Feng Shui Articles:
TIPS & INFORMATION ON THE ART OF FENG SHUI

Last year I met my first Feng Shui consultant at a networking event in Federal Way, Washington. Truthfully, I thought the whole placement for power thing, which she was espousing, was just a bunch of silliness that some person made up to make a few bucks. What rational basis could there be in the belief that the placement of my “stuff” could impact me in any way except if I tripped over my stuff?

I continued with my refusal to believe in such silliness for several months. Then, one day while at a bookstore, I picked up a Feng Shui book to browse through while waiting for a date to arrive. I thought, okay this should be good for a few laughs. After flipping through the book - I was flabbergasted as I pondered that this author had seen my apartment! How could this person so correctly guess that my love life would suck and that by chance I have this incredible tendency to want to throw tons of stuff in every relationship sector in my home?

I thought okay maybe it's just chance or maybe those inclined to read such self help books in home design are statistically more inclined to have messed up love lives. After all, are not those with no significant other more inclined to have more reading time on their hands and more inclined to want to work on self in pursuit of a loved one? Then I kept reading, and I saw certain patterns of decorating and placement that seemed to be in direct contrast to my stated goal of wanting a relationship. I said I wanted a loving man and a family one day - yet, these symbols were entirely lacking in my apartment.

What decorated my walls? Image upon image of women either sitting, thinking or writing alone. I had decided upon my divorce several years ago that I should decorate my home with images of single women being happy and single. I had thought why have images in my home of what I do not have and may never have in my life again. Should I not celebrate my single status? As I flipped through the pages of the book I thought - the single image thing is chance.

Surely I must have other things that I am doing that are not symbolically contradicting my stated intent of wanting a healthy relationship. The next chapter I flipped to dealt with placing objects in groupings to celebrate relationships. This didn't add to my sense of comfort at wanting to discard the idea that I might have set myself up for bad relationship energy. I felt like the author had come to my apartment and used me as an example of what not to do in decorating your home. Not only had I started to put up single women images all over my apartment, I had also started this odd trend of buying single objects that matched nothing and would have to sit all by themselves. Why buy a pair of something if you are not a pair? If you are not even a pair, why buy groupings?

In my pursuit to try to write off what I had read in the Feng Shui book I figured I would try to find data to support my belief that this is all just silliness. I asked a few people about their home decorating tendencies for images, groupings and the status of their relationships in their lives. What I found did not support my desire to want to write off Feng Shui. I found person after person, of the social butterfly tendency, had a thing for wanting to have collections of things in tidy groupings. And, person after person who were of the anti-social or non-relationship blessed type seemed to have thing for solitary item placements.

A 73 year old lady I met attributed her good health in relationship to her age, to her social life. She thought it bizarre that anyone would not place things in groupings. She reflected how much of her life she had sensed a desire to have everything from candlesticks to picture frames in at least pairs if not groupings of at least 4 or 5 of each item. How she viewed her stuff is how she viewed life - it is not good to be alone. And, her life mirrored this in her never being alone and always being part of some sort of a group.

I have come to think that using Feng Shui is a lot like using Reiki energy to heal. As a level II Reiki practitioner I have learned that true inner intent is vital in maximizing one’s life. Everything has energy. How we use or not use the energy allotted to us defines our lives. By seeing patterns in our lives reflected back at us, we can learn to see ourselves more truly and learn to either accept or improve upon the images reflected back at us. We can use exploring how we decorate our homes and our offices as tools to examine what we may be doing unconsciously to sabotage our inner and outer successes.

Questions to reflect on: