Copyrighted by Lorna Tedder. Originally published in Third Degree and Rising.
Over the past couple of years, I’ve noted that my meditations include “metaphysical houses,” which are representative “structures” of the inner workings of a person, community, partnership, or situation. I didn’t set out to visit such places but rather, I just landed there and explored the territory, often without the owner being present or available at that moment.
I’ve wandered through my ex’s 3-story mansion with the heavy furniture and picture-perfect rooms but with a huge secret house of cubby holes in the back, mostly occupied by his mother but opening out onto a back patio of pleasant snapshot-posters of the girls and me many, many years ago. My ex was never present on those visits but the girls and his mom were.
Once I was invited into a dark, damp, dangerous place filled with basement rooms and spiraling staircases that seemed to devour anyone who stepped inside more than a few feet. I’ve stayed far away from her “house” since then and from the cruel little girl with dead eyes.
I’ve landed a few times at a cozy house on a cul-de-sac with a stream nearby and been told that the place belonged to The Treat. I’ve wandered through and talked with his mom (mothers seem to occupy the back rooms of so many of these metaphysical houses!) and smiled over his eclectic mix of pop culture furniture and ancient artifacts, all in a cozy home that was behind a busy office and reception area in the front of his home. Sometimes he wasn’t home and other times he was in his office and too busy to notice the steady trail of visitors—sometimes by the bus load. But he did reciprocate by visiting my own “house” more than once.
I’ve discovered that my own “metaphysical house” is based on the house I grew up in but it encompasses a huge portion of the family farm. So a “metaphysical house” is more than just a building. So many of my own memories reside there, as well as people I knew from long ago who have passed over.
But I think…I think I’m moving into a new house. A new “metaphysical house,” that is. And it’s really quite interesting what’s there.
In yesterday’s meditation, the girls accompanied me to a large house that’s very loosely based on the physical house we now share. Very. Loosely.
Our current house has never figured in my meditations at all. I have no idea why this is. There wasn’t much that related in this meditation except in regard to size and placement.
It seemed to have been built and left unoccupied for a while. I was familiar to some degree with the contents and floor plan of the house, but the situation reminded me of coming home after evacuating for a hurricane and not knowing exactly what I would find here….
The girls and I walk in together. The house is dark in most places and we immediately come upon a small animal—I can’t remember what it was!—and it runs out the open door. There’s a sense that this place has been empty for a while and waiting. Almost as if it were built long ago and lived in only briefly if at all. It’s almost as if Nature has taken it over in my absence and there is a sense of “checking out” the damage.
We hear a noise and think someone’s broken in and hiding there, but it’s just a silver-white and black raccoon, an animal usually associated with hidden knowledge and transformation. It runs off and I’m relieved that it’s just a small animal but a little disturbed that this place of dreams had been locked up so tightly and yet an animal that large was able to get inside.
I’m suddenly afraid that there was been major damage to this place and that surely somewhere in the house, I’ll find half the roof gone and gaping holes in the walls, so I trek through the house in search of any damage to this place. I must make sure it’s safe for my girls and me before we can move in, so I tell the girls to stay put while I look around.
On my first walk through the house, it’s dark, as if all the windows are boarded up and there’s no light. As I look around and remember the dreams I left here long ago, I see light pouring through the ceiling in places, through skylights, and in the sunrays, I see what I first think are dust motes. They’re not. They’re molecules. I can see the tiniest particles of energy in the sunshine here. I can see the tiniest structures and how things work far below normal physical sight.
I’ve covered every inch of the house except the back corner and still no sign of where the small animals came in, so I fear that the back corner—I can see sunlight in that room from the hallway—will feature a gaping hole in the ceiling.
No.
It’s just bright, white light coming through the windows. There is not damage. This place is still intact.
As I walk through the house, searching out damage, I find more and more sunshine. The entire house seems to brighten and become a home.
“Are you going upstairs?” Shannon asks.
“It’s a one-story house,” I remind her.
The girls point out the stairs, and I climb them to a second floor, a higher level that has been built in my absence. I’m stunned.
The entire higher level has been built atop the base of my dreams and visions. There are no windows and it’s dimly lit with no obvious source of light, but this is not a bad thing. It feels more like a wonderful secret place where no one gets to peek inside. Private, secluded. It’s huge, and there is no furniture whatsoever except for a king-sized bed in the middle of this sanctuary. The floor is artfully designed, the wood beautiful, and it overlooks parts of the house below.
The girls join me on the stairs and ooh and ahh over it, with Aislinn noting that we should add a rail so that any small children don’t fall over the edge.
They note where I might have a home office to write late at night or a sitting room for reading or even a little parlor for music. There’s space enough for all of it and more. Much, much more.
Then I realize what this higher level is.
It’s the space that’s been prepared for a coming relationship.
It’s ready, it’s secretive, it’s roomy, and it’s just waiting to be filled with whatever we want.
This is the new home I am preparing to move into.
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