House with 4 Rooms & 29 Faces

This page wasn't going to leave me alone til it got made...

First I read the quote in Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort of Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach, which I'm reading through daily this year. 

It really stuck with me, been thinking about it ever since...

Then it showed up in a daily message email as the signature... 

ooook, They may have been following SA:DC too...

Then it ALSO showed up on a website I was researching photographers on. 

hhmmm... 

No 4th *poke* from the universe needed.

The Quote (which I used in the roof):

There is an Indian proverb or axiom that says that everyone is a house with four rooms, 

~a physical, ~a mental, ~an emotional, and ~a spiritual. 

Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room every day, 

even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person. 

~Rumer Godden~ -A House with Four Rooms-

Face #4 for 29 Faces was born.

Gathered information on the '4 Room House' from the internetz and bumbled together a rough 'guide' for myself. I'll post the babble way down at the bottom so if your here for 29 Faces and don't want to read the Woo-Woo you don't need to tip-toe through it. ;O)

 

  Printed the information to fit, Page is 12" X 8", then sketched in some guidelines to Art around. Inked in the roof as well before sketching the face and body.

Pencil sketched it all in, then traced in Sharpie PEN ( I LOVE my new Pen!!!!) and erased the guidelines. 

Glued the ink tinted printouts on, then colored her in with Stampin' Up! Markers.

Took a few pictures in process... 

Forgot to take a just-pencil one so I've already inked the main face in that photo. (sowy)

(Woo-Woo Babble below...)

 

 

The Spirit Room

The spiritual room is not about religion or ideology. Living in it doesn’t require a particular set of beliefs or faith.  Visiting this room is about identifying what makes us come alive, how our “spirit” (regardless of how we define it) expresses our deepest values and the meaning and purpose of our life.

Living in this room requires that we more closely define what inspires and brings us joy. Whatever the experience –  being in nature, working with passion, being with those we love, sharing ideas, caring for those in need, painting a picture, creating a wonderful meal, traveling to places we love – bring us into alignment with the spiritual room.

Whenever we visit this room, we integrate all four rooms in harmony. In this room, we find new sources of creativity, energy and peace. Here we discover what truly feeds us – the source of the real needs behind the endless quest for self-expression.

• Meditate/Reflect
• Be in silence
• Serve others
• Practice self-compassion
• Spend time in beauty
• Do what you love to do
• Stop judging yourself & others

The Mental Room

We place the mental room first because we believe that our individual thought is at the root of every emotion, action and experience. Thought is our greatest creative asset and the actor in every thing we do.

To really live in the mental room we need to become more self-aware, which neuroscientist V S Ramchandran refers to as the “Holy Grail” of neuroscience.

Developing our ability to be self-aware, to “bear witness” to our experience opens the doors to all of the rooms.  In the mental room dwells the beliefs, assumptions and expectations that drive our experience. Becoming more intimate with how they work – holds the key to greater mobility and choice in moving through our four rooms.

The thinking process (and its branches of beliefs, assumptions and expectations) forms the basis for how we perceive our own well being and our power to change it.

• Develop Self-Awareness
• Seek out Silence
• Understand Your Thinking Process
• Focus on one task at a time
• Practice Positive Imaging

The Physical Room

This is the room where the physical body lives, our precious vehicle for experiencing life through our senses.

There are lots of experiences of life in our physical room. What we are talking about goes beyond eating less junk food and working out (though that can make for a healthier physical room).  Our focus in the physical room is about developing a much deeper relationship with our bodies as the source for our experience of being fully alive.

To accomplish this, most of us need to make greater connections between our mind and our body. We tend to think of stress as the inevitable culprit that attacks us from the outside, describing it in almost “viral” terms.  While stress can definitely be felt in the body and can wreak real havoc there, its trigger source is in the mental room. External events happen constantly that can be experienced as stress, but it’s the mental room that opens the door for stress to take up residence in the body.

• Meditate/do relaxation techniques often
• Rest often/get the sleep you really need
• Get in touch with the messages of your body language
• Eat consciously/drink enough water
• Move, dance, play, exercise, laugh
• Focus on your breathing as a critical support system for your body awareness

The Emotional Room

This is the room where our feelings reside.  Neuroscience has shown that our feelings do not simply emanate from one part of our brain (the limbic system), so we can imagine that this room is vast. It encompasses our entire body. You have more neural networks for feeling in your stomach and heart than anywhere else in your body.

Some of us really ignore this room. It’s like the extra back room, filled with clutter, that seems like just too much work to organize.  Others spend way too much time in the emotional room, reacting on auto-pilot to life’s events, rather than using the knowledge of the mental room for balance.

The tools of emotional intelligence can give us a whole new level of freedom in which to explore this room.  We tend to think of this room as a messy place filled with anger, anxiety, resentment, impatience and frustration.  While there should be a welcome sign on this room’s door for all of our feelings, remember that this is also the room where calmness, confidence, contentment, satisfaction, love, joy, empathy and compassion live. There is room for all.

• Expand Your Emotional Literacy
• Practice Developing Your Senses
• Cultivate Bringing Emotions that Heal You (like Gratitude) into Your Daily Experience
• Make more Connections Between Your Thoughts and the Emotions they Trigger