In Lesson I, I projected that the reason people decorate is to get “energy.” This is not the scientific definition of the word but a life force. In the West we don’t have a word for this concept so we just use other terms like the Eastern “chi,” subtle energy, or just energy. Using the “energy” word, however, can cause problems in a culture that may not be receptive to its alternative use.
It is important, however, to explore this word because people seem to have an urge to address it in their environments. This chapter is an exploration in how individuals struggle to get their needs met in a culture that has no room for these concepts. For simplicity, in future writings, I will mostly use use the italicized “energy” to refer to this life force.
Going Around to the Backdoor
“Using a backdoor” is a euphemism for not being honest. Burglars go to the back of the house so they won’t be seen. Hackers create backdoors in computers to steal information.
I use the phrase to describe how we act when we fear being honest concerning our needs about energy and find other ways to express them.
Westerners use these backdoors to reveal their inner conflict on matter. Is it alive as the East sees it or is it dead as seen from a Western perspective? Western minds had removed spirit from matter to make room for the scientific way of life. It is hard to believe in both points of reference, a need for spirit yet an adherence to the Western idea, the spirit-matter divide. Yet that is what Westerners do, straddle both beliefs.
One one hand, they they need to connect with the spirit of things but on the other hand, still hold on to their cultural norms. They are also afraid to have their needs met in a culture that is hostile to animism. Backdoors seem to provide a temporary answer to these problems. Unfortunately, they expose the fear people have in talking about subtle energy.
The Backdoors Behind Decorating
Examining the backdoors around decorating can give insight into the conflicts over spirit and matter in the West. These back doors are:
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Looking to the East
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Hiding Behind Metaphors
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Misusing Science
Being spiritually nourished by one’s surroundings is a basic human need. Whether buying, collecting, or decorating, I believe all attention given to material goods is an unconscious search for something spiritual. This spirit is energy. It gives rooms their oomph, homes their embracing arms, and all spaces, private or public, a connection to an energizing force.
Backdoor One: Looking to the East for Answers
Feng Shui has become the favorite way of looking Eastward. Around 368K Americans are regular visitors to Feng Shui sites. People google the term every second, totaling two million times every month. Amazon alone sells 12,449 different Feng Shui books.
Feng Shui is a successful system. It has demonstrated a connection between energy and matter in the aesthetic realm. Using it exclusively, however, presents an issue. Even though it is somewhat diffused in the West, it simply cannot be fully understood. Using Feng Shui seems almost mystical, certainly magical: if we move “this and that,” we will create chi, which will bring prosperity. Such magical thinking, however, has its downside. More power is present in our actions when we understand how they can affect us.
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Most important of all, Westerners need to recognize that if they go to the East for answers, they should go there fully. I have often observed how certain individuals adopt an Eastern program involving matter yet only embrace it partway. My relatives, for example, once decided to use Marie Kondo’s tidying method to de-clutter their houses. When I asked them if they knew that the program was based on animism, that is all matter was alive, they hesitated.
While they were happy to follow the how-to’s, they stopped when asked to consider that their socks and shoes had feelings. That suggestion was too much for them. Going partially to the East and not embracing it fully because of Western cultural beliefs creates a divided self, and in that division, we send out a weakened intention.
To more full explain this cultural divide of the East and the West, I compared Feng Shui with the work of Abraham Maslow, a Western psychologist.
Maslow’s Work
Abraham Maslow’s ideas, referred to as the hierarchy of values or needs, have often been expressed by others in pyramids and similar graphics. The lowest level is the physical level and must be realized before the next level can be achieved. One must have food in the belly before one feels safe. Then once safe and nourished, one must have friendships and love before self-esteem manifests. The final goal is self-actualization.
Maslow’s Work Interpreted with a Humorous Twist
Sometimes in the tech age food is not the most important first step.
Aesthetics Is Part of the Pyramid
Occasionally I find a diagram that reflects beauty and harmony at the top of this step pyramid. One example is:
It is clear from this Western diagram that to achieve beauty, one must first have other needs met including food, shelter, security and companionship.
Yet the opposite occurs in Feng Shui. Decorating for chi comes first with an end result of the prosperity that brings food, shelter, security, and love.
Feng Shui Pyramid
So, I built my own pyramid of values based on how Feng Shui and other life force energy systems work. Compare it with the last Maslow diagrams and look at where beauty and prosperity lie
- Feng Shui indicates that aesthetics causes prosperity.
- Maslow’s hierarchy of values indicates that prosperity must be in place before aesthetics can be reached.
The thinking behind Maslow’s psychological pyramid is reflected throughout Western culture. Even in the field of aesthetics, the American saying, “Form follows function” (that is, practicality should come before beauty) is an architectural rule. Feng shui would always say function follows form. Consequently, a Westerner who uses Feng Shui does so in conflict with well established cultural norms, some which may be deeply ingrained to the point of being subliminal.
On the other hand, my scientist friend agrees with Maslow. After all he says, “When you are hungry, a thing of beauty is a ham sandwich.” Giggling my response, I question why we have to first feed one or the other, the belly or the eyes of the soul. Why can’t we do both at the same time?
Backdoor Two: Hiding Behind Metaphors
Metaphors can be a way of expressing esoteric ideas without taking responsibility for believing in them. It is a way of survival in the West. Jungian scholars use this backdoor in their writings. Their prose is beautiful, almost resembling poetry with metaphorical illusions to their theories. As psychologists, they are scientists but their discipline often takes them beyond what is provable.
Take the brilliant James Hillman. In his book, The Soul’s Code, He debunks both nurture and nature as responsible for forming the human character. Instead he refers to the core of character as based on the Greek Daimon, the indwelling spirit or an acorn which is already encoded with the trajectory of a person’s calling. As I read it, I kept questioning, “Isn’t his use of the word “acorn” just another word for reincarnation, an Eastern concept that is not user-friendly in the West?
