into a restaurant, felt a little uncomfortable and walked out again moments later; or maybe you stayed and had a nagging feeling that you should have left? Perhaps the music was too loud or poorly chosen, the lighting too harsh or dim; maybe the tables felt cluttered or chaotic, the ambience sterile or grungy, or something somehow just didn’t feel right. Have you ever walked into the home of a friend or relative and immediately felt uncomfortable or ill at ease, perhaps for similar reasons?

These experiences are often the result of being in an unconscious environment. A conscious environment is designed to soothe the soul, relax the nervous system and make us feel at home. Even subtle things like lighting, color choices, smells and music can either soothe or disturb our senses, our consciousness, and our subconscious.

Wherever we go, we are affected by our surroundings. We generally have little control over environments out in the world. Our homes are the most significant environments that we can control. We get to decide what we bring into or remove from our homes. We get to say what stays and what goes. We get to choose where we put things and how we arrange them. We can design our homes as we wish, according to our own visions. After being in the out-of-control world, we generally look forward to going home to be in the one place where we can relax, let go, feel safe and be completely ourselves.

So, when designing our living spaces, it is important to remember that everything we bring into our homes �?each piece of furniture or art, every object, from a cushion to a copper saucepan �?has its own feeling and creates an effect. Each combination of objects and elements �?shapes, patterns, colors, textures and scents �?does the same. Every choice we make, practical or creative, also embodies a feeling and produces an effect. And the combination of all the elements together creates an environment, an ambience, in the same way that all of the separate ingredients combined in a soup create the final flavor of the broth. So we need to be especially conscious about the things we bring into our homes. We need to consider, observe and consciously feel their effects on us. It’s up to us to decide the effect we want our environments to have on us, and then consciously create environments that have that effect.

Ask yourself the following questions: “What do I want to see, feel and be surrounded by in my home? What do I want my living environment to look like and evoke in me? How do I want it to serve me?�?

Everyone’s tastes and desires differ. It’s your tastes and desires that matter. Do you desire more beauty and style, more tranquility and harmony? Do you prefer Zen-like elegance, spare and understated, or plush comfort and a lavish look? Discover your own aesthetic. Trust yourself and your vision. This is essential to creating a unique, personal, meaningful environment where you will be happy living and sharing with your family and friends.

Sacred home design requires conscious reflection, a spiritual intention, some imagination and maybe a little education. In the process of designing your home, you’ll develop a keener eye and a more refined sensibility. You’ll become more attuned to the visual, sensual and spatial dimensions of your home. You’ll also deepen your connection with yourself.

To create a home that is a temple for your spirit, you must know or discover what you really want, need, appreciate, desire and love. Then, by design, you can creatively anchor and evoke into your home any quality you choose and any feeling, meaning, mood or memory that you want present and alive in your life.

Reenvisioning Any Space


Our grace is making the invisible visible…and the feelings of the heart when they manifest are beauty itself. When others see it, they attune to their own beauty. So your designs are designs for ecstatic, graceful living.
�?Dr. Gurcharan Khalsa


A quality living design isn’t created in a vacuum or out of a theory. The person living in the space is essential to create a living environment that works for that individual at every level. The best home design is even a creative projection, into the environment, of the person who lives there. And that person is you. So who you are, what you like and what makes you feel alive are essential to the process. When you project your vision, aesthetically and functionally, into three-dimensional space, you create a comfortable, delightful, beautiful environment that expresses and nurtures your essential self.

To design a home that truly reflects and embraces you, that you find beautiful, pleasing and comfortable, it helps to view the space as if for the first time, with new eyes and a “beginner’s mind.�?How can you see, from a new perspective, something you’ve grown used to, that you’re utterly familiar with, that you take for granted.

To see your home with new eyes, you’ll need to interact with it in a different way, look at it from different viewpoints. Most of us were taught to see space as empty or flat, or we were never taught to notice it at all. We notice objects and perimeters, but tend to ignore space and forget to take it into account. But space isn’t empty or nonexistent. Every space has its own quality, depth and temperament.

When I help clients design their home interiors, I look through the rooms and spaces from multiple perspectives, from different physical locations. I also talk with them and get to know them a bit. I need to know some essentials about them to help them find their design. What are the essentials about you that you need to take into account in creating your own interior design?

