The Environmental Impact of Expansion
I’ve been house-sitting a Los Angeles mansion. It’s only 3 bedrooms, so by my deeply-set midwestern standards, it’s isn’t actually that big. But by California standards, it's a mansion, and the size isn’t the only thing that makes this house grandiose.
This house has everything. Floor-to-ceiling windows, a perfectly manicured lawn, white marble floors, a curated kitchen with beautiful ceramic cookware, expensive shampoos and lotions in the bathrooms, a whole-house filtration system so the water is pure from the tap, and a giant, purified, heated, salt-water pool and hot-tub combo.
When I first got here, I was afraid to touch anything. Everything is so clean, it looks new. I knew that just by interacting with things in the house, I’d never be able to get them back to the state that I found them in. The environment was just so beautiful, so perfectly curated, and I felt intimidated, and like everything I did would be a blemish on the perfect backdrop.
Vibrationally, I wasn’t sure I felt worthy to be in a space like this. I was nervous and uncomfortable. This house is the nicest place I’ve ever stayed in - hotels included. It blew my mind that people live this way - and that I was now living this way. Here I was in a Los Angeles mansion, responsible for it all, and worried that somehow I would ruin it just by existing in my normal state.
I spent the first week wide-eyed staring at the bookshelf filled with celebrity’s books, all personally signed, googling the face cream I’d just slathered on my face, to find it cost $85 a jar, using the same pan every day for every meal, knowing that at least I’d only ruin this one and no others from their state of like-new-perfection.
But soon, and maybe sooner than you think, I started to get comfortable. Maybe that is just the nature of sleeping in a place and waking up there enough days in a row. Maybe I am good at acclimating to new things, but after about 7 days, I started feeling safer and more relaxed. I tanned naked by the private pool, played my music through the apple TV, and started using the hand-blown-glass drinking cups that I was at first afraid of breaking. Nothing broke, nothing imploded, and I expanded.
After two weeks I recognized that if I did live here, it wouldn’t be that impressive to me after a while, because it would just be normal. I was not only comfortable, but also bored with the lack of musical instruments and art supplies. I wondered how you could really live a full life with so few things, all perfect in their place. The house was certainly beautiful, impressive, and perfect, but it wasn’t really for me.
But being in a space that I didn’t curate changed things about me and opened me up to new ways of living. The way it feels to have space, without clutter, and the way that it relaxes your mind is really profound. I found myself meditating more, and finding the ability to switch between relaxing and working more accessible. When you’re living in a small space, there is no physical change to say, “Ok, now it is time to relax.” Everything is stacked on top of itself and it blends together. But, when you can walk away from your work computer to swim a few laps in the pool, you really feel the difference.
This process of acclimating to the nicest house I’ve ever stayed in has been a very interesting roller coaster of emotions. It has expanded me and changed me in ways I didn’t know could change.
A lot of manifestation teachings suggest finding friends who are already living the way that you want to live. I always found that advice to be difficult to accomplish. It’s rare that I even get along with people - and how could I really have anything in common with people who are so vibrationally different than I am? But I feel that in spending time in this house, I was able to make a similar expansion without the uncomfortable social dynamics.
As you are expanding, find spaces that feel luxurious to you. Find spaces that make you feel as though you’re in awe, and then acclimate your energy body to them. Visit a museum and imagine it’s your house. Imagine it’s been your house for a year. How would you feel then?
Go to a hotel lobby that would normally be too fancy to stay at and imagine yourself perfectly fitting in, tired, bored, grumpy even, like everybody else there. Seek out physical experiences to expand you. Allow yourself to belong to spaces you normally feel are uncomfortable to be in because they are “too nice.”
As you adjust your vibration, you will be calling in more experiences like that. Your physical reality will shift and you will start to feel more comfortable in nice spaces, around people who have already mastered physical wealth. As you do this, you will be bringing the gift of true spiritual abundance into the material world. The fancy spaces and fancy people so desperately need your energy. Shine your truth and allow your truth to shine into spaces you never let it shine before.
This post has a part II.