Metaphors in Design
I found a similar use of metaphors in one of the best inspirational books on design. It is the brilliant, The Old Way of Seeing by the architect Jonathan Hale. I reflect on his book through out my writing, but unfortunately, he had to use a backdoor.
He uses the terms “ alive, dullness, lifeless, magic” and the lovely words to describe the old world of seeing,
“the old buildings sang,”
but he never uses the word energy. One has to ask, would the book have been a best seller if the author used terms like “energy, subtle energy, life force energy or chi” to describe the old way of seeing.
Metaphors in Design Magazines
Other institutions which use this backdoor are design books and magazines. In a short time, going through five major design magazines, I found the following words used in metaphors for recharging or depleting energy:
- dynamic, alive, invigorating, clarifying, magical, nurturing, mood enhancing, warm, stimulating, exciting, inspiring, loving environment, refreshing, aglow, vibrant, magnificent, spectacular
- quiets the mind, ennobles the spirit, calming, reduces anxiety, serene or serenity, realigning, reconnecting, recharge or recharging, rebuilding, restful
- depleting, stagnant, worn out, exhausting, rut
Although the adjective, “energetic” was used once, not one publication used the word energy. Yet the February 2013 issue of Architectural Digest’s front cover boasted in loud print “The Power of Design.”
Backdoor Three: Misusing Science
Another backdoor to using the words subtle energy is attempting to prove it with established scientific laws.
Since quantum physics became so popular, non- scientific writers use it to try to “prove” their writings. They often make horrible mistakes but it passes for truth. These writers are sometimes pejoratively called ‘quantum mystics.”
I fell into that trap myself, until one day my grandson, an astrophysicist took me aside. He said, “Grandma, you are not a quantum physicists so you can’t be using science to prove your theories. You can write about anything you want to as your own opinion.” Aside from clearing my writing, I started to see when science was being misused to prove metaphysical ideas. Yes there was a need to in the West to find a way to deal with subtle energy. Science is not the way. And the misuse of science is a backdoor.
The basis to the problem is a misunderstanding of Einstein’s equation. It indicated that matter and energy are interchangeable and that matter could be broken down into energy.
It became very easy to confuse the energy of the equation with subtle energy.
One example is a very popular book, Subtle Energy, Awakening to the Unseen Forces in Our Lives by William Collinge. The author states, “Earlier this century, Albert Einstein showed what the sages have taught for thousands of years: everything in our material world – animate and inanimate – is made of energy.” The author’s conclusion was that science now proved that subtle energy exists.
Another example of the same fallacy is a book which I just love: Vibrational Medicine by Dr. Richard Gerber.. He beautifully writes in great detail about all the many alternative healing modalities. His description of Bach, the discoverer of Bach Flower remedies brought tears to my eyes. He does not disappoint in detail and explanation.
Einstein Would Not Have Been Happy
Unfortunately, his premise is based on a fallacy. He echoes Collinge and others by referring to Einstein’s theories as a proof that subtle energy exists. He states that the Newtonian model has been replaced by the Tiller-Einstein model which shows that energy exists in all matter and this allows an explanation of why all these subtle energy based alternative medicines are proven as true.
I think if Einstein were to be reading these books right now, he would be cringing. His equation showed that energy could be created from matter but that energy was still the scientific form. Think the nuclear bomb. That energy released from some atoms were nuclear, heat and light. Nuclear energy is a scientific concept.
Subtle energy like chi or prana is a thing, a noun. Subtle energy does not have to be released from an atom. It is in an atom and all matter.ANDDDD it can not be proven to exist.
In his lifetime Einstein refuted that anything could be greater than the speed of light. Subtle energy , on the other hand is everywhere at once which is greater than the speed of light.
So to use Einstein to prove something that he did not believe in, is just another back door.
What to Do With Backdoors
So, how do we get rid of the need to use backdoors? How do we get our needs met when we create our personal environments? Unfortunately, such transformations are not easy unless we understand how we got there to begin with. Why is the thinking different in the West as opposed to the East, which compels many of us to reach out to the East to give us the answers we seek?
It all comes down to Western philosophy and the changes that happened over more than 2,500 years. Somewhere along the way, the belief that spirit is dislodged from matter, which persists up to this time.
It was not always that way. When Greek philosophy began with the Milesian school in the 6th century BCE, science and religion were melded. There was no distinction made between spirit and matter. The Milesians actually had no word for matter, for they believed everything was alive. Thales of Miletus, the father of Greek philosophy, claimed “the gods were in everything.”
So to get away from these back doors and be free to decorate for a more harmonious life, we have to explore our collective mind and how it has changed from tits ancient roots. We have to have an understanding of our cultural thinking about spirit and matter to decorate for energy.
In Conclusion
There are many ways to bring energy into our lives, but in the world of decorating I discuss only two: what we see and our relationship to the objects within our environment. I cannot explain why these ideas work. I only know instinctively that they help people feel and function better. Such ideas can be found in the ongoing lessons:
Remember this lesson is a metaphysical exploration. My theories are born in the laboratory of my own personal experience and are without scientific proof. We can, however, be open to possibilities.
As Jung said, “I shall not commit the fashionable stupidity of regarding everything I cannot explain as a fraud.”
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There are two parts to this website, The Lessons, which are more difficult in concept, and the blogs, which are lighter in nature. A blog you might enjoy with the same theme as Lesson Two is:
How to Cope with a Clutter Emergency
Please note that my website allows the reader to leave comments at the end of the blogs but not at the end of each lesson. If you have a comment or question about a lesson, you may email me at ruta@rutas-rules.com
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