For example, who else lives in your home with you? What are your practical needs? What experiences and activities do you want to have in any particular space? What are your emotional and spiritual needs? What feelings, reflections or memories do you want the space to evoke in you or invite you into? What part of yourself or your life do you want your home, or any space within it, to express? How do you want others to feel when they come to visit? Do you want your living environment to foster tranquility, harmony, playfulness, sensuality, creativity, inspiration or spirituality? What colors do you like? What kinds of images or art deeply affect you? What do you do for a living? What are your personal interests, your fascinations, your tastes in music, art, travel and life?

After pondering these questions, do the meditative exercise below. It will help you look at your home with new eyes, and see and feel the spaces in a new way.

Walk through your home. Spend time in each room and each space you want to transform. Explore, pay attention and be present. Look, listen, feel and imagine into and through each space. Listen to the space. Listen to your gut. Listen to yourself the way you would listen to a child. Believe that your heart, creativity, consciousness, sacred intentions and positive projections combined can create a space that is loving, restorative and uplifting to you, your family and those who come to visit.

At different times of day, sit or stand in various areas in each room to get different perspectives. Investigate your home with a beginner’s mind. Pretend you’ve never been there before, that you’re seeing it for the first time. Listen to it, notice it, smell it, feel it. What do you see? What do you see past? What do you see through? How does it feel? How do the qualities of the space affect you? Are they calm, still, shadowy, flowing or bright? Do you feel comfortable? Are you restless? Are you centered and calm? What draws your eye from any point in the room?

What are the components in each room? Notice and feel the walls, their shadows as well as their colors. Are the colors stark, oppressive, bland? Are they warm, vibrant, soothing? Notice and feel the lighting. Do you like the fixtures? Turn the lights on and off. Are they too bright or too dim? How do they feel? What are the particular needs of each room? Bathroom lighting ought to be bright, for good mirror reflection. We need to see ourselves clearly to shave, brush our hair, put on makeup, or get ready for work or to go out on the town. Bedroom light should be softer, warmer, less intrusive.

What about the windows? Do you have quality curtains, basic white or off-white blinds? Do they feel good, or are they merely baseline functional? What would look and feel good here and there with the furniture, lighting, carpets, paint, blinds? What do you really want? What would you love? What can you afford? What are your options? What is possible? What comes to mind as you look at any space and any component in any room? Ask yourself, how can this space be used? What could it look like? What would I like it to be? Ask yourself, how can this space serve me? Think creatively.

Do a slow walk-through of your home, starting outside the front entrance. What do you see when you approach the front door; when you first enter the house; as you walk, from different directions, through the house, down its halls, into and through its rooms? At each point, what naturally draws your attention?

As you do these exploratory exercises, keep a pen and notepad handy. Notice what opens up in you or becomes clear to you. Write down meaningful impressions and creative ideas that come to you. As you do these exercises, you’ll feel your perspective shift as you access a new clarity and vision. This will help you make practical and creative choices that delight and feel right to you.

At some point you may feel intuitively drawn to certain colors, tones, images or other elements. You’ll be intuitively guided to helpful information and resources. You’ll want to do outside research: go to furniture stores, bookstores, the library; look at photographs in magazines, on websites and in books like this one.

You don’t have to be an expert in sacred design to turn your home into an altared space. All it takes is some conscious reflection, some inspiration, and maybe a little help. Then, in the process of doing it, you’ll discover how to do it. The ideas, suggestions, exercises and photographs in this book will support you in this endeavor.

There are two ways of living in this world: the way of worry and the way of relaxation. If you worry, you have to concentrate to imagine, and it becomes physical work. But if you turn your mind to the Universal Mind,
then things will come to you.
�?Yogi Bhajan


Remember, your commitment, intentions, vision and faith are the keys to creating a home that feels like home in every area, that is truly a temple for your spirit. So it’s important not to pressure yourself or allow others to pressure you. Take your time, and let the process take its time. Don’t rush things. Don’t set arbitrary deadlines. Don’t invite anyone into the process who will pressure you to rush decisions or criticize your choices, or whose motives or judgment you don’t completely trust. Be aware that the emotional and energetic qualities you bring to this process will infuse and linger in your home.

