The Heart of the Matter

There is a section of one of the Enki guides that deals very much with getting to the heart of the matter. With Enki this is in relation to the various subjects. Why do people do circle, or movement, or math, or Language Arts??? Beth breaks it down to the "essential energy" of the matter and really helps to bring great clarity to the topic.

With the threads I was talking about the other day, this is what I am trying to accomplish. I want to really identify the essential energy of what i am doing in my life and for my family and through recognizing it, make the effort to honor and nurture it.

Is there an essential energy to housework?

Yes, I believe their certainly is. For me that energy is coming from a need to provide my family with a home environment that nurtures us and supports our efforts. I am trying to look at each room and figure out how can i make this space really support us. Is their too much stuff and it is overwhelming to be in? Do we need better seating or lighting for comfy snuggled reading, or a set of good chairs for the kids to sit at while doing their writing, or a sink that fits my stones in it so I can clean them properly? I want to be sure that the choices I make in our home will set us up for less frustration and more success in our tasks. Of course it is important to me for it to be a beautiful space. I am very visual and having balance and beauty around us is very important. I also spend a great eal of my life and the lives of our chilren within our home. This is our starting point and our ending point, and on most days. our entire point. :-) We play here, we relax here, we nurture ouselves when we are ill, we eat, we entertain, we LIVE here. So of course this should be a wonderful space. My mother is a wonder at making wonderful spaces from hardly anything, I was able to learn a lot growing up about how important it is to surround yourself with beauty, no matter where you are. She could turn an old apartment into what looked like a big house by just taking the time and adding into it her love and her energy. So Im not talking fancy, or costly, just lovely and a space you want to be in.
Another aspect of the essential energy of our home is tradition. The creation of ritual around our regular tasks and lives. It is important to me that the kids feel a sense of importance in the simplicity of our lives. That they view our home as a part of our family and the choices we make for it, as important and having an impact on their lives. Dinner is served here, on this holiday we...., the tooth fairy always leaves the gem here.... things of this nature. A reverance for the daily. It is my honest belief that a lot of people view the home as last in their lives, and often feel that the glory in life is found outside the home. While I agree that a lot of amazing success and glory can be found outside the home, it is also my belief that the ability to recognize it when it comes stems from having a respect and understanding of home as the foundation for our lives. We never make decisions about career that will negatively effect our homelife, and when things turn that way, we pull back and reorganize so that home and family are again number one. So anyway, Im getting off track here, but having a reverence from what some people may feel is mundane, or routine, helps to build a respect for the home as a foundation and an essential platrform for success and joy.

So, in thinking it through now, I feel I have three main points or that the "Essential Energy" of housework and homemaking are...

• A means to nurture and support our family. Creating simplicity and a true usefulness with the choices we make for how to set our home up.
• Surrounding ourselves with beauty to inspire and feed our souls.
• Traditions and reverance. Creating a sense of importance in what we do within our home to allow us to honor this space as essential to our lives and our happiness.

So now to figure out how to get there!!!! Well, I really think the earlier thread regarding needing less will help us out in the simplicity and functionality of our home. We are trying to make choices to add things into our home that support the need for storage, for everything to have it's space, and to help with beauty and surrounding ourselves with inspiration. We are also trying to create spaces that support our needs for tradition or reverence. Although a slow process, it is coming along.

I need to harness this energy and use it when I am cleaning my house, remembering that I am not just doing chores, but I am moving within the energy of our home and supporting my family in a way that shows them love and helps us all feel nurtured and cared for.