Facing a big decision? Your home has a corner for that
Updated: 4 hours ago
A few days ago I left home, alone, and drove up north to a kibbutz with one question for the coming year: how do I want to keep weaving Jewish wisdom and ancient feng shui into the way we live in our homes today? With no family and no to-do list, it was just me, the quiet, and a question too big for a couple of hours at my work desk. It needed a weekend.
I went up there to be alone with my questions, and found that I wasn’t. Every answer I reached for came from somewhere: a teacher, a text, a tradition that had already walked part of this road.
It turned out to be the right week for it, because Rabbi Jonathan Sacks translates the week’s Torah reading, Lech Lecha, as “go to yourself.” As he puts it: “Follow the inner voice, as did those who came before you, continuing their journey by bringing timeless values to a rapidly changing world.” Inner-directed people, he says, are pioneers who explore the unknown while keeping faith with the old.
It’s in these chapters that Abraham is told to leave his father’s house, and he goes on to become the father of a whole people. The one who set out alone became the lineage everyone after him draws from, and going to yourself works that way too: the insight you find on your own is often the gift you end up passing on.
That’s the paradox I brought home. The questions about your direction have to be answered alone, because nobody can go inward for you, and yet you are never unsupported. There’s a whole lineage behind you and inside you to draw from.
On the bagua, feng shui’s energetic map of your home, three areas sit side by side and tell this exact story.
Feng shui concept: 3 guas, 1 movement
Kan (gua 1), at the center of your front wall, is water: your career, life path, and also dissolution. It’s the deep winter where things lose their shape so something new can form.
Gen (gua 8), in the front-left corner, is the mountain: stillness, knowledge, self-cultivation. The ancient I Ching commentary calls Gen the place where all things are completed and begin again.
Zhen (gua 3), on the left side, is thunder: family, ancestors, new beginnings. It’s the first stirring of spring, growth rising from old roots.
Walk your bagua from the front door and these three run in order. You let go, you go inward, and you step out, carried by what came before you.
This week’s experiment
Ask yourself which of these you most need to say yes to right now:
To go under. To let something dissolve, stop holding its shape, and not know yet. → Kan, gua 1
To go inside. To get quiet and find out what you actually think and want. → Gen, gua 8
To step out. To move forward, guided by people and wisdom that came before you. → Zhen, gua 3
Then find that area in your home and place one thing there that symbolizes it for you. In Kan, maybe a small bowl of water or something deep blue. In Gen, a stone, a book that formed you, or a chair you’ll actually sit in. In Zhen, a photo of a grandparent, an inherited object, or a plant reaching upward.
Choose one, and let it remind you every time you walk past.
Closing insight
On the bagua, the corner of self-knowledge sits between the water you came through and the family you come from. That’s usually where answers live: in the quiet place between what you’ve let go of and what you’ve been given. Go to yourself, and you’ll find you brought company.