A good therapist knows that when partners view one another as problems to be fixed, the relationship tends to degenerate into a battle of wills in which both partners lose, even when one apparently wins. A similar principle applies to home design. So don’t approach your home negatively, as a problem to be fixed, but positively, as a creative challenge or opportunity. Approach it in a spirit of cooperation and enthusiasm. Be a partner with your home in the design process. Listen to your home, feel it, appreciate it. Cocreate with the way the energy of your home naturally flows. Follow its leadings. Adapt to its qualities. Let trust and enthusiasm inform the entire process from beginning to end.

Approaching your home design in this relational way is part of what will make it your temple. No object, statue or piece of furniture, no “correct�?spiritual arrangement of elements, makes an environment sacred. Your visioning, intentions and involved relationship with each phase of the process are an investment of your spirit that makes your home sacred.


Did you ever see an unhappy horse? Did you ever see bird that had the blues? One reason why birds and horses are not unhappy is because they are not trying to impress other birds and horses.
�?Dale Carnegie

In the same way that our attitudes and intentions can invoke the sacred, they can also banish the sacred by provoking tension, restlessness and discomfort. Our attitudes and priorities around the things in our homes, relative to the people who live there or come to visit, affect those people and our home environments.

Last year I went to a shop in Beverly Hills to buy some quality cheese. It was a reminder gift to my wife of our beautiful trip to Paris the previous Christmas. Many of the terrific meals we had eaten in the Parisian restaurants had involved delicious cheese. I bought a large wedge of very fine white truffle cheese, took it home and put it in the fridge. The next day I took it out, intending to sample it.

“Hey Jagatjoti,�?my wife said. “Should we save the cheese for company tonight?�?

“Oh, this is company cheese?�?I joked. “So we only get house cheese? I want company cheese!�?

“I want company cheese too!�?said my almost–three-year-old daughter. But she was completely serious. Soon she and I were chanting together, “We want company cheese! We want company cheese!�?

Of course my wife appreciated my silly humor, and we all ended up eating company cheese. Company cheese is now a family joke. But it points to a real principle about how to live, and not live, in our own homes. The principle is this: first and foremost, home should serve the people who live there. But sometimes we set up a home environment for the benefit of others, at the expense of those who live in it. This is a company-cheese mentality. It creates tension and discomfort, and makes people (usually the children) second-class citizens in their own homes.

That was the problem in the perfect designer home in which I grew up. For example, our dining room had a beautiful mahogany table. God forbid that it should’ve ever been scratched, or eaten at for that matter. Heaven help us if it should’ve ever suffered a water stain! So I never felt comfortable at that table. It was a company table in a company room. I only sat there once or twice a year for family holidays. The rest of the time we ate at the table in the kitchen.

So I don’t believe in having “company�?furniture, food, rooms or spaces in a home. Nothing kills an altared space like the feeling that you don’t belong or aren’t welcome. A home feels best when everyone who lives there feels welcome and at home in every part (although we ought to have privacy and dominion in our own bedrooms.) No company cheese!

In this spirit, I suggest not buying furniture that, if it got scratched or stained in the course of living, would ruin your day. Do not buy furniture that, if your child opened it or hid something in it, would make you feel that you’d been violated. Don’t buy “freak-out�?furniture that, if someone went near it or used it without following specified protocols, would send you into semi–rigor mortis. Don’t invest furniture and other home items with your neuroses. No company furniture! Let it all be used!

When things in a home become more important than the peace and comfort of the people who live there, you no longer have an altared space. If you have a fine wooden table that you don’t want to get water stained, keep plenty of coasters available or be willing to refinish it later with no regrets or complaints. Better yet, don’t worry on principle.

Furniture that you worry about becomes a potential booby trap in your home. Such pieces become magnets, attracting the very things that will blow up your peace of mind and drive you crazy. They will create subliminal tension in you, your family, your guests and your home. As a child, did you ever go to the home of a friend to find plastic covers on their living room couches and chairs? If you’re like me, it didn’t make you feel welcome or at home. Our use and enjoyment of the things in our homes ought to be a higher priority than whether or not they get scratched, nicked, marked or stained over time.

A company-cheese mentality is a kind of stinginess or poverty consciousness. It’s about controlling, hoarding or holding tightly onto things. It’s similar to a miser living in poverty with a fortune hidden under the mattress. Be expansive in your home! Let it all be available for use! Let the living commence! Let everyone eat the company cheese!

Copyright © 2007 Palace Publishing Group, San Rafael, CA, www.palacepress.com