Your home knows what you're here for. Do you?

I'd been putting off cleaning our windows for six months. It's genuinely hard work — it took three adults, forty-five minutes, and puddles of grimy water splattering all across the floor. But when we were finally done, the light came in differently. Not dramatically. Just more of it. Cleaner. Like the room remembered what it was supposed to feel like.

In feng shui, windows are the eyes of the home — how light enters, how chi moves, how the house stays in relationship with everything beyond its walls. So it made me wonder: what else had I been blocking without realizing it? What else was waiting to come in?

Last week's parasha, Pekudei (Exodus 38:21–40:38), describes the completion of the Mishkan. God gave precise instructions. The Israelites followed them exactly — adding nothing of their own, imposing nothing of their own vision. The greatness wasn't in the building — it was in the restraint. They made faithful, ego-free space. Then this week, Vayikra (Leviticus 1:1) opens with God calling to Moses from inside that completed space. The Mishkan didn't summon God. It made it possible for God to arrive.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks teaches that Vayikra's essential question is the one every person must eventually face: what is the specific, irreplaceable thing that only you were made for? Not what you're good at. Not what you want. Not what you've spent years building toward. What you're actually for.

Drawing on the philosopher Michael Novak, Sacks identifies four signs of a true calling — and they all point to the same thing: your purpose doesn't get found. It arrives. But only when you let go of the need to control, and make room for something larger to come through. Like the light coming in through the windows.

Making that kind of space is harder than it looks.

The Feng Shui Concept: Windows

Every window in your home is a decision about what you're willing to receive.

In feng shui, windows govern how chi enters and circulates — not just light, but energy, possibility, the quality of what the house is in relationship with. A clean, unobstructed window is an open channel. A grimy one, a covered one, one blocked by furniture that crept in over the years — these don't stop the light completely. They filter it. Dim it. And we stop noticing, because we've made quiet peace with the grime of habit: this is just how it is here.

Tending your windows isn't a cleaning project. It's a practice in staying awake to what your home could be letting in.

I recognized feng shui as my calling not because I discovered it, but because I recognized it. It was what I had been doing instinctively my whole life — in 27 homes, across three countries, long before I had a name for it. When I finally studied it formally, I didn't feel like I was learning something new. I felt like I was being handed the vocabulary for something I already knew. That's the feeling Sacks and Novak are describing. Not arrival. Recognition.

We are also right now at the exact seasonal hinge this work lives in — water feeding into wood in the five-element cycle, the last week of winter giving way to the first week of spring at the equinox on March 21st. Gua 1, career and life journey, feeding into new growth. If you've been waiting for a signal that it's time to let more light in — the calendar agrees with you.

7-Day Experiment: The Windows of Your Home

Pick one or several of the following. There's no correct order. Go where you're drawn — or where you've been avoiding.

The glass itself. Grime is a filter. It doesn't block light completely — it just dims and distorts it. Wash one window this week with full attention. Notice what the room looks like afterward.

What's in front of the window. Furniture, objects, plants that have slowly migrated into the light's path. Stand at your window and ask: is anything here that doesn't belong? Moving even one piece can shift the whole room.

Window treatments. Curtains and blinds manage the boundary between inside and outside, private and seen. Are yours creating the mood you actually want? Privacy is legitimate feng shui. So is openness. The question is whether your treatments are a choice or just something you stopped noticing.

What the window faces. Go to each window in your home and actually look through it. When did you last do this? What is your home in visual relationship with — trees, a neighbor's wall, a street, sky? This is what your home sees.

Poison arrows. In feng shui, a poison arrow is a sharp angle or edge pointing directly toward you through a window — a roofline corner, a utility pole, the hard edge of a building. Sharp lines carry sharp energy. Look through each window and notice: is anything pointing back at you? A plant on the sill, a crystal, or a sheer curtain can soften the line without blocking the light.

Light at different times. The same window in the morning and afternoon are two different windows. Does the light in each room serve what that room is for?

The window you avoid. Every home has one. The one that faces something awkward, or is painted shut, or covered entirely. You know which one it is. This week, just go look at it.

CLOSING INSIGHT

When the Mishkan was completed, the Torah says a cloud covered the Tent of Meeting and the glory of God filled it. Moses himself could not enter. The space was so faithfully made, so completely emptied of human insistence, that what arrived was larger than anyone had planned for.

You don't find your purpose. You make yourself findable.

Make space for what's trying to come through.