How to Choose a New Home Receptively
An image from the sweetest Airbnb in Fort Worth, Texas, a stop on my 32-hour cross-country journey. © Maggie Battista 2024
Eighteen months ago, I found myself fresh off a plane in Austin, Texas. I arrived to do a breath-work and healing retreat with a thousand people. If you were a member of my audio membership at the time, you heard a bit about that experience.
After just two days in Austin, I heard the call from within to stay longer so I found a quiet treehouse to live in for two extra weeks.
During that time, I studied Mayan Ritual Cosmology, an ideology that I had begun studying a year or two prior given its roots in my own Mayan lineage.
Mayan Ritual Cosmology is a complex and ancient belief system that describes the origin of the universe through gods and the first peoples; through the four levels of the world including the underworld, the middle world, the sky world, and the earth; and through the relationship between the celestial and the terrestrial.
That last part represents the relationship between the heart of the sky, the heart of the earth, and the mid point that connects them in my heart, in your heart.
During my studies, I learned more about the Mayan Sacred Calendar and the energy of the days, which Mayan timekeepers or Ajq’ij consider to be divine and sacred.
Today, I so often see (and feel) how the events of a given day perfectly align to the energies of the Calendar. It’s wild and beautiful—and quite potent to this storyteller.
Since I had a natural connection, a natural affinity for Austin, I decided to compare the energies of my Soul (calculated based on my Mayan birthday) with the energies of the founding of Austin, Texas (which is December 27, 1839).
What I discovered delighted me.
Austin and I have the same Mayan birthday. We were born in different centuries but carry the same energy of 2 Tijax.
On a very high level, the sacred number 2 represents relationships, lovers, duality, polarity, indecision, and self-sacrifice. Tijax is represented by the archetype of the warrior-healer, the sculptor, the surgeon, curanderos, and the obsidian blade. With each of these archetypes, the aim is the same: healing and beauty.
Stick with me, it gets better!
In Mayan Sacred Calendar calculations, one can determine the combined energy of two entities. When you combine my energy with Austin’s energy, you get a new number: 4 Ajmak.
The sacred number 4 represents wholeness, stability, the four directions, the four elements, the four stations of the sun, the four colors of corn, and the four pillars that hold up the sky from the earth. Ajmak represents reconciliation, forgiveness, humanness, living more wildly, exploring desires, sensuality, and healing.
There is some next level healing work I am meant to do in Austin. I may not be here forever. In fact, once the co-creation is complete between a 4 Ajmak pairing, oftentimes, one entity decides it’s time to part ways. For example, the city could kick me out metaphorically or I could wake up one morning wishing to get out of town.
But I’m here for now. And, I want to share how I am choosing a new home here, as it’s entirely different from how I did it for the first fifty years of my life.
At the time of finishing this piece, I’ve been in Texas for about four weeks.
The moment I arrived, the mind wished to hit the hot pavement to seek that perfect new home for me. And as I began scrolling through listings and reaching out to realtors, I could sense my body tense up.
I could feel that some part of me wished to solve a problem, exert control, know all the things right this very second.
Once I sensed that urgency in the body, I stopped. The old Maggie would try to ease the tension by solving the problem faster.
This time, I choose to follow the call and trust that there is something or someone or some perfectly aligned new home that brought me here. What is meant for me is never, ever going to miss me.
What is meant for you is never, ever going to miss you, too.
So instead of searching frantically, I started to regulate my nervous system.
Here’s what regulating a nervous system looks like for me:
I slept for eight to ten hours per night.
I ate whole foods and filled my meals with foods this body loves like rice, kale, beans, ginger, cumin, cinnamon, turmeric, coconut cream, eggs, and chocolate. Always, chocolate.
I returned to my morning Cacao ritual, drinking a small cup in the early morning hours before the sunrise, with only a candle to guide my path from lips to cup.
I spoke to my ancestors and the Mayan Sacred Calendar and the spirit of Cacao, offering my devotion to soul, asking for guidance in the form of messages and magic, and listening very closely.
And, I spoke to my own Soul, every single morning, because I practice what I teach.
I rode the wave of my emotions, allowing all the need for control to transmute into surrender, reminding myself that every time something doesn’t work out, in fact, it is working out.
I cultivated a playlist to fill the silence and steered away from distractions like television and social media. Those media aren’t bad but they can distract me from what I need to hear or feel or see.
Instead of noticing the media, I noticed the sunset and the sunrise (which rises right outside one of the windows of my temporary rental). I was originally called home to my Soul in part by paying close attention to the sunrise. If you’re a dear friend, you aren’t a stranger to me say, “Good morning, sunshine.” That’s what I began saying five or six years ago to allow the awe of the cosmos to call me in, gently, softly.
And, I got back on my yoga mat. Given my ankle surgery, I haven’t done yoga in six months and so deep stretching is finding me at the perfect time.
And now, my approach to choosing a new home feels way different. Let me tell you about it.
Yes, I’m working with realtors. Yes, I’m working with locators. Yes, I’m on the apps and the Facebook. But all of that is strategy, implementation, and secondary to how I’m choosing the new home.
Instead of piles of research, I’m exploring this city and its surroundings.
Instead of stressing about timelines, I’m working one or two days per week in a new coffee shop, feeling into the energy of that particular land and its peoples.
Instead of rushing to sign on the dotted line just to have something, I’m waiting for my body to be a 100% yes on a place or a building. (95% might do, too.)
I’m getting to know the land and what it lays on the altar between us through its own particular resonance, through its own particular frequency, through its own people.
I’m getting to know the people associated with a town or neighborhood by listening to them, literally listening to how they speak about their life and work. I ask questions. I let them talk. I say less. I listen more.
And I’m letting people help me. As a woman with a fair amount of trauma, it can be challenging to let others help me. I’m so familiar with taking care of life on my own, of figuring out how to fix or solve things independently. But this time around, and for the duration of my life, I’m moving slowly, accepting help, and asking for help, saying ‘thank you’ and ‘I appreciate you’ frequently.
And here’s the thing: I will know my new home not by the price tag or the difficulty with which it has appeared. I will know my new home by how it resonates within my body, by how alive the soul feels when it is there. I will know my new home by sense, touch, and resonance.
I will know my new home by the amount of aliveness that is allowed to flow through me when I’m there, when I engage with its energy, when I ground into its soul.
This is a new way of moving in the world. It requires slowness and softness so that I may feel the energy of a place. It requires living receptively. It requires living in the unknown. But, at last, I’m so here for it.
I’ll be sure to stay in touch on how this new home search unfolds.
Thank you for listening.
