Spiritual Housekeeping....

Hi Everyone!

I always find it interesting to watch people--but that includes myself, too. Maybe, because I’m a writer, I pay attention to a lot of nuances other people don’t have to check out or watch. In building a character for a book, it’s all about nuances....shades...hues...tones....that make a hero or heroine real to the reader or not. But all of that ability, at least for me, comes from paying attention. To myself. To others. We are all, ultimately, fascinating to watch. Or so I think.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
While cleaning out the hogan and moving books to my new office, this thunder being rolled overhead. It was spectacular in that you could see the cumulonimbus mammatus and the 'fingers' of energy and the winds pushing this big boy. Awesome! Powerful! Aho!

Which leads me to today’s focus: spiritual housekeeping. Remember I told you that the flood of December 30, 2004 sent a 1000 books, and all our ‘good stuff’ out to my hogan? It was the only dry, safe place to put things since we had no idea of how high Oak Creek was going to rise that time. And since that awful day, my hogan, which was my spiritual connection where I meditated daily and did my yoga, was no longer available to me--so I quit do these things that fed and kept my spirit in balance. It was as if my spiritual abode had suddenly been taken from me. I didn’t like it, of course and at first, it was awful. But after awhile, I let it go. Wrong thing to do.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is part of my hogan. A hogan is a Navajo term for an 8-sided structure. Each side represents a major or minor direction (4 major directions, 4 minor ones). And the door always faces East to the rising sun. When I was twelve years old we lived at Ft. Wingate, New Mexico, on the Navajo Reservation. Coffee-Chili, a very old Navajo man, adopted us. He lived with us. My father and he communicated in sign language. Coffee-Chili didn't know English and my father didn't know Navajo. It was on of the best years of my life. I loved Coffee-Chili as if he were my grandfather and having a hogan always reminds me of him, my love for him, and my love and respect for the Navajo people.


But I had a lot of other things going on that were life shattering in December of 2004 onward to this day, so I released something that I shouldn’t have. Choices...we all make them. And this choice has taken me until now....to roll up my shirt sleeves and start moving the books and other furniture, the CD’s, the stereo speakers, the paintings, my beloved art glass--all up to my new office that Dave and Michael Foltz built a year ago.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is another angle of my hogan. You can see my trust canary yellow Dyson vacuum which is worth its weight in gold. You can also imagine that there was nothing in this hogan, other than my altar--and now as you look around, there's lots of stuff in here! And much of it will stay. For example, all my homeopathy (white bookshelves) must stay here because if we get flooded out again, I don't want to have to try and save and run all this stuff out of the house one more time. So, all the remedies will stay in the hogan where they'll get all that great vortex energy!

It had been standing empty. But my focus was elsewhere--out of balance--and I could have started traipsing up and down the steps from my hogan to my new office a long time before this. But I just didn’t have the heart, the passion or desire to do it. And yet, my spiritual house was crapped up and ladened with ’stuff’. And so was my internal spirit in just as dire a straits.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is an unknown flower that just popped up and bloomed today--thanks to our weekly monsoons in the canyon. Now that I have all my arizona flower identification books in my new office--all in one place--I can run up there tomorrow and hopefully find its name! That's refreshing just to do that much!


There’s always a breakdown for a breakthrough. I just had my breakdown and saw the light through the window (a very dirty window) of my spiritual eyes into getting a true reality check. And that is when I decided to clean my hogan because in cleaning it up, I was symbolically cleaning myself up--from the inside out--on a spiritual basis. For too long, I had been away from my meditation and my yoga. It was now time to get back to it. To recommit to my spirit’s well being.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is some Globemallow (orange) that has sprung to life due to the monsoon rains and in the background, a magenta colored Desert Four o Clock. The desert has intense colors that are beautiful and breath taking. No desert is 'dead.' It just has a miraculous ability to bloom over night. And if you aren't paying attention, you will miss all this incredible beauty....



Today, Dave and I moved box after box of books from the hogan to the new office. Dave set up the shelves and anchored the book cases to the walls. You ever look at a thousand books and they need to be put in a specific order? Order out of chaos. Yep, that’s my life. That is everyone’s life! That’s how I felt inside, too.....I was in chaos and trying to make order of my breakdown/breakthrough. But, I just bent to the task of sorting, going step-by-step, those baby steps, and I began to put certain books on certain shelves. Within a couple of hours, there was more order and far less chaos! The rule here though, is you have to work at it--stay focused--and do it.

Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is our beloved prickly pear cactus--we got tons of them in the canyon! Native Americans gather them when they are ripe like this, skin and peel them, and remove the spines, and make a wonderful jelly with them. Our wild pigs/javalina/peccary, this is a very necessary food for their survival. This has been a very lean year and very few have these bright maroon colored fruit on them--so the pigs are going to be hungry.



Toward afternoon, I turned my attention to my beloved hogan. The floor was in need (dire need) of a vacuuming. Dave brought out my trusty canary yellow Dyson (love that machine) and I began to have it suck up all the leaves, the dirt and anything else -- a dead scorpion -- that was around. Little by little, I could see the beautiful nubby, dark blue carpet that symbolized Father Sky, becoming clear to me . It’s such a beautiful color. And I looked at myself how I was vacuuming up my own dirt, litter and debris inside myself and jettisoning it just like my vacuum cleaner was sucking it up and containing it so that the rug could be clean once more. At that point, I could see how I had held all this dirt and debris inside me and dimmed my spirit and threw me out of harmony or balance. It wasn’t going to be as easy as carrying out the dirt from the Dyson and emptying outside, but I knew I was discharging and that was as good as it gets. Rome isn’t rebuilt in a day!


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Of all things, here is a Blackfood Daisy!! You sometimes see them in very early spring after winter rains. But never in summer. For them to have bloomed like this--and trust me--yesterday, they had not or I'd have seen them for sure--like this is just astounding and magical! The whole plant just opened up and bloomed. Wow.


The more I worked through the afternoon (and it was hot and muggy and I was sweating like a racehorse), I kept thinking “this was me....” And then I thought: “How could I let my hogan, my spiritual place I love so much, derived so much from, go and sink into such an awful state?” I could see that my shattering event in mid-December/2004, had really taken me around a turn in my road and I took a fork that looking back on it, I shouldn’t have--but we all take these detours to learn from--and sooner or later, we find the road we were on again and hop back on it. We all get hit by a freight train in life--be it a person, place, thing or event. And we all get derailed by it. That’s a fact of life. How we struggle to get back to our feet, recouperate and heal ourselves from it, is what counts. And that was what I was doing right now!



Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here are Blazing Stars. These are smart flowers. They bloom only when there's a lot of rain--which we've had recently. And then, the open up at dusk, remain open all night and close at dawn. It takes a lot of water which is energy, for a flower to remain open all day under this brutal heat and sunlight.



The more I cleaned (I washed windows, inside and out, dusted, sucked up spider webs, washed every crystal and fetish, removed every picture and cleaned it up), the cleaner I felt inside. I felt almost euphoric with the whole process. The old adage, “As above, so below” applies here, but in an obverse kind of way, “As we are on the inside, we are reflected on the outside.” So, my hogan, my spiritual home, was a disaster area of untold proportion that I had let sink into a state of disrepair for so long, and clearly, it was an inner reflection of my own spirit being dusty, cobwebby, dirty and filled with junk, too.

With every window I washed, I thought: “I’ll be able to see myself better now.” Clean windows meand better inner vision and connection with one’s self in my little book of life. And pretty soon, after four hours of nonstop work, the hogan looked pretty good. Not that it’s back to ‘normal’--it isn’t. Still stuff to do -- but at least it’s CLEAN and it’s got order instead of chaos, and I can once more, feel the vortex energy that is there, circulating again. And I can also feel my spirit beginning to stir and move within me, as well.

Best of all, I toted my boom box out to the hogan, got a Wayra CD (beautiful flute music--this guy is part Incan and part Native American and I met him in person in Prescott on a jaunt over there with Linda M. to an arts and crafts show). And I bought two of his CD’s. I played one of them this afternoon, laid down on my pillows (one under my head and one under my knees) and I meditated in my hogan. Boy,did it feel good! As I lay there just feeling my body, my aura and the energy of the vortex in the hogan moving I thought: “How could I have EVER have stopped doing this? It’s so prime to my balance, to my survival, to being in a good space with myself and all my relations...”

And as I lay there, I understood that I had drawn a horrific, smashing, shattering event that caught me coming and going, that had thrown me into this tailspin from which I’m only now, just beginning to emerge from. And as I allowed the flute music to take me to Peru, to Lord Salcantay, the great Apu, or mountain spirit, of that country, I felt light and free and joyous in a way I have never felt before. I knew that by going through this Dark Night of the Soul test where I had denied myself the vital use of my spiritual tenets to help me through it, had been a real mistake. But, I learned from it. I had never walked away from my spiritual life--ever--before this shattering life event. But I had with it.

And now, I was coming home...home to my hogan, home to my spiritual symbol. The healing I receive in my hogan, due to the vortex and so many other things, such as the spirit guardians who live around us, all have supported me through this arduous, nonstop event. Without them, I couldn’t have made it. And without my husband and m friends in my outside/external world, there as equal support, had gotten me through this, too. We never go through hell alone. We are always given support whether we realize it at the time or not.....


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
Here is an intense look at the Thunder Being as she moved in a northwest direction.


Meditation is such a healing tool. I can’t recommend it enough, to everyone. It brings you back into harmony not only with all yourself, your auric field, but also it realigns your chakra system and renews the connection with ‘all our relations’ that are around us, whether we see them or are aware of them or not. In other words: it helps us destress, detox, relax and let down to a level where we can reach our own, inner sense of peace.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
This is long after the sunset and before Rocky and I were heading down the hill toward Jon's vineyard--orange colors in the northwest with Mormon Tea trees as a dark frame for the wonderful colors.

I was glad I cleaned out my spiritual home. In doing that today, I was making a commitment to my spirit, to clean me up from the inside out. Aho.


Copyright Eileen Nauman 2006
It is always a magical surprise to crest Sunset Point. This is what I saw tonight--a huge Thunder Being dumping her veil of dark rain in the distance. Awesome power, incredible panorama and a sense of timelessness and yet, connected with nature in a very raw, real way.



In Spirit....