I always make the spaces I live and work in into Temples. "Why not", I feel.
When I went to school I was often looking around wondering why everything needed to be so square and ugly?! If you build something why not make it beautiful? That was how my reflections were going! The time, energy and money is anyway put into it! Choosing beauty was always easy for me, and when I was little I thought everyone functioned like that. The equation did not come together in that super ugly concrete building from the sixties with the most disgusting colours on the walls and with materials that fitted better in a prison than in a place for learning and creative inspiration.
When I got older I understood better and realised that this was one of the natural gifts of mine, which I could contribute with to others. So it happened that my first business at 14 was one of renovating and selling old amazing iron beds. Maybe the most profitable business I ever had percentage-wise, which is cool as a first step on the journey of entrepreneurship. Although I truly have to send the thanks to my parents who were, well, hmmm... now when I think of it they were kind of slave labour, or maybe even worse... as they actually not only drove me around to the dirty farms where I sourced the old beds in the barns, but they also did pay for the petrol. Hihi, that parental love is amazing. So, anyway... what happened with that experience was that I felt that anything is possible and that I got the creative power to follow my ideas and make them show as beauty in the world.
Right now I am working on one of the most fun projects I have ever done, my first book - "Spirited Living - The Wonder of Rituals" - and more than ever I am feeling that the spaces I choose to work in needs to hold the light, the beauty and the dark soil which I need for it to be born. Most days I work in my own room with a view, which you can see on the pics below, other days I go to cafes or restaurants for another kind of experience and vibe.
This my space is such a blessing and every time I step into the room I am in awe of the light, the view, the details, the feeling... and I almost can not believe that I actually created it. It is as if I live inside my dream altar, as if every piece of everything is a reminder of what I am truly passionate about in this life. As if every piece in here IS my soul, which I can see on the outside.
When I sit down to work I do the simple rituals that inspire me; drink water with peppermint oil, light my sweet vanilla Japanese incense stick, play some jazz and stretch a bit. I breathe deeply and look with eyes that reach all the way into the core of the Earth, all the way out through the black holes of the Universe and I simply know; my unique blueprint of a soul is perfect, it matters, it lives and it gives. We all are such wild wild amazing flowers of beauty. We are here to live as our most sweet and simple beauty. And where ever we are, we can always start to honor that with the smallest of gestures towards beauty.
If I would have understood more of who I am when sitting there in the prison like environment of my school, I would have brought a pink rose, a picture of my kitten, some essential oil and a white stone to place on the work desk in front of me. Making a hole in the Matrix right there, piercing myself into the future of my own life. Maybe then I would not have had to become so hard and tough from trying to handle the pain of it all.